Sometimes just chicken and rice is not enough and it gets boring. If you want to explore a little more, here are a couple of tricks that can elevate those easy recipes with an added tingle.
Contents:
general things to know
how to be really cheap
cheap places to eat
Herbs are important
You start with simple dried or hearty herbs at the beginning of the cooking process and you finish with the softer ones, like cilantro, mint or scallions.
Spices are majestic
I do not have to tell you that spices are the key to everything. In cooking, if you want to spice up a meal, you add spices (pun intended). Say that chicken tastes bland. Salt is not going to help you with fancying it. When it comes to searing meat, properly marinating with great spices makes it so interesting.
The safest bet that you can have is paprika. Makes the chicken taste delicious, adds depth to almost every sauce. Opt-in for the sweet smoked paprika – that is the best thing ever!
I know that when it comes to using spices, everyone gets a little jittery. The key to managing them is to start slow. One by one you will get to understand what you want and like.
Citrus elevates
Do you know why Mexican food is so delicious? They use a dash of lime before serving everything which lightness up the taste, tingles your senses and makes that dull fatty avocado interesting! Considering adding something citrusy on meats and sauces.
Alcohol is not always for drinking
Do you know how you read on the fancy restaurant menu’s: glazed with cognac? This is fancy talk for added a little cognac to the sauce. Wine can be a great addition to water or stock in stews. Cognac or any type of alcohol is awesome with protein. Just adding a bit of it while frying protein helps give it a more complex flavor.
Now, if you are cooking with open fire, beware, the alcohol will evaporate slowly or catch fire. Take care not to get burned!
Now before I start, I just do not really want to get your hopes up. Frankfurt is NOT cheap in any way and finding cheap eats around here is just close to impossible. It is considered to be one of the typical consultant’s cities where people take the train every day to work here, but not live here.
There is a certain standard maintained in this city, and restaurants tend to be quite nice, clean and expensive. Eating out is some sort of fashion here – as a lot of people, from what I have seen from the local lunch eateries, tend to eat out.
Lunchtime during the week is almost always overcrowded in the central area (so basically, Alte Oper, Westend, Bockenheimer, Hauptwache, Hauptbahnhof and whatever is in the vicinity). During dinner time, you can get a table, unless it is Friday or Saturday. Sunday is a church day in Germany – and almost nothing is open except the fast-food chains and the touristy restaurants.
Streets to explore
Frankfurt is a fairly small city, so there are three main streets to explore:
Leipziger Straße
Berger Straße
Schweizer Straße
All of them are packed with restaurants and great places to eat.
What to try
Before I start, there are three main things that you need to try in Frankfurt, except the frankfurter sausage: apfelwein, Grüne Soße and Handkäse.
Apfelwein
This is a sort of cider, a little tart but typical of the region. Now a lot of Germans drink beer, but the later is not so great in Frankfurt. Unlike Bavaria or the hipster selections of Berlin, here you do not get much, but you get apfelwein plenty. Do not get me wrong, Germany is a beer place, wherever you go there is plenty of beer and plenty of selection. So if you were an outsider like me, you would be amazed – but once you talk to people that have spent some time here – they will put you down easily.
Back to apfelwein. You can have it in three ways: regular – so nothing added, with sparkling water or sweet, with a little bit of sprite. Depending on your taste, if you have never had it before, try the sweet version – as it is more normal.
Grüne Soße (green sauce)
Fairly straight forward – a herbal sauce that it is used for meats or eggs or potatoes. It is interesting and quite flavorful.
Handkäse
It’s a type of cheese, smells like old socks, they like it here (as they like the stinky cheeses in general). Based on that – if you walk in a supermarket and get a strong smell of rotten food, it’s the cheese area. I bought it once, slinked up my fridge – so for the love of what’s holy, please have it in the restaurants only. Give it a try as it has a very strong full flavor.
