Hate cooking but want to eat healthy home cooked meals? I’m here to help…
As someone who literally hates cooking (don’t even get me started on the cleaning up afterwards) I struggle to motivate myself sometimes to make nice home cooked meals. I tend to force myself to do it though as I have Ru so I want him to eat healthy and well, and I always enjoy them when I’m finally done cooking so it ends up worth it! When I first started cooking a lot, I was tending to cook the healthy stuff for Ru and I wasn’t really eating as well as him which I’m now trying to change. It’s just as important that I eat healthy too so now that he’s a bit older, I try and cook so that we can eat together. I keep meaning to try out an online fitness plan but I struggle to find the time so instead, I’ve been experimenting and now have a selection of meals that I can make for dinner that are healthy, super quick & easy to do and the best part – Reuben loves them! You may have seen these on my insta stories but I kept being asked for the recipes so today I’m sharing three of my favourite dishes.
Sweet & Sour Beef
I tend to make this recipe using both beef and chicken (not at the same time obvs) but I either use chicken strips or beef strips. If I make the beef version then I generally use beef steaks cut into strips as I find these the be a lot more tender and soft for Ru’s benefit as he struggles with very chewy foods due to him not having many of his back teeth yet. I also have two different recipes for the sweet & sour sauce that I mix up depending on what ingredients I have in but I’m just going to share my favourite recipe out of the two today to make it easier!
It’s so simple to do, all you do is chop onions, peppers and your beef or chicken strips and fry in a pan with a tsp of olive oil in. I like to add chopped cherry tomatoes too but everything is optional really depending on what you like. Another option is to add in tinned chopped pineapple (without the juice, save that for later) but I can highly recommend this step as it tastes delish!
Separately, in a bowl or jug – mix 2 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of white wine vinegar, 4 tbsp orange juice, 1 tbsp ketchup or tomato puree and 2 tbsp of cornflour. If you used the tinned pineapple, you will also add the juice from that at this point but if you didn’t then make sure you double the rest of the ingredients as you will most likely not have enough sauce for the dish. You could always add it and then make up some more if there isn’t enough but the cornflour makes it thicker so I can guarantee that you will need more.
You literally then add your sauce to the pan and let it all simmer together for basically however long you want, I usually leave it a good 15-20 minutes so it’s full of flavour and of course you can add whatever seasoning you like at this point too and you’re good to go!
Sea Bass
This dish can be a tad more expensive if you’re cooking for multiple people but for me because there’s just me and Ru it’s fairly cheap to do. Sea bass is honestly one of my favourite meals ever, it’s such a nice fish. I’ve been obsessed with it lately and it’s such an easy meal to make plus it’s super healthy so you can’t go wrong!
This isn’t really a recipe as such as more as how I cook it and what I eat with it, but I’ve been having it with homemade chips and green beans. I cook the homemade chips (just peeled potatoes in strips) first which is fairly straightforward, however I use my dads trick and add in a chunk of lard which I melt in the tray first before adding my chips and then mixing them round so the lard covers them all. I also sprinkle in mixed herbs, salt and pepper and a touch of olive oil and then leave them to cook for about an hour in the oven. When they’ve got about half an hour to go I put some green beens on the boil and let them simmer so they’re nice and soft and then when I’ve got about 5 minutes to go, I fry my sea bass fillet in a pan with chopped cherry tomatoes. The fish cooks so quickly so always do this last, and add some herbs and things too for extra flavour!
Creamy Chicken
Another v easy dish to make is this creamy chicken one with a pasta of your choice – or even rice! Reuben cannot get enough of this dish so it’s a definite winner in my house.
It’s as simple as frying chicken strips or breasts with peppers, cherry tomatoes and onion (just my personal favourite way to fry things) and then adding about 250g of double cream, 2 tbsp of cornflour (possibly more but just add as you go) and then some seasoning. I also like to add veg into it just because it helps Reuben get his 5 a day and makes the overall meal a bit healthier. My favourite pasta to cook with it is tagliatelle but you can use whatever you like!
I hope these meals gave you some inspo if you’re a busy mama like me and don’t particularly like or find the time to cook a lot. I realise that they aren’t specific recipes but I just make it up as I go along and add things as they are needed. I’m no expert when it comes to cooking but I tend to just go with the flow and it always turns out delish so I guess you just pick that up. I find these three meals to be some of the best tasting plus they take me less than an hour to make and the clean up is always fairly easy too so win win!
What’s your favourite easy dish to make for dinner?
This post contains sponsored content.
