One Pan Cooking
One pan cooking is the easiest way to prepare a tasty, quick and nutritional meal for one or two people.
Ive found the best pan to use is a wok, but the right wok is very important. I dont like a wok with a hand hold opposite the handle as it is hard to store in pan cupboards, its ok if its hanging up but I always think pans can get dusty if left to hang up for long periods of time.
Also I dont like wok pans with too thick a base as they can hold the heat and continue to cook food to the point where it burns even though you may have turned the heat off.
The best wok I’ve found is a a normal wok…as simple as that.
One of the important things that I have found about cooking with a wok is that you can use several of the same ingredients for a wide variety of different meals. For example I tend to use the ingredients below;
Garlic
Onions
Ginger
Mushrooms
Peppers – red / green / yellow
Sweetcorn – frozen
Fish Sauce
Crab meat
Prawns
Chicken meat
Beef strips
Extra virgin oil
Chillies dried and fresh
Coriander
Parsley
Coconut milk – can
Mushrooms
Tagliatelle
If you keep the above as a basic list of ingredients you can cook a wide variety of meals by adding just a few other ingredients specific to the meal you wish to create, for example if you wanted to cook a risotto all you would need is risotto rice or if you wish to cook Thais Green or Thai Red curry all you would need to add is a sauce.
To cook any of these one pan meals follow these simple instructions;
1 – Put you wok on a moderate to high heat
2 – add two table spoons of extra virgin olive oil
3 – once the olive oil is very hot, safely add the onions and cook for 5 mins stirring regularly until softened
4 – reduce the heat to a moderate heat and add the mushrooms, mushrooms will produce liquid so to save that in the pan simply cover the work stirring occasionally making sure the onions don’t burn.
5 – add you fish, chicken or meat and stir regularly until browned
6 – add whatever you fancy from sweetcorn, ginger, peppers etc depending on what you wish to cook i.e. prawn risotto will not need peppers whereas a curry is ideal for peppers.
At this point if you are cooking Thai curries you can add the can of Coconut milk.. Always shake the can prior to opening
Reduce the heat and stir occasionally. Typically it will take up yo 20 mins to cook the meal in the wok.
The meal in the wok can be served with chips or rice. I always like to use Basmati rice that can be cooked in a microwave in two mins, so two m ins before you serve, microwave your rice and put onto the plate before serving up your meal.
If you wish to use chips instead of rice simply put the oven on when you start cooking with the wok and once the oven is at the required temperature pop in your oven chips. Check timings before starting to cook and adjust times as required to ensure the chips will be ready when the wok meal is ready to serve.
Please see below examples of wok one pan cooked meals;
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Venetian liver and onion gravy
Recipe by Lloyd Saunders
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Gennaro’s Family Lasagne
Recipe by steve-gowers
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Texas Chilli Con Carne
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The Juiciest Kofta Kebabs
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Home-Cooked Chicken Curry
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Cottage Pie