Sausage
I know I said three, but there is a special type of sausage for every holiday here. I like them, but humbly, I cannot identify the flavor. Maybe you can! Something to bear in mind – they are served in a small bread with ketchup or Senf(mustard). Why they do not serve them with something else is beyond me though…
Out of all three(four), try the apfelwein, it is a personal favorite of mine.
Cheap Eats
Supermarkets
They are my favorite. Supermarkets in Frankfurt tend to be huge with an immense selection of products, great prices, and a warm food area. At every REWE that I have been in, they had rotisserie chickens, meatballs, a salad station, roast beef and more. Prices are cheap and the quality is very decent. For drink keep in mind that you will be charged a recycling fee. So a 99 cent Redbull will cost you 1.24, and after you drink it, return it to get the 25 cents back.
Sundays all of them are closed except the two supermarkets at the airport.
Fast food chains
Almost any fast food chain imaginable is here and they are open 7 days a week. If you are in Frankfurt for a day, and that day is Sunday, then these are almost the only places that you can actually eat something.
Doner Places
Like everywhere you will get cheap fast food here, somewhat decent, Have not really been amazed by anyone here, but if there is nothing else that fancies you, give them a try
Happy Hour
A lot of restaurants practice happy hour incentives. Considering that this is a working city, almost any restaurant is full during lunch and dinner time. Completely free at any other part of the day. Make sure to check them out!
Kleinmarkthalle and other weekly markets
There is this general obsession with markets in Germany. The one that I would recommend is Kleinmarkthalle which happens every Saturday. It is in a very central location and it has everything from local food to try, actual markets and when the weather is good, usually live music and a lot of wine and apfelwein in the back with some music. Konstablerwache u-bahn station turns in a market on Saturdays as well. Similar concept as Kleinmarkthalle, maybe a little cheaper.
Something to be noted is the Christmas market as well – which happens every December in Frankfurt (and everywhere in Germany). This is such a big deal here that people do Christmas market tours in different German cities. The food that you would expect here is typical German, but somewhat not really expensive.
Restaurants that I recommend
These recommendations are all around the business area of the city – an area I tend to explore every day. I am sure that are plenty of other places, but these are the ones I have explored.
For nice burgers, I like Burgerschmiede (Bockenheimer Landstraße 9, 60325 Frankfurt am Main). It is a small place, with a small kitchen but with delicious burgers. UPDATE 2020: Place is closed but we shall keep it in the Frankfurt cheap eats list because I miss it.
There are a huge amount of Italian restaurants in Frankfurt, but most of them are a bit expensive. One awesome place that I would highly recommend is Ciro il lattaio. It’s located at Stephanstraße 13, 60313 Frankfurt am Main.
There are plenty of other alternatives, but they do not fall under this category of Frankfurt cheap eats.
As in any service type of city, pizza places are everywhere. Usually, you will find a lot of Doner/Pizza places which make a very cheap, not not as great pizza. If you are looking for 5 euro pizzas, then that’s your choice. If on the other hand you are looking for something special, it’s another story
Sushi: In terms of Sushi places, Superkato is my all-time favorite(Kornmarkt 3, 60311 Frankfurt am Main). On lunch, there is always a line, but you do not really wait a lot. This is seriously one of those hidden cheap eats here. Prices are cheap and the sushi is DELICIOUS.
For local cuisine, highly recommend Mutter Ernst (Alte Rothofstraße 12, 60313 Frankfurt am Main). During Friday lunch they have a special Frikadelle(just a big fried meatball/burger) with fried egg and a side of potato salad – which is highly recommended.
I have not really explored that many to be honest, but one has really made me happy. Yummas in Wested has some deliciously fresh and cheap Mexican food. There was a time that we were going there almost every day. Explore their lunch alternatives. Find them here Feuerbachstraße 46, 60325 Frankfurt am Main
Regarding sweets, to be brutally honest, I have tried a couple of places but I still do not really like them. Cheesecakes are weird, chocolate cakes are interesting but nothing too fancy – nothing is really sweet enough for me! But as I said, still exploring and the ones that I found can’t be part of the Frankfurt cheap eats list.
Recently I have moved in Frankfurt, for a new project and as a foodie It is always awesome because you get to explore and enjoy the city from a different perspective. Now I am in no way saying that I get to explore the fanciest and most expensive restaurants, considering that I have moved in here, I think I will be able to check out some of the most interesting parts.
On the other hand, as a full time working adult, I have to make do with what time I have and whatever is nearby the office. This is always where it gets tricky.
Generally speaking, breakfasts here tend to be something grabbed at the coffee place. I usually skip eating out for breakfast as I always cook something at home. Bread is something that governs it.
Lunch for Frankfurters, during the working days at least, tends to be short. Even business lunches are fast. to the point and on somewhere nearby. I come from a place where lunch is something that is always enjoyed and it takes a little more than 45 minutes (because you will need 15 minutes to get back).
Dinner, on the other hand, happens only on the weekend, as everyone rushes to get back home during the working day.
Now, this is my early perception. Maybe I will change this article later, maybe I wont.
here are my observations
Vibe.
Restaurants in Frankfurt (the ones that I have been in) are going through the hipster stage, with the local beer brews, secret menu’s and odd hours.
The food tends to be interesting, but yet not local and the offerings are either very specific to the food region or extremely local.
This is certainly not a good thing – yet is not a bad thing either. From what I see, there is slight tendency of food not being mixed up.
So German food is served in German Food restaurants, Italian in Italian restaurants, Thai in Thai places, burgers in burger places.
Very German of them, don’t you think?.
Food quality.
Have not had a bad meal yet! Surprised of a lot of places – but at the same time, they could be SO MUCH better! Pleasantly surprised with the Asian cuisine here – of all sorts. There is this random lunch Thai place nearby, which is genuinely outstanding, yet so hidden and so not comfortable.
This is good for one reason – if you see something interesting while wondering around, you should not be afraid of getting food poisoning.
Service.
Generally speaking is just bad. Waiters are rude (except on some fancy expensive places) and they do not really go a long way – as you would expect in other countries. Tipping is expected, yet not earned. They will do the bare minimum of service. Some places, for a western European city which is the key banking place of the region, do not accept cards – so be prepared to have some cash with you.
People go out in general, so on a Friday/Saturday night do not even dare to visit a place without a reservation. It is pointless! On a normal working day though, lunch time is very full. It is my understanding that Frankfurt is a consultant’s city – so everyone eats out.
Keep this in mind if you plan to visit this cool place that you and 100 other people found on google and want to visit..
Delivery.
There are a couple of third-party providers for delivering food in Frankfurt. Now thing is – no matter how good they are, they are third-parties. So the general flow is simply put with a lot of latencies. In other words, not a fan! Unless you have no choice, just go and pick it up yourself!
General Conclusions.
Note that this is no way a final review of Vibe. I am still missing the Spring, Summer and Autumn here. Also – keep in mind that the countless possibilities that you have to eat out in Frankfurt makes is such a diverse environment. I generally like it, I am mostly surprised for good than anything else.
we live in an era of abundance and there is almost everything that you can ever need in a supermarket – or can it?
I was wondering around a REWE (a German supermarket chain) the other day and felt like getting a whole chicken, so I can roast the way I like it. Turned my head, there were rotisserie chickens ready and warm on the counter. In terms of pricing, there is a 1 euro difference (4 something to 5.50 for the cooked chicken) but the advantage that you get, from working in a small kitchen (or any big kitchen is immense)
Starting from the worst– cleaning a chicken. I have absolutely no issues with marinating and cooking it – but cleaning is just a royal pain in the bottom. You get chicken juices all around, and you clean it with a kitchen rag, which can not be used for anything else afterwards – just a pain.
There are a lot of schools of thought on regard to this issue – and I am not saying that the store bought rotisserie chicken is better than your own special blend of spices and buttery goodness, but sometimes it has to be a middle way.
here are my rules:
Fresh vs canned veggies
Starting from the pretty easy ones, between fresh and canned carrots, I do not need to tell you what is the best one to choose, or do I? As a general rule, unless it is specified otherwise, please choose fresh (except beans – life is much easier with canned beans)
Pre-made Dinners
(or Ready to go dinner in a box solutions) vs cooking them yourself
I absolutely hate pre-made dinners. No matter how good they can be! Even if you are a broke college student and you want something warm, for 3.99 eur, you can buy rice and sausage and there you go.
There are plenty of easy solutions out there, so a simple google search would do you just wonders – or even recipes in this site.
Bread
A lot of people recommend making bread by yourself, and to be honest, once you get a hang of the recipes and figuring out what is the combination that you like, you should – but bread making requires a bigger kitchen than a “kitchenette”. In addition it requires a bunch of tools (like a bread maker) to make your life easier. In terms of an investment, if you are the bread consumer, would highly recommend it as in te long run it is quite cheaper.
For example, if you are fancy, get the Panasonic Bread Maker which will set you back about 170 EUR. There are cheaper alternatives like the Russel Hobbs Multi-cooker which is around 80 EUR.
If you are like me, that likes bread every now and then, then do not bother with these stuff, just locate the nearest bakery and get something.
Butter
I remember when I was young my dad would make our own butter at home, but conditions allowed it, and getting proper good store bought butter was not an option. Now that is out of question and it is pointless to deal with your own butter.
Tomato Sauce
If you are comfortable making it on the fly and the sauce requires a simpler taste, just chop a bunch of tomatoes and go for it, else do not bother as the mess and convenience does not justify the effort. Sure it may taste better up to a point, but only if the sauce is the main ingredient (say you are making some penne with tomatoes and mozzarella). If you are making something a little more complicated (like anything with protein in it) – do not bother!
While writing the article, I jumped by our friendly local market, REWE, and just checked out the sauce section – the AMOUNT of choice that you have is immense. Would highly recommend going for the simple solution as a general choice though!
Granola Bars
This in my opinion is about choice. Making or buying will have the same cost to you. Buying it though, will give you a choice of the specific type you feel that specific day. Making it, will make you stick to a specific flavour combination. Up to you in the end of the day – I do not really bother with them much.
Dressing
A big make for me. The taste is just too much of a difference. Let’s take the easiest of them all: Italian dressing – which is nothing less than olive oil, balsamic, a little garlic, salt and pepper. All these ingredients are around the house at any given day! Also – with the dressing, you can play a little, depending on how frisky you feel on a daily basis.
Meat in General
Cooking meat is a personal process! I like it in a way that buying it ready is just not enough. In terms of convenience, when you only have a kitchenette, once the price is not too big of a difference, I would recommend to experiment. If you own a full on kitchen, please stop reading right now and make if by yourself.
Here I am not talking about pan fried meats, like chicken breasts or steak – but mainly for the roasted sections, or slow cooked selections.
Other stuff
I believe I have covered the main topics. Some people would be looking for ketchup, mayo, making your own pasta, or puff pastry. Some things are not related to any tutorial – it is a matter of personal preference. Like puff pastry requires you to be a good baker and have that specific calling in you. Ketchup is just hard to make – and for the love of it – one can not get that Heinz perfection. Mayo is delicious homemade, but it is an acquired taste. Pasta just makes a royal mess, but it is just too good when made at home, even though pricing for the store bought pasta is incomparable.
Some conclusions
If you are very much into making your own stuff, follow this book where you will get a lot more info and in more detail about everything.
Till then, just live your life and experiment – no one will judge you if you went ahead and bought the dressing in store or made your own butter.
Whenever we say chicken gyros, here is what I think of: let’s say that it is the middle of the summer and there is nothing better than spending most of your day at the beach, but when you are stuck in the office how do you deal with the pain…you eat junk food. Now here at Kitchenette Recipes, we like to revolutionize junk.
