RoamingFrancis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 10:15 pm
I think the pot is stainless steel, not 100% sure. Around 12" diameter and 8" height. I have access to a refrigerator and a freezer.
i calculated the volume of such a cylinder and that’s almost a 4 gallon (!) pot (-905 cubic inches), which is *ginormous* for one person... big stock pots for domestic use are 10 or 12qt. it’s also unusually shaped because stock pots tend to be taller rather than wider... so i’m a bit puzzled by this one. did it come from a restaurant? my huge sautée pan (6qt) is 12” diameter but less than 3” tall. and it’s huuuuuge!
anyway, beyond the fact that it’s your only pot, the size is a challenge in itself. that kind of volume is used to brew beer, that sort of thing. even if you keep it at 25% of the volume (which would tend to evaporate things rapidly due to broad surface relative to volume) you’d end up with one gallon of food which for one person is *massive.* 16 cups. say it’s rice. that’s 5 days for 3 square meals of the same.
if you cook for a bunch of people in a shared house (e.g 8 roomies) then no worries.
anyway what i was going to suggest originally was batch cooking single ingredients, rather that one-pot meals.
the problem with *giant* one-pot meals is that you end up eating the same thing with the same flavor over and over and over. especially with a huge pot, there is pressure to eat it all before it goes bad.
batch cooking lets you cook (and refrigerate or freeze) different “preparations” that you can then combine into meals and season ad-hoc. hot sauce, soy sauce, oils, yeast flakes, ferments, and some of the preparations in themselves, can add variety and nutrition.
if you think of chinese food, there is a lot of very tasty stuff served over a blank rice canvas. there is a lot of variety but rice sits quietly at the center of every meal.
you can expand and your “canvases” to fit nutritional and flavor demands. these can be rice, pasta, quinoa, potatoes, barley, couscous, breads of many kinds (wheat, rye, etc), oats, millet, “neutral“ beans like garbanzos and white beans, grits/polenta, masa, pancakes/crepes, etc. etc. etc.
you could season these things upfront but then it’s going to be the same music all week.
then once you have your canvases you can make a stew type thing, something like a ratatouille or tofu in peanut sauce or tomato sauce or spicy lentils or (you’re vegan yes?) and dispense/combine as needed. this is where you’d load the flavor.
some beans are best seasoned well from scratch, like red beans, which go great with rice. same thing with chili beans. a neutral batch of garbanzo otoh can fortify a soup or a salad or get blended into hummus. farinata is a kind of flatbread made with garbanzo flour. white beans are so damn bland! i blend them with salsa verde for a dip.
what you want is contrasts and options with minimal effort, so that you can keep things interesting, but also “lazy.” no use in cooking all day unless it’s a profession.
...
pot size:
when i lived alone my most used pot was a... 2qt pot. looked like this
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/images/produ ... 215_S4.JPG
i’d make oatmeal in it, beans, rice, etc, and there’d always be leftovers for a day or two. it’s really a handy tool. i did not refrigerate much and never froze things but oats cook in 5’ rice cooks in 15-20’
now with 2 people that’s still our most used pot to cook something fresh, even for popcorn (we make small popcorns with lots of flavor). also does duty as a teapot, brews 1 qt at a time. makes the breakfast oatmeal, makes rice, and cooks small amounts of short pasta.
if i want to batch cook then i’ll use something larger (6qt pot, max fill is 4qt), and that’s *a lot of food* for 2 people.
i think a 2qt saucepan for fresh and a 4qt stew pot for batch cooking would be a good fit for a single person and prevent waste & spoilage. add cheap carbon steel frying pan (8” maybe?) and you’d be set...