Make your own junk food! Chapter two

Last time, we looked at easy recipes to replace convenience food, making your own burger, fries, soda, mayo and salad dressing. You won’t regret spending a little time in the kitchen to make a much healthier, tastier and cheaper version of junk food. And imagine the time you spent as an investment in your most valuable asset: your health, causing you less doctor visits and bills.

Today I have more easy “junk food” recipes for you, enjoy!

 

 

My brother, not really convinced by pizza night…

 

Make your own pizza

I shared my pizza recipe here. Pizza is great because you can put anything on top, any veggie about to go bad to avoid food waste, or you can do a different topping on each slice and please the whole family, without having to spend 30 minutes on the phone with the pizza joint so they understand your weird order.

A first step if you are afraid to make your crust is to buy it, and add your own toppings. Shredded cheese can be put frozen, and your cuts of meat will be much healthier than the regular frozen pizza topping. In terms of price, it may be a little more expensive to make your own pizza if you choose premium toppings, like nice cheese and cold cuts, or much cheaper if you do a vegetarian pizza with leftovers. A smaller portion will also leave you more satisfied.

Once you master the art of pizza dough (not at all complicated), you can freeze balls of dough for later, meaning little prep time next time. With an unfrozen or ready dough, you can have your pizza baked before Domino’s 30 minute promise.

 

Make your own lasagna

Frozen lasagna is bad. The meat comes from all the scraps butcher can’t possibly sell as is, sometimes horse meat, and it is loaded with fat and sugar.

I don’t make my own pasta but that is fairly easy to do, especially lasagna as you don’t have to cut the pasta thin like you would tagliatelle. Buy the leanest minced meat you can afford, and prepare a sauce with chopped tomatoes, garlic, onion, carrots, laurel, salt and pepper. Then cook the meat and pour the sauce over.

Cook the pasta for half its cooking time in boiling water and drain.

If you want the lasagna to be creamy, you’ll need some bechamel sauce as well. In a pyrex, put lasagna at the bottom, then bechamel (or not, I’m not a fan so I do without and it’s not dry), meat, another layer of pasta, bechamel, meat, etc. until you reach the top of the pyrex. Cover with shredded cheese and put in the oven for 45 minutes.

Unless you microwave your ready-made lasagna, it doesn’t take much more time to make it than to bake a frozen one.

 

Make your own ice cream

If you love ice cream, it may be worth buying an ice cream maker. You just throw in there diced fruit, milk or water and tada! you got some ice cream. Great for doing sugar free or low sugar sorbets. Making ice cream without a machine requires work, but you can make mini popsicles out of an ice cube tray pretty easily.

 

Make your own flan/custard

Those are also loaded with unwanted sugars and fat. All it takes is eggs, milk, sugar and some vanilla extract. You can batch make them as they last for a while if you have individual moulds.

 

Make your own preserves

My mother cannot cook a thing but she can makes preserves, that’s how easy it is. Hit the market and buy the discounted fruits, the ones that don’t look so good, cook them for 15 minutes with their weight in sugar and that’s it! Make sure you sanitize the jars properly or it will spoil.

 

Any easy ideas that you would like to add to the list?