Whenever you watch cooking shows like MasterChef, whenever the contestants are given only ONE HOUR to prepare and cook and plate up a dish, they always freak. It may seem like a lot of time, but do not underestimate the preparation and organisation required to cook a meal within an hour… it’s always going to be tight! Unless you’re cooking 2-minute noodles of course… but even 2-minute noodles take more than 2 minutes sometimes!
So tonight, I got home just before 7pm and I really wanted to watch MasterChef, which leaves me with just 30 MINUTES to whip something decent up. So here, in order of method and preparation… is a step-by-step recount of my 30-minute cooking task.
- First thing is to always preheat the oven. Always the first thing. 190C fan forced to be specific.
- I mixed tomato sauce, dark soy sauce & honey to make my marinade.
- I dipped my pork spareribs into the marinade and coated it generously. Onto the baking tray, straight into the oven. The pork will take almost exactly 30 mins to cook, so it had to be done really quickly.
- Now that the pork is out of the way, I fill a pot with water and started cooking it to get the water to boil.
- Chopped up the veggies – red capsicum, spring onions, snow peas and carrots.
- Cooked the noodles out of 4 packets of Indo Mee Goreng.
- Heated oil in a separate work to start stir-frying the veggies.
- DO NOT overcook the noodles, they need to stay firm… so I drain the water and started mixing the flavoring into the drained noodles.
- Back to the wok, fry 1 teaspoon of minced garlic.
- Add the veggies into the wok and stirfry for about 3 minutes.
- Add the Indo Mee Goreng noodles into the veggie stirfry and cook for a further 5 minutes.
- Plate up the noodles, and the pork comes out of the oven at exactly…. 29.5 min mark, lol.
See? Who says you need to eat instant noodles just on its own? Spend some extra time prepping some veggies and you get more flavor, variety and crunch in it. Also makes you feel slightly better about eating so-called “junk food” by adding some fresh vegetables into the mix!
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