Falafel is really fun to make, but it’s not exactly introductory-level difficulty. Maybe if you bake the patties instead of deep-frying them, it would be easier. You could probably slow cook the chickpeas, saute the onions, roast the garlic, mince the parsley (and/or other greens), add spices and put it in a pita for a beginner’s version.

Others have mentioned hummus, this might not turn out so great with just a blender instead of a food processor, unless it’s a really good blender you’ve got.

Minestrone might be something you lean into. You can make it fancy, but you can also leave it quite simple.

I frequently just look up recipes for something I have on hand and then peruse dishes until I see something I want to make, I’ve very rarely used cook books but I do watch a lot of videos and find I pick up tips I use in other dishes.

Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat is one of the best books on cooking (note I didn’t say cookbook) I’ve ever read, and I am professionally obsessed with food. It does have recipes, but the message of creativity opens you up to just being able to figure out stuff for yourself, and being able to identify what a dish needs is so much more important.

The Netflix miniseries is OK, too, if you want a sample of what it’s about.

Just FYI, it mentions animal products.

I read elsewhere in the thread you have a rice cooker. There’s tons of recipes with it that require near 0 effort on your part, too! And if you’re able to have rice around, fried rice with frozen veggies has always been my go-to when I want to save some money and don’t have the energy to make something more elaborate.

As far as chickpeas:

Roasted in the oven they make a nice crunchy treat. Toss them in olive oil and put some spices on, bake for about 40 minutes at 350f (175c). Great as a salad topping.

Vegan tuna salad made with chickpeas is pretty good. Mash up a can, then add a bit of mayo and pickle/relish, some spices to taste. Good in a toasted sandwich with all the toppings or even just on crackers. You could also do the same chickpea mash but add buffalo sauce instead (melt butter and add in some hot sauce), then put it in a wrap. This is one of our go to lazy pantry meals, perfect for when work kicks your ass and you just need dinner.

There are a lot of really good, easy curries that center around chickpeas if you don’t mind making rice to go with. We usually cook an onion and some peppers, add the chickpeas and a can of diced tomatoes towards the end.

General advice would be to start small and manageable, get the hang of something and then build on it. Find and follow a recipe, but also trust yourself and your taste to alter it somewhat if need be. It helps to write down changes you make to a recipe so that you can keep trying to improve it to your taste.

If making big meals is a hassle, dinner can always be a random assortment of things you have on hand or can make quickly. Not every meal has to be three perfectly balanced dishes all on the same plate that complement each other.

YouTube. I’ll think of something I want to make/eat, like say, channa masala. Then I’ll watch like 5 different videos of people cooking it. Sometimes it will be a search like “easy channa masala” or “quick channa masala”. After a few videos I know if it’s something I wanna tackle and I have the gist of it. Then I’ll pick one of the videos to emulate closely.

I used to look on YouTube and old cookbooks from the secondhand book store/thrift shops.

I’m a bad and lazy cook but I will mention sautéing. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s fast. And it’s forgiving so if you overcook something - it’s still tasty. I often overcook stuff because I need to be on the net for just a few seconds more which turns into minutes.

My go-to method is sautéing frozen vegetables. But I don’t have any particular advice. Google - bad as it is - surely is more useful than anything I can say.

I’ll usually recommend dahl. Lentils are cheap, efficient, versatile and nutritious. For red lentils, start them off in a pot at about 3 or 4 parts water to 1 part lentils. Stir fairly regularly because they do tend to stick. Meanwhile, fry up spices (cumin, coriander, maybe some mustard seed, fennel, fenugreek it you have it) garlic, ginger and onion. Start with seeds, just until they start to get fragrant, then drop in the aromatics. Let the onion sweat a little bit, then reduce heat and add spice powders after that. When the lentils are soft and creamy consistency, drop your cooked spice / onion etc in, stir and salt to taste. Eat with rice or flatbread.

You can do a huge batch for relatively cheap and it freezes well, handy to have some on hand when you CBF cooking.

Do you have access to affordable premixed spices that aren’t loaded with salt? Many Indian curries/dhals are high effort from scratch but very easy if you can use premixes (e.g. channa masala). Or you can make these mixes ahead of time in bulk. Channa is chickpeas so searching for channa dhal is a good start.

I favour stews for lazy cooking. Slow cooking and long simmers develops flavour with minimal effort (at the expense of bite if you like that). Not suitable if you’re rarely at home. However stuff like: https://www.purelykaylie.com/vegan-moroccan-stew/ can be very easy if you disregard all the fuss, throw it in a pot and simmer for hours.

