Cooking sucks ass sometimes.
When you’ve had a long day/week/month/lifetime, sometimes the last thing you want to do is expend energy preparing something just to shove it down your gullet.
Sometimes all you want is a direct injection of nutrients into your belly without having to move an inch off the couch.
Sometimes you’d rather serve time in prison than have to clean another dish.
I am currently in that phase.
My whole life tends to revolve around these phases. Maybe a month of being adventurous and cooking new recipes, a month of relying on the good ol’ classics where I don’t have to use any brainpower, and a month where I look at my stove and want to vomit everywhere.
I say it’s important to lean into these phases. Thankfully I live in a city where food delivery is already in the year 3022.
This week, I’ve gotten delivered to my house:
A double bacon burger + a hot dog + fries from Shake Shack
A gigantic gyro from Halal Guys
Thai beef noodles + egg rolls + somtam (papaya salad) from one of the best Thai spots nearby
A Big Mac + 10pc nuggies + Large fries from McDonald’s
Lamb Curry + panipuri (first time I tried) + garlic butter naan from my favorite Indian restaurant here
Salmon poke from a place called Slow Cali (pretty California-like I must say)
Fried chicken from a place that literally translates to Fried Really Good Home Chicken. They do have really good fried chicken. And they sent it to my home. More restaurants should be this clear in their marketing.
5 tacos and a quesadilla from one of the remaining Taco Bells in Korea (they don’t carry Mexican pizza 😔)
Plus going out to eat several times of course.
This was a galmaegisal (갈매기살) spot nearby, or pork skirt meat.
Interesting thing about Korea is when there’s a specialty for a certain type of food or cut of meat (like galmaegisal pictured above), there’ll be a whole neighborhood dedicated to it. So we went to the galmaegisal neighborhood and went to a spot our buddy showed us a while back, but there were also like 10 other galmaegisal spots right next to it.
Isn’t that kind of weird? Competition-wise?
It’s one of those things that’s interesting enough for me to comment on every time I see it, but not interesting enough for me to do a simple Google search to find the answer.
Last night my girlfriend and I went to this Taiwanese street food style spot. It’s one of the most popular drinking spots for university students around my area and straight up is one of my favorite restaurants in Korea.
The crispiest fried pork w/ a hint of cinnamon, crispy chicken doused in a scallion oil sauce, crispy shrimp in a spicy pepper sauce. Just crispiness all around. Great drinking food.
We demolished everything the second it came to our table so I couldn’t get good pictures. Wouldn’t do it justice anyway. But you can look at this picture of a bunch of college kids getting smashed on a Sunday night. Keep it up guys.
Was the point of this to show you what a fatass I’ve been over the past couple of weeks?
No, the point was that even people who really enjoy cooking really hate cooking sometimes, too.
As someone whose biggest percentage of screen time consists of watching cooking channels on YouTube or watching brainless quick-cut food videos on Instagram, I find myself very turned off by intricate meals that take a lot of brainpower and work to make — which I believe is what most people are like.
The very reason I’m writing this post might be because I realized I spent like half an hour last night reading a Reddit post on the best (laziest) ways to cook a hot dog.
Quick answer —boil the dogs in beer and onions. Then sear.
Sooooo simple yet fascinating to me. I imagine those from cultures who eat hot dogs a lot (trying really hard to find another way to say this than just “white people”) might have known this incredibly simple trick like the back of their hand.
But I didn’t.
The simplest things are the most interesting, by far. I want to know ALL of the laziest cooking tactics from every culture.
So I decided to share one incredibly simple little thing Korean people make when they can’t give a single fart about cooking. When they would rather jump out the window than walk two steps to a nearby mart for groceries. Something so simple they can force their 3-year-old toddlers to make it themselves.
Here it is.
Egg and Rice and Stuff
Step 1: Get a serving of rice and heat it up
Step 2: Fry an egg. Make sure its yolk-y.
Step 3: Put egg on top of rice.
Step 4: Put a spoon or two of soy sauce.
Step 5 (extra credit): Put a touch of sesame oil
Step 6 (extra extra credit): Throw some chili crisp, scallions, kimchi in there too on top.
Step 7: Mix it all up.
You probably have one of two reactions to this:
Yeah no shit elliott
Oh I never thought of that elliott’s a genius
Nothing beats simplicity.
If you don’t feel like cooking, don’t cook.
Oh, your spouse is hungry?
Just send them this recipe and then go on vacation to Bali.
Oh, your kid’s hungry?
Tell them tough luck, they should have thought of that before they chose to get born
Your culture’s super-easy delicious food - insert here 👇🏻
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You make me want soy sauce egg bowl!!
Boil hot dog in beer and onion?! I have to try it. I'll put Two eggs in my egg rice bowl haha