The College Student Cookbook: Easy Meals on a Budget

Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Student Kitchen

Let’s be honest about what you’re working with. Your kitchen might be a shared dorm floor with a microwave that’s seen better decades, a hot plate that trips the circuit breaker if you look at it wrong, and a sink that’s perpetually full of someone else’s dishes. Or maybe you’ve got a tiny apartment with a two-foot stretch of counter and a stovetop that has exactly one burner that actually gets hot. That’s fine. Everything in this book is built for that reality.

Before we get to the recipes, we need to talk about the stuff you’ll cook with and the stuff you’ll cook from. This chapter is the groundwork. It’s not the exciting part, but it’s the part that makes the exciting part possible. We’re going to cover the very short list of equipment that’s worth owning, the pantry staples that will let you throw together a meal without a trip to the store, and a few core techniques—cooking rice, beans, and eggs—that will carry you through dozens of recipes in this book and beyond. Then we’ll talk about how to read a recipe like someone who’s been doing this for a while, and how to make any recipe in this book work for just you or for you and a roommate.

The Short, Honest Equipment List

You don’t need a kitchen gadget drawer. You don’t need a stand mixer, an air fryer, a Dutch oven, or a garlic press. You