Microwave Sunday Dinner for One

Better than buying a ready meal in a plastic tray and wrapped in cellophane, you can be in control of the variation and quantity of food on your plate, even if you’re making a quick Sunday lunch for one.

It was a wet and wild weekend, with a massive Storm rolling on through overnight – and where I live the wind speed topped 100mph.  Having been kept awake all night with the sound of the storm raging through – and the occasional trips I had to make into the garden to secure garden items that were being blown around – I was feeling pretty groggy all day, so decided to treat myself to a full Sunday Dinner for One, rustled up fast in the microwave.

Normally I will make my complete Sunday Dinner for one in the microwave, but this week I decided to cook the Yorkshire puddings