Step Up Your Dorm Cooking Skills With These 5 Hacks

If you’re in college, you’re a long way off from being a charming fella who knows your whiskies and grills steaks for the family while chatting up your wife’s friend’s husband about politics. You’re also a long way off from being a dazzling lady who earns a reputation for a dish “that’s just to die for” at a dinner party, where you explain to a fascinated table of friends how you’re restoring a classic car in your spare time.

See, you’ve got time to get classy with cooking. But, in college, all rules, bets, and expectations are off. If you can give anything the ol’ college try, go for it. Because in college, the weirder, the cheaper, the better.

Here’s some college cooking hacks that take so little and deliver so good.

Rice

Use your coffee pot as a rice cooker (yes, f’real) by pouring the uncooked rice in the pot, adding water to the machine accordingly, and hitting brew. From there, once all the water’s in the pot, keep cooking for another ten minutes. You’ll debate buying a real rice cooker for the rest for your life.

Quiche

Whisk eggs with just a splash of milk in a mug. Add cheese, some vegetables, maybe some salt and pepper, whatever you want, and cook it in the microwave for a minute or so. Slide onto a plate if you’re trying to impress someone, or barge it in said mug if you’ve got an entire season of something to watch alone on Netflix.

French Toast

Batter up your bread until it’s covered in gooey goodness and wrap it in foil to then heat with an iron. Anyone staying over is going to try and marry you. Plan your canned response ahead of time, because this will likely happen every time. You’re the closest thing they know to a wizard.

Taco Salad

Take a bag of tortilla chips (or Fritos or Doritos, if you’re really going for it) and — I kid you not — dump in all the goodies you’re going to want to slamdance in your mouth. We’re talking beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapenos, hot sauce, all the goods. Shake it up, grab a fork, and celebrate your new life as a master chef. Also, you can carry that with you, just in case you want to show off the madcap genius.

Panini

There’s a fork in this road, and it’s just up to you to take the one that meets your preference. Either wrap your sandwich in foil and use a clothing iron to heat it or grill it in an adorably tiny frying pan on your coffee maker’s burner. No points off either way. Both will make for good stories down the road, which, again, is long before you become the celebrated chef you’re destined to be.