Whether you love to cook or you’ve never even used your stove top, cooking for one can be a challenge. This guide will show you can you can enjoy cooking for one no matter what your dining preferences are.
If you really enjoy preparing a good meal, you may be annoyed by how difficult it is to scale your dinner down to prevent a ton of waste, or it can even leave you with a lonely feeling to do all that work for a single plate.
If you (like me) like to grab something fast and simple, you’ve probably already realized that you’re either going to be eating a lot of super-processed food or spending a small fortune on healthy individual meals.
Fortunately, there are several ways you can make cooking for yourself an enjoyable experience.
Be Prepared
Meal planning is key to having a pleasant single dining experience. Take one or two days a week (preferably a day when you don’t have to work) and make your meals for the week. If you’re an amateur chef, you can make these as elaborate as you like without worrying about wasting extra ingredients. And if you want to do the bare minimum amount of prep work, there are a multitude of quick and easy freezer recipes (see below) to help you out.
How to Cook and Package Single Serving Freezer meals from Once A Month Meals
11 Easy Single-Serve Dinner Recipes from PureWow
Prepare What You Love
One of the very best things about being single is that you get to make all of your own decisions, and that includes eating whatever you want. Don’t settle for the perfectly portioned meal of acceptable nutritional value you found in the “meals for singles” section at Target. If what you really want is a tomato mozzarella panini, toast one up and enjoy! If you like it, there’s a single-serving or meal-prep recipe out there for it.
Wrap It Up Nice
Nothing sours a delicious defrosted meal like the dull aftertaste of freezer burn. Safeguard your hard work by keeping your meals in refrigerator- and freezer-safe containers. Make sure they’re microwave and dishwasher safe so reheating and cleanup are a breeze.
Just following these simple steps can take your cooking experience from annoying-at-best to absolutely appetizing. And if you’d like to follow up an positive cooking experience with a positive dining experience, check out How to Enjoy Eating Alone.
Want to see single cooking tips in your Pinterest feed? Follow my Cooking for One board:
