Until recently, I did not realize how unprepared most students are for cooking.
Most people tend to think that everyone’s parents teach them the basics of cooking growing up. Well, that is not the case. According to a study from the National Library of Medicine, even when students understand basic nutritional principles, it often does not transfer into their cooking habits. Most students rely on convenience foods instead.
Here are some of the “dos and don’ts” of student cooking.
Do not put plastic in the oven.
It sounds pretty straightforward, but some people just do not know. Just recently, I was sitting at home watching a movie when I started to smell something odd. It smelled like an electrical fire, but it was not. My friend wanted to cook a pizza for dinner, and instead of using the many metal pans at his disposal, he used the only plastic one in the cabinet. I walked into the kitchen to a scene straight out of the training we would have in elementary school. There was smoke everywhere. Long story short, we spent the rest of the night scraping melted plastic out of the oven, and we still have not gotten it completely clean.
Double-check that you’ve added water to your noodles.
That includes mac and cheese, ramen and any other noodle! If water is not added to the noodles, they immediately dry out, turn black and start to smoke. Some dorm evacuations are inevitably caused by students forgetting to put water in their ramen or other noodles. In a dorm a couple of years ago, this exact situation happened, leading to the entire dorm needing to evacuate. All of this was due to a student putting her Cup Noodles into the microwave without adding the water. It was a disaster. So, for everyone’s sake, if you do not know how to cook noodles, read and follow the instructions on the box.
Do not reheat your takeout pizza in the cardboard box.
The corrugated cardboard box is meant to keep the pizza safe and warm, but it was not designed to be put in the oven at 350 degrees. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) states that cooking mistakes were involved in 87% reported dormitory fires. To minimize these mistakes, they recommend that you learn to cook. They also leave you with the tip of never putting pizza boxes or take-out containers in the oven. It looks like a reasonable container for reheating pizza. It is not.
The NFPA also states that you should never leave the area while cooking, which ties in with the next tip.
Please set a timer when you are cooking.
You may think, “Oh! I’ll remember,” but inevitably you will not remember. I set a timer for pretty much everything, and sometimes, I still forget that I am cooking. A few weeks ago, I was making a batch of my sourdough bread in the early hours of the morning — around 2 a.m. — and I fell asleep. Let us just say that bread was as hard as a rock and inedible. Not only did I make the mistake of falling asleep, but my friend from the previous story forgot to set a timer entirely. Honestly, if I had not investigated the smell, I fully believe that pizza would still be in the oven and we would probably have been short one house.
Learn the art of the microwave.
The microwave is a Godsend for living in a dormitory. You can do many things with it, except heat up aluminum foil, styrofoam, metal and any ceramics that have the sparkly foil on them. Heating styrofoam causes it to warp and release toxic chemicals. Heating aluminum foil and ceramics with foil on them can cause sparks and eventually lead to a fire. Something you can do with a microwave is cook eggs. You can boil, scramble and fry an egg. To boil, you have to poke a hole in the shell, or it could explode. You mix it up and pop it in the microwave. To fry the egg, crack it onto a plate and microwave it. Be sure to poke holes in the yolk before consuming, as it could explode in your mouth otherwise. Not only can you cook eggs, but you can also cook cake in a cup, like this recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch.
Make sure food is completely thawed before frying.
One last tip: if you plan to fry something, make sure it is completely thawed out. Oil and water do not mix; that means when oil is boiling, and water is frozen, it creates a reaction, which then creates a type of explosion, which then creates a fire.
A crockpot is an amazing tool for cooking and meal prepping. After some research, it appears that crockpots are not on the list of prohibited dormitory items here at Mississippi State University. Not only is it a wonderful instrument, but there are plenty of crockpot recipes on the internet. My go-to place to look for a recipe is Pinterest.
If you do not know what you are doing when cooking, take the time to watch a YouTube video on it or, better yet, get someone who is experienced to teach you. It is okay to make mistakes, but you can only make so many before it becomes a hazard. I have made plenty of mistakes in the kitchen, but I have also been there to fix them or prevent them from getting any worse. There are a lot more tips that could be given, but these are the basics for cooking as a college student.
