[Cooking for One] A Guide to Getting Started, Useful Gadgets, and Easy Recipes!

Living alone often brings the desire to start cooking for yourself, but it’s common to feel unsure about where to begin or anxious about whether you can keep it up. However, once you grasp a few key points, home cooking can become an easy, enjoyable, and sustainable habit. In this article, we’ll guide you through everything from how to start, to easy-to-make recommended recipes, and tips for staying consistent. If you are looking to challenge yourself in the kitchen, this guide is for you.

Benefits of Cooking for Yourself When Living Alone

Cooking for yourself while living alone offers numerous benefits that enhance your overall quality of life, including saving money, managing your health, and gaining food knowledge and cooking skills. Being able to create a dietary lifestyle that feels good and suits you personally is one of the greatest appeals of home cooking.

Saving Money on Food

Compared to dining out or buying convenience store meals, cooking at home can significantly reduce your food expenses. Through daily habits like buying in bulk or meal prepping, you can achieve substantial savings over time.

Improving Nutritional Balance

Cooking at home allows you to freely adjust salt, oil, and sugar intake. This makes it possible to create menus tailored to your physical condition and health goals, naturally leading to a more balanced diet. The ability to add more vegetables or choose lower-calorie cooking methods, such as steaming or boiling, is another major advantage.

Acquiring Cooking Skills and Food Knowledge

Continuing to cook for yourself helps you naturally acquire cooking skills and knowledge about food. You will gradually understand how to use knives, master heating techniques, and balance seasonal ingredients and flavors. Expanding your cooking repertoire is a rewarding part of the process.

How to Get Started

Here, we explain the points you should check first and the basic seasonings you should have on hand when starting your home cooking journey.

Points to Check First

Before you begin, it is important to review three areas: your budget, ingredient management, and kitchen environment.

Setting a Food Budget

By setting a monthly food budget in advance, you can prevent wasteful spending and shop more strategically.

Ingredient Management

Check the contents of your refrigerator and expiration dates, then create a shopping list of what you need. This prevents buying duplicate items or wasting food. Deciding on a frequency for grocery shopping is also a trick to make ingredient management easier.

Kitchen Environment

Keeping your kitchen clean and equipping it with the minimum necessary tools lowers the psychological barrier to cooking. Especially in smaller kitchens, securing storage space for tools and seasonings makes it easier to start working smoothly.

Basic Seasonings to Stock Up On

When starting out, having these basic seasonings will give you peace of mind and versatility.

Examples of Basic Seasonings:

• Salt
• Pepper
• Sugar
• Soy Sauce
• Sake (Cooking Sake)
• Mirin (Sweet Rice Wine)
• Vinegar

In addition to these, having frequently used items like Miso, Mentsuyu (Noodle Soup Base), Consommé or Chicken Stock granules, Ketchup, and Mayonnaise will allow you to handle the majority of dishes. Also, don’t forget to prepare Oil, as it is essential for heating and frying.

Essential Kitchen Tools for Living Alone

To cook for yourself, you need to prepare the right tools. In addition to the basics, having some convenient gadgets can make the process much smoother.

Basic Cooking Tools

Gadgets That Make Life Easier

Here are some useful items that reduce effort and make it easier to stick with cooking.

Useful From Day One! Easy Recipes for One

From here, we will introduce easy and delicious recipes that you can try today. These menus are easy to continue and will enrich your daily dining table, so please give them a try.

Time-Saving Recipe Using Just an Electric Pressure Cooker

Quick & Delicious: “Uma-atsu Curry” (Savory Pressure Curry)

The greatest appeal of an Electric Pressure Cooker is that it cooks without fire and saves time compared to regular pots by simply “setting and forgetting.” You can cook safely even while away from the kitchen, allowing you to use your time efficiently.

Making “Uma-atsu Curry” is simple. Cut the meat and vegetables into bite-sized pieces, put all ingredients except the curry roux into the inner pot of the Electric Pressure Cooker, set it into the main body, and start the pressure cooking. Once the cooking is finished and the pressure indicator drops, add the curry roux as a finishing touch and heat for another 5 minutes to complete.

Pressure cooking results in a tender finish, as if the meat and vegetables had been simmered for a long time. Since Electric Pressure Cookers are safe and easy to operate, they are highly recommended for beginners in home cooking.

Easy Recipe Using a Toaster Oven

Just Arrange and Bake: “Japanese Style Quiche Toast with Komatsuna and Chirimen”

A Toaster Oven is a strong ally for those living alone, allowing you to cook simply by arranging ingredients and baking. It is appealing that you can create authentic menus with just a little twist, beyond simply toasting bread.

“Japanese Style Quiche Toast with Komatsuna and Chirimen” is an easy arrangement recipe using thick-sliced bread. Make an egg mixture by mixing eggs, soy milk, mentsuyu, cheese, etc., and add microwaved Komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach) and Chirimen (dried young sardines). Make a hollow in the bread placed on the cooking tray, pour in the egg mixture, and bake in the toaster for about 15 minutes to finish.

The richness of the egg and cheese combined with the savory umami of the sardines makes for a delightful blend of Japanese and Western flavors. Arranging it with ingredients like bacon, mushrooms, or spinach is also a good idea. It is recommended for holiday brunches or hospitality dishes.

Tips for Maintaining a Cooking Habit

To continue cooking for yourself while living alone, a little ingenuity is key. Create a system where you don’t overexert yourself, and keep these tips in mind to sustain your cooking habit without stress.

Start with Minimal Ingredients and Tools

The biggest secret to long-term success is to start casually with minimal materials. Don’t try to do everything perfectly from the beginning; start by making just one dish or cooking only a few times a week. Lowering the hurdle makes it easier to turn into a habit.

Make “Meal Prepping” and “Seasoned Freezing” a Habit

Adopting habits of “Meal Prepping” (Tsukuri-oki) and “Seasoned Freezing” (Shita-aji Reito) is also effective. If you cook in batches when you have time, such as on weekends, your weekday meals can be ready just by heating or plating, allowing you to continue cooking even on tired days. Furthermore, utilizing “Seasoned Freezing”—marinating meat or fish and freezing it—allows you to enjoy the taste of a freshly made meal simply by thawing and heating it when you want to eat.

Fix Your Recipes and “Routine-ize” Them

If you find thinking about the menu every day burdensome, we recommend deciding on a few dishes you make often and “routine-izing” them. By fixing your menu, shopping and cooking become smoother, making it easier to maintain home cooking even during busy days.

Prepare Well for a Comfortable Cooking Life

Cooking for yourself when living alone is surprisingly easy to continue once the initial preparations are in place. By gathering the necessary tools and seasonings and utilizing convenient gadgets, you can cook comfortably. By incorporating simple recipes and meal prepping, you will be able to make delicious meals without burden, even on busy days.

We hope you feel encouraged to casually start cooking for yourself, enjoying the many benefits such as saving money and managing your health.