Chickpea tofu is easy to make in bulk and can be used in a lot of dishes (disintergrates when boiled/simmered though so add later) https://thehiddenveggies.com/chickpea-tofu/

Canned chickpeas work well in “bowl” type recipes. Throw a quick dressing on a pile of tasty crap and enjoy.

Oh also let me tell you about temperings: chickpeas/lentils and rice throw some hot spices and oil you just fried over the top. Now it’s a delicious meal.

Oh also if you’re strapped for cash consider foraging for weeds? Cow thistle, milkthistle, and dandelions are very easy to identify and safe to consume. Leafy greens can be very expensive for thhe calories but often contain key nutrients and are tasty.

Beware: DO NOT FORAGE ANYWHERE WITH ROAD OR INDUSTRIAL RUNOFF, CONTAMINATED SOILS, OR ANYWHERE SPRAYED WITH POISONS. If unsure, don’t forage there.

chickpea

It’s not technically “cooking” because it doesn’t involve any heat unless you’re cooking the chickpeas from scratch, but if you like hummus, it’s one thing that’s very easy to make (it does require a blender if you want it to be smooth), saves a ton of money compared to store bought, and also turns out better than store bought. You can find good recipes online.

If you have any kind of pressure cooker, beans in general are very easy to make from scratch. Rice is also very easy to make from scratch. The combination of beans and rice is a complete protein, filling, and I think it’s very tasty, so much so that I can eat it every day. In fact, here’s my easy every day lunch (vegan): black beans, rice or quinoa, and steamed mixed vegetables. You can also find how to do each of these online. I’ve even used the recipe on the back of a rice bag and it came out very nice!

By the way, all of the above will keep in the fridge for up to a week, so I only need to cook them once a week.

Edit: I think I was a bit optimistic when I said a week. You may want to freeze half of it to keep it that long. Especially rice can go bad relatively quickly.

You can slice sweet potatoes like 3/8" or a little thinner than your pinky, drizzle olive oil over them and season with e.g. salt, smoked paprika, and rosemary. Throw them in the oven on a sheet pan for like half an hour at 400 (very forgiving, you’ll get a feel for the length of time and temp you prefer.) Super easy and you can try different herbs and spices, plus they’re great later cold.

What have you got for kitchen tools? We can do a lot with a little but its good to know what can save work. Roasted chicken peas are an easy one. Toss em in some salt pep, and whatever spice you wanna spice with and roast em till they taste good. Something around 15 minutes with a flip half way though. Somewhere around 400. Depends on your oven so just check every 5 minutes the first time and adjust as you try again. Blast those into some rice and fried veggies, theyre great in a salad, theyre a good snack on their own. If chick pea flour counts, falafel wraps are my budget food. You gotta spend like 20$-30 and have a few spices on hand but I have done food costing for an individual one cause knowing how much money it costs to make a menu item at a restaurant is part of my job and I can do the same at home, I weighed all the ingredients out before making a falafel wrap before and did the math with my grocery receipts and figured out each falafel wrap I made which was a pita pocket stuffed with hummus, falafel, pickled onion, pickled cucumber, tabouli and garlic tahini sauce came out to $1.46 per wrap. It’s delicious and nutritious, you can add some greens and or rice as well. You need to be able to throw down the initial cost tho, but at least where I live that is relatively low and most of the ingredients are dry or pickled or bread and keep well.

What is time consuming or not is a skill to learn itself. Knife skills, timing up the hot stuff so it all finishes at the same time and getting a sense for how long stuff takes so you feel comfortable multi tasking and not babying something for fear of burning. I would look up techniques for cutting any veggies you use often. A good chef’s knife is a great investment if you take care of it, but you wanna learn what you want in a knife first.

For baking, unflavored apple sauce is a fantastic cheap alternative to flax seed or bananas (bananas may be cheaper but they always taste like bananas, apple sauce is prettt neutral). If I can dig up my old muffin recipe, that one is pretty simple, cheap and customizable.

What are your favorite foods? If I have categories to work with i csn help more

You can always rinse a can of chickpeas and eat it just like that with a spoon. Or add some or all: olive oil, yogurt, chopped tomatoes, pumpkin/sunflower seeds, roasted garlic, fine sliced onions, parsley, tahini, lemon. That’s just one possible flavor group.

If you want to cook from scratch, don’t skim on salt.

the most important thing you could ever know aside from food safety and hygiene rules is what maillard reactions are and what governs them and how to promote them when you want savory flavors with depth