Chefs reveal how to cook great food with random ingredients
The Ready Steady Cook chefs have been inspiring us with ideas on how to improvise in the kitchen for nearly four weeks now – rustling up tasty, simple 10- and 20-minute meals using a random selection of ingredients, plus store cupboard staples. Romy Gill, Akis Petretzikis, Ellis Barrie, Mike Reid and Anna Haugh have brought us inspiring dishes and invaluable tips on how to cook when you don't have exactly what you want in the cupboard.
Of the Ready Steady Cook recipes, Ellis says: “It’s food that’s accessible, you can cook it in a good time and within a good budget, so everybody can relate to it”. So what advice do the chefs have for us?
Chefs’ tips for getting creative in the kitchen
Great dishes have come from improvisation on the show, even when the ingredients have been, er… surprising! Romy was given peanut butter: “I was making a paratha and two dishes, and I was like, that was a disaster! It turned out great, it was delicious. But at the time…”, she says, shaking her head.
All the chefs had to be really creative with the ingredients they were given. “I got a pack of ready salted crisps”, says Ellis, “that was fun”.
But even when things went wrong, they didn't panic. “I got gingersnap biscuits and I’m pretty sure I served a bowl of… gingersnap biscuits!”, says Anna.
Cooking lessons from Ready Steady Cook
At BBC Food we picked up lots of great tips from the show. Here are some of our favourites…
Don’t be afraid to swap one type of mince (or other meat) for another. Akis replaced lamb mince with beef to make these simple beef mince kebabs. This can work for all sorts of dishes. For instance, if you’re making bolognese and don’t have beef mince, swap in pork or turkey mince and it will be equally delicious.
Add a twist to classic dishes using whatever you have in the cupboard. Sausage and mash gets an upgrade with the addition of chopped leek to the mash and paprika to the gravy in Ellis’ recipe. Try adding any sautéed greens to mash for extra flavour and a vitamin boost.
If you’ve got some spices, you only need one or two fresh ingredients to make a great dinner. Romy Gill cooks this easy butter chicken using a couple of fresh ingredients and lots of spice. Her simple tamarind duck is another winner – you could try using a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice blitzed with a few sultanas or raisins instead of the tamarind paste for a similar tangy flavour and swap out the duck for any other lean meat or poultry.
Pizzas can be made with all sorts of surprising toppings. We love this halloumi and Parma ham one from Akis! He didn’t even have the right ingredients for a pizza base – he whipped one up with self-raising flour and yoghurt!
A little sugar can lift all sorts of savoury dishes, whether it’s light brown sugar in Romy’s sweet and sour tofu or honey in Mike’s Korean-style chicken.
If you’ve got flatbreads in the cupboard, a delicious dinner is only ever a few minutes away. We love Akis’ lamb souvlaki; lots of quick-cook meat and fish combined with salad make a great filling for wraps!
When disaster strikes...
Even what seem like major mishaps can be rescued. Ellis says, “I accidentally turned the oven off when I was doing pastry. And I think luckily it just sort of worked out, but next time I might put the oven on a higher temperature (than zero)!”
There’s one problem you can’t get around quite so easily, though. “I didn’t have any food disasters; I had equipment disasters”, says Akis. “I just destroyed everything. But that’s me!.. If you break the oven you cannot cook – you have to find another way – and we were always finding another way”. How did Akis fix the second broken oven on set? Rylan had to hold the oven door shut to keep the food cooking! “You ended up using Rylan as a prop, didn’t you?”, says Ellis.
What were the chefs' favourite dishes?
“All of them?” says Akis, jokingly bragging.
“I did a Black Forest gâteau with blackberries in 20 minutes”, says Anna, before adding that there wasn’t time to measure out quantities.
“I done a bangin' Italian pavlova type of thing, with meringue on the go – that was naughty, naughty, very naughty”, says Ellis.
“I was pretty proud of my samosas in 10 minutes”, says Romy – something that at the time she regretted saying she'd make as it seemed impossible.
And Akis? “I broke two ovens!”, he says with a smile.
Watch Ready Steady Cook weekdays on BBC One or catch up on BBC One’s iPlayer.