The expression that everything that you want is either fattening, expensive, and doesn’t call back is not entirely true. These chicken gyros are a healthier experience and truthfully not that expensive.
Unfortunately, it is not the middle of the summer – but it is the end of the year and the weather features a whole lot of shades of gray (get it haha)
ingredients
1 chicken breast
1 cucumber
5 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 spinach leaf
1 tomato
4 greek pitas (available in almost every supermarket.
100 gr Greek yogurt
fresh basil and fresh mint leaves
dried oregano
olive oil
salt & pepper
My recipes are defined into steps, so here it goes:
Doing the Tzaziki is easy – usually, you can use yogurt or yogurt cream, add half of the cucumber, diced, the garlic, diced, salt, pepper – I like little-chopped basil and mint on mine – some extra virgin olive oil and let it sit in the fridge while you cook the chicken
Cut the chicken breast into 3 thin pieces – usually, it takes about one piece per gyro so do as many as you want. I like to marinate chicken with salt, pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes, and garlic. Now you do not have to bother with so many ingredients, but feel free.
When done, take them out of the oil and let them sit on paper towels. Let them sit, and then slice them into long pieces
Get rid of the excess oil from the pan, dry the extra with paper towels, and put one of the pitas. Here we are trying to keep it a little lean, but adding a little olive oil to the pan is not bad either.
Be careful not to burn them.
Once they get a little crispy, take them out of the pan, spread the tzatziki, add the chicken, tomato slices, cucumber slices, pepper slices, onion slices, salt and add an extra layer of tzatziki.
Roll them and serve them immediately.
For a fancier alternative, check the jambon beurre, and do not forget to check out our Instagram for more cool posts
I know that all of us are very into seafood but none of us actually takes charge of buying and cooking it. There is some sort of automatic blocker for dealing with an ingredient that is so subtle and delicate. Adding the fact that it can also be expensive and toping with our general risk aversive attitude, seafood goes to the bottom of the list when it comes to priorities of shopping.
There are two ways to tackle this problem, either go to a supermarket nearby and buy some pre-packaged, deveined, and cleaned shrimps or go to a nearby fish-market and buy some fresh ones. Now the latter is always better and much tastier but pack a little extra effort. Garlic shrimps will go great with both.
If you get fresh shrimp, bear in mind that they tend to go bad very easily, so at this point, your nose is your best friend.
IF shrimp smells funny (funny=amonia in food) THEN NO GO.
Fresh shrimps have a very robust built – so if they are extremely soft and slimy – that’s another no-go situation.
If you are buying it in a supermarket – 9 times out of 10 – they are frozen fish which are thawed – so unless you will use it immediately, just go for the frozen ones
For all the other cases make sure that you buy frozen ones. Let them defrost under runny water and it will take just a couple of minutes. Clean them up really well – you do not want any seafood slime left. If they come with the shell it is up to you what you do with it, but if you de-shell them, on their back you will see a black line – take a knife, make a little cut, and take it out.
Once they are clean and ready, you have to prep everything. As shrimps cook really fast, we want to make sure that we have everything at hand so that they do not get all gummy. Once everything is ready, open up a bottle of white or chilled rose wine, and let’s get to cooking! Here are some other shrimp recipes.
Depending on how this plate comes out for you, you can integrate some sort of additions to the dish. Eating it as is, works – but getting a bottle of wine and eating the shrimp with it, works as well.
Garlic shrimp
Seafood is easy when done simply. Let's learn the great garlic shrimp recipe – the Spanish gambas al ajillo – a Spaniard delicacy to die for!
Chicken is the most versatile ingredient that you can buy. You can find it in a lot of supermarkets and at the same time it tends to be very cheap. Now I know that a lot of you do not want to deal with cooking or baking a whole chicken, so today we will focus only on one of the key protein providers on the planet: the chicken breast.
