February 13, 2018

Blizzard Ramen with Meatballs

This is what it looks like when the plow has been by a couple
times, but it's still gonna keep snowing all night
Sometimes in life you get thrown a curveball. Sometimes that curveball is actually billions of snowflakes (actually more like quintillions, but billions is easier to wrap your head around) falling and covering everything in your immediate geographic area with a cold blanket of beauty and traffic collisions. Sometimes you spend hours cleaning off of your car and driving through treacherous conditions just to get to the store, only to find out that the store wasn't dumb enough to open in this weather. The point is, sometimes you have to make due with whatever disparate ingredients you have lying around, and try to make something tasty and nutritious. Or at least tasty and not poisonous. Or at least tasty and not immediately poisonous. Listen, tasty is the important part. Survive until the end of the snow and then you can go get all of the fancy medical attention you want.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Beef
2 packs Ramen Noodle Soup
3 cups Water
1 cup assorted Frozen Vegetables
1 cup Seasoned Breadrumbs
1 Egg
1/2 an Onion
2 tsp Grated Ginger
2 tsp Soy Sauce
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/2 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
1/8 tsp Hot Sauce
1/8 tsp Crushed Red Pepper
Salt
Oil

Now, I know that's a daunting list of ingredients. It's in the double digits, and the world is ending outside, and you don't want to deal with this. You'd rather just order a pizza. There is no pizza. The pizza place exists outside of your apartment, a place that may-or-may-not even still exist at this point. And most of these ingredients are just spices anyway, so deal with it. Take a bowl and mix together your ground beef with your breadcrumbs, egg, onion powder, hot sauce, sesame oil, and half of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Got all of that? Good. Once your hands are covered in meat goop, wash them off, using some form of witchcraft or yoga to actually turn on the faucet without touching it with your gross meat hands. Then thinly slice your onion half and sauté it in some oil along with a standard human's pinch of salt over medium heat until the onions start to soften and turn a little translucent. Form your meat goop into golf-ball sized balls and then crank the heat on your pan up to medium-high, and toss in your meatballs. Or gently place them in if you're a wuss who doesn't like grease burns. Don't stir them around a whole bunch. Give them time to brown before turning them and repeating on as many sides as time and geometry will allow you.

There's nothing quite like eating way too much food from the
comfort of your couch while watching the olympics
While your meatballs and onions are doing their thing, stir the seasoning packets from your ramen in to your water along with another pinch of salt, your crushed red pepper and the rest of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Once your meatballs are sufficiently browned, add in this spiced murky water along with your frozen vegetables and use a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of your pan. Bring the whole mess to a boil, then cover it and reduce it to a simmer for 10 minutes. If you live in a standard apartment building, it's about now that your neighbors will start sensing the presence of food, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, and start wandering the halls in a zombielike trance, trying to find its source. Don't be fooled into letting them in to your home. It's totally a trap. You might not all make it through this winter alive, and you want to make sure that you don't get killed and eaten. Anyhow, after your 10 minutes are up, take the solid bricks of noodles from your ramen and break them up into about 4 pieces each. Add them in to your pan and stir until they're tender. And that's it! You have food to make it through the storm possibly. Happy shoveling!



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