Cooking on a College Student Budget

I’m not going to lie to you, I was that college student who did my grocery shopping at CVS for half price ramen noodles that are probably slowly giving me cancer, a can of sweet peas for my week’s serving of vegetables, and a Little Debbie zebra cake for my troubles. I am not a reliable authority on East Asian cooking.

But I am resourceful, which is something we have in common. While the Koreans have a soup made from chicken bones called dak gomtang (닭곰탕), my mom taught me to make soup every Christmas and Thanksgiving by boiling the leftover turkey bones for a few days. Chinese stir frys can be made from anything on hand, and so are mine.

But now as I embark on a new college journey as I return to campus to pursue my master degree, I am looking for a different way to get those aromatic flavors and chewy noodles as an alternative to dropping $14 on a styrofoam container of pad mama from a food truck, eating half for lunch, and saving to rest for dinner to justify spending more on lunch break than I had made in the previous hour of work.

My new plan?

Meal prepping! By cooking the sizes I would make for my family at home, I can store it in pre-portioned servings and eat throughout the week.

That $11 I spent on tteokbokki becomes $2 a serving. And the $10 on jajang sauce? $1 or less a serving.

Disclaimer: I eat small portions throughout the day. Partly because I'm in such a rush with two campus jobs, senior classes, volunteering as an editor for our literary magazine, and making free Christmas presents in the ceramics lab; partly because I'm too stressed and hot from occasionally poor air conditioning to digest bigger portions.

To make it more balanced, I used some ingredients I had at home. A pound of ground pork for protein, a package of frozen broccoli, and some garlic and onions.

The aromatics really go a long way with the flavor. I bought squeeze ginger in bulk to save prep time, and I usually use a jar of minced garlic, but this time I used a fresh bulb before it went bad. My dad got green onions from someone's garden and I splurged $2 on a shallot to be fancy, but you don't have to.

For the tteokbokki, I boiled it in water and an open chicken broth I needed to use up. I also added the chicken broth and some soy sauce to the paste for extra flavor instead of thinning out the paste with plain water, but that's not necessary at all. And finally, I have some crema from central america to cool it down for anyone who thought it was too spicy. You can use sour cream, crème fraiche, or mascarpone.

Step 1, Prepping: Boil a pot of water for the tteokbokki (you can wait if you're a slower chopper like I am because the rice cakes only boil for 2 minutes), boil rice cakes, strain and let sit in the sink until you're ready.

Small dice your garlic and onions.

Step 2: Heat some oil in a pan and sauté ginger, onions, and garlic together with some salt and pepper.

Step 3: Take the aromatics out and brown the pork cooking all the way through, adding more salt and pepper.

I microwaved my broccoli half way, so it wouldn't overcook in the frying pan and would remain a bit crisp.

Step 4: Add all the vegetables to the meat, and two or three tablespoons of paste, and enough liquid so the sauce is able to cover everything evenly. Maybe 1/2 cup.

Step 5: Add rice cakes and eat

You can use any noodle you want instead of rice cakes. Jajangmyeon is a popular meal of udon noodles in black bean sauce, but if you can't find any I'm sure ramen would work in a pinch.

The following are pre-packaged versions you can buy on time, and skip the plastic tasting ones from Walmart!