Photo: Blasius Erlinger (Getty Images)
Here at Mandatory, we understand how inconvenient it is to be alive. There are so many little things that must be done to assimilate into society like banking, working out, and suppressing the deep seeded desire to eff up your life. Instead of succumbing to your more criminal impulses, you should nurture positive ones like the ability to cook. If you’re a grown man who can’t pull together five different meals, why are you even alive? Man up in life by adulting in the kitchen with these easy recipes.
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What recipe do you make that consistently wows and would appeal to a lazy cook? Let us know in the comments!
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Simple Recipes
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Mango Smoothie
Ingredients:
- 2 mangoes
- 2 cups of plain yogurt
- 1 cup ice
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cardamom
Preparation:
Smoothies are simple pleasures that anyone can make. (That's a nice way of saying, "You can't mess this up.") Cut the seed out of the mangoes. Peel them against a cup and shove them in a blender. Add the yogurt, ice, milk, water, brown sugar and cardamom. Blend thoroughly and serve with a straw.
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Avocado Toast
Ingredients:
- 1 fresh loaf of bread
- 1 avocado
- Olive oil
- Lemon juice
- Salt and pepper
- Poached egg (or anything else you want)
Preparation:
When it comes to avocado toast, it's kind of a marvel any of us bother to order it at restaurants. Start with a fresh loaf of bread (sourdough, wheat, rye, or multigrain are good options). Cut a thick slice and drizzle olive oil across it. Then cut an avocado in half, remove the pit and put it in a bowl. Mix the avocado with a squeeze of lemon juice and the salt and pepper. Top it with a poached egg, smoked salmon, Canadian bacon, or sliced red onion. When it comes to avocado toast, you can't go wrong as long as you're adding ingredients you already know you like.
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Honey Garlic Pork Chops
Ingredients:
- 4 center loin pork chops
- 2 eggs
- 4 tablespoons water
- 1 cup flour
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons black pepper
- 1½ tablespoons ground ginger
- 1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
For the Honey Garlic Sauce:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 cloves minced garlic
- 1 cup honey
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
Preparation:
There are a lot of moving parts in this recipe, but it's really quite simple. Mix the eggs and the water together in a bowl, and set that aside.
In a separate bowl, toss together the ingredients for the flour mixture. Take a pork chop and dip it into the flour mixture. Then dip it into the egg wash. Then dip it back into the flour mixture. Once that's done, take the pork chops and fry them in about a half an inch of canola oil for about 5 minutes on each side. They'll look brown and crispy like God intended.
Next, make the Honey Garlic Sauce by browning the garlic in the olive oil. When that's done, add the honey, soy sauce, and black pepper. Let it simmer on low for 5 minutes. Once it bubbles up and looks thick (that's what she said), it should be done. Then dip your cooked pork chops into the sauce and enjoy your life as an evolved human man.
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Easy-As-Hell Roasted Chicken
Ingredients:
- 1 whole chicken, cleaned and dried
- 10 - 12 garlic cloves
- 2 lemons (1 cut into wedges, 1 sliced thinly)
- 1 bushel of rosemary
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil
Preparation:
This is really the easiest way to make a whole chicken and it's delicious. You will need a slow cooker, but also, why don't you have one? Is it because you never considered that you'd need one, Mr. Man-child?
To start, take your cleaned whole chicken and make sure you've removed the gizzards. Once that's done, stuff it with half the garlic, the lemon wedges, and a few sprigs of rosemary. Salt and pepper the entire bird. Then line your slow cooker with more garlic, some of the sliced lemon, and more rosemary. Place the chicken on that and cover it in more garlic, lemon slices, and rosemary. Put the top on the slow cooker, turn it on high, and let it cook for 4 hours.
Once that's done, take out the bird and broil it for 10 minutes in either a roasting pan or a cast iron skillet. Then let it sit for 10 minutes and serve.
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One-Pot Pumpkin Pasta
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 pound penne noodles
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 4 ounces goat cheese
Preparation:
This recipe could not be easier. You put it all in a pot and cook it together and the result is a nutty masterpiece that only gets better as leftovers. To start, add the olive oil to your stock pot and heat it over a medium flame. When the oil is warm, add the onion and cook it until it's translucent. Then add the garlic, nutmeg, salt, and black pepper.
Let that cook for 1 minute, then turn up the heat to high and add all the other ingredients minus the goat cheese. Once that reaches a boil, reduce the heat to medium and let it cook for about 10 minutes (or until the pasta is tender). Turn off the heat and fold the goat cheese into the pasta. Let this sit for a few minutes and like all good things, it will thicken and be ready to eat.
Congrats. You're a human adult hero. Spoon the pasta into bowls, top it with Parmesan cheese and serve.