Starting from scratch in a kitchenette tends to be a little tedious. I am not a big fan of pan-fried chicken breast with just salt and pepper so you can easily understand my pickle. The idea of this post came after I ordered some sushi for dinner. It came with a bunch of soy sauce packets and I actually wanted to use them instead of just throwing them away. So I bought a chicken breast and some veggies and used the soy sauce as an additional element to introduce a fun Asian element.
The general rules for this to work are fairly straightforward. First and foremost, cut everything in small pieces. Make sure that the chicken is cut in even stripes so it cooks evenly. Take care that some veggies need less cooking time than the others and also make sure to marinate everything abundantly. The best thing to do after you have cooked this dish is to make some simple rice and combine it with it.
ingredients
1 chicken breast cut in thin strips
1/2 of an onion cut in strips
Some broccoli (boil it for 5 minutes and its done)
carrot strips (now carrots are hard to cut with a knife. If would highly advise against it. Use them only if you have some sort of vegetable peeler)
Baby squash cut in thin strips.
Salt and pepper
Soy sauce packets because we are cheap
steps to happiness
Marinate the chicken. Salt, pepper, some olive oil, and a little soy sauce. Miks them all together and let them be for a couple of minutes.
Heat up a pan. throw the chicken in and fry them 2 minutes on each side. Please make sure not to overcrowd the pan and at the same time if your strips are a little thick, leave them for 3 minutes.
Once the chicken is done, remove them and leave them aside. Now it is time to fry up the veggies. Make sure to marinate them first with salt and pepper. Frying veggies without salt and pepper is horrible – you end up with tasteless cardboard…
We do them one by one as their cooking time is not equal. Start with the squash. Give it a quick fry in high heat with olive oil. Remove it, add the onions and let the sweat, add the carrots, the cooked broccoli, then re-add the squash. the chicken and give a quick fry.
At this point, it would be great to add some more taste – but we do this by following the golden rule of cooking: YOU TASTE IT FIRST. After the test, if you see that it needs some more soy, add some…maybe you want it a little spicy…add something to get it done.
Remove it from the pan and make sure to eat it immediately.
Depending on how this plate comes out for you, you can integrate some sort of additions to the dish. Eating it as is, works – but adding some very easy rice on the side works as well. To answer your question though on “Depending on how this plate comes out for you” – I do not believe in strict cooking and my recipes are very very simple so you can adjust them as you go along. Easy breezy lemon squeezy!
No, I am not kidding and yes, I am dead serious. Whoever has ever traveled anywhere for more than a couple of days knows that the easiest thing to buy in a supermarket and the easiest thing to cook is simple fried eggs.
To make it a little more interesting, let’s add some more condiments to it.
Simple cheese – I choose Feta.
Some tomatoes – definitely go for cherry tomatoes
This recipe is important due to a couple of self-sufficient factors starting from protein which eggs are a great source of. Protein is one of the key macronutrients required for our body to function and to be honest – one of the key things to help us get fed. The second factor is that you don’t need to have anything fancy for these eggs. They can be cooked with olive oil, butter, any source of fat or if you only got eggs in the fridge – nothing.
Now eggs by themselves are not as fun – they lack a nice freshness and feature a pretty dull flavor if not accompanied by something. In other words, our egg’s friends are cheese and tomatoes.
You should be looking for a cheese with a strong flavor. I mean – you can even go for elemental if you are craving it or have nothing else in the fridge. Feta though has a pretty distinctive flavor and it is great just like that. You should aim for something salty, not very heavy and definitely not processed.
To top it all off we need some sort of liquid, to get everything going – something that you can choose at this point is some sort of veggie – I personally chose cherry tomatoes because they are easy, you don’t have to take a lot and you will never leave a half cherry tomato in the fridge (yeah – I am looking at you!)
Now to upgrade it – Add a little paprika to the frying oil before adding the egg – it will completely change the taste texture.
