Have you ever wondered what it is like to cook in a college dorm? Well I know I was wondering for a while. I am currently a first year student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania studying Population Health in their brand new College of Health. Once my friends found out about my passion for cooking, they began begging me to cook for them. Everyone is super tired of dining hall food and wants a “real” meal. At first I put it off and said that it could not be achieved due to the facilities. But then after a month and even more pushing, I decided to finally make it happen. So how did I make college cooking work? And what are some tips that I can give to anyone looking to cook in college? Here are the recipes I made and the rules I followed to make college cooking fun and easy!
It was a cool October Sunday afternoon when my two friends, Peter and Emma, dragged my to the C-Town Grocery Store, about a ten minute walk from campus. While we were there, we bought a pot, cutting board, pasta fork and cheese grater. We also bought the ingredients to make a pasta with meat sauce which included: onions, tomato sauce, garlic, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, ground beef and of course Farfalle pasta. The hard thing about college cooking is that we had to buy all our tools and pots. But we made it happen! I wanted to keep this dish really simple as I did not know how well the kitchen was going to work. I have made pasta with meat sauce a million times so I thought this would be the perfect dish.
After arriving back to the dorm, we started cooking. The first thing the kitchen lacked was functional counter space. Luckily it had just enough space for me to make it work. It also had an electric stove that was super hard to manipulate and that heated very slowly. I first started the pasta water and of course seasoned it with salt. By the way, I made this dish all in the one pot we had which was quite an accomplishment. I then began cutting the onion on our flimsy cutting board with a half sharp pairing knife. This was really sketchy and scary; I am glad I did not hurt myself. After successfully doing that, I began to mince the garlic and chop the mushrooms.
While I was doing all this, Peter was grating the cheese into a paper bowl (we didn’t have tinfoil) and was getting it all over the counter. He was successful though and we got grated parmesan cheese which is a must for this dish. Once the water was boiling, we realized we did not have pot holders to grab the hot pot or a strainer to drain the pasta. We also realized we did not have any olive oil! 🤦♂️ This meant we had to improvise; this would not be the last time we had to improvise. We immediately went over to the next dorm over and luckily they had a pot holder that we could use. But what about straining the pasta? To be honest, I just pulled the cooked pasta out of the boiling water and put it into the paper bowls we had. The only problem with that was that since we lacked oil and only had one pot, the pasta all stuck together while we cooked the sauce. Also, the paper bowls are not meant to get hot so they were almost melted by the time we wanted to put the pasta back in.
After the pasta had finished cooking, I began to sauté the onions and garlic. Since we did not have any olive oil, I added the meat in at the same time as the onions and garlic. This made it so that there was enough liquid in the pain for the garlic not to stick. After cooking and breaking down the meat with the onions and garlic, I added the chopped up mushrooms and let that all sauté for a while. Finally, I added the jar of tomato sauce followed by some salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. I then let that cook for a minute.
After making the sauce, I literally had to poke the pasta to get it out of the paper bowls; it was that sticky. Luckily it all came out! Once it was all out of the bowls, I combined it with the sauce and served it in paper bowls with paper forks. I even garnished the dish with more parmesan cheese.
All in all, despite our lack of a quality kitchen and some key ingredients, we made it work. And to be honest, it actually tasted better than some of the pastas with meat sauce I have made in my home kitchen. But maybe that is because I am so tired of dining hall food that anything homemade will taste good. The cheese melted right in with the sauce. Furthermore, the onions and mushrooms were the perfect combination and base for the sauce. All in all this was the perfect starter dish and great for a cold night.
After making this meal, I made a decision that every Sunday night we would cook to avoid dining hall food. And I stuck with that promise for the next week. The next weeks meal was also more elaborate too: fettuccine Alfredo, Garlic Bread and a Garden Salad. WOW!
Fast forward to the next Sunday and we were back at the store. This time, we bought another pot, a strainer, a real knife and some olive oil. We also bought the ingredients to make our Alfredo with Garlic Bread and salad. This meal was a bit more complicated but I had a couple sous chefs who were willing to help out. I was also very excited because my friend Peter had just moved into a new dorm that happen to be an old frat house. What this meant was that there was a full size kitchen with a gas stove and cutting space to use 😁.
After finishing up shopping, we hiked all the ingredients and supplies up to the top of the hill (a twenty minute walk from my dorm) to my friends new dorm. Lehigh has a very hilly campus but it was worth it to take the hike so that I could use a real kitchen. Upon arrival at the dorm, we began prepping and boiling the pasta water. I then realized yet another error had occurred: we still did not have a pot holder. So yet again it was time to improvise. This time, we did not have the oven mitt from the dorm next door so we had to mix it up by bunching up some paper towels. This did not work so well as my friend Jordan ended up lighting the paper towel on fire and almost burning himself. But, we did make the pasta and the garlic bread so you could say it was worth it.
While Jordan prepped the garlic bread and salad (baby carrots, cucumbers, a homemade dressing and feta cheese) I boiled the pasta water and chopped the garlic we needed (with an actual knife!) for the Alfredo sauce and the bread. Meanwhile, Peter was grating the parmesan cheese that we needed for the dish. This meal was truly a team effort which is part of what made it so good!
Once the pasta was cooked, I started the Alfredo sauce. I combined the garlic with the olive oil and let that sauté for a bit. I then added the butter, heavy cream and a lot of parmesan cheese. After letting that cook for a bit while stirring, I added seasonings, (salt and pepper) tasted it and called it a day. Finally, I threw in the pasta and served it up. Yet again, we were using paper bowls and plastic forks; but we did not care. I topped the pasta off with some parmesan cheese and we enjoyed out feast. Jordan had to toss the salad in our second pot as we did not have a salad bowl. In the end though, everything worked out!
All in all, college cooking is super fun and I definitely plan to keep doing it in the future and possibly every Sunday. A couple things I learned throughout these last two weeks: how to improvise and that everything should be simple. The lack of a full set of kitchen tools and a real kitchen really threw me off but I persevered and made it happen. Also, I made dishes that I knew how to make without a recipe and that used few ingredients. This allowed us to minimize the amount of groceries and prep time. In doing these two things, I produced two amazing meals that were better than the dining halls and a hit.
If you are in college and want to cook, I say make it happen. At the very least it will be an adventure. Thanks for reading this blog post and enjoy cooking in the future! Stayed tuned for another college cooking blog post in the future. Walking Tacos?
— ChefWalker out 🥙🍝😁😤
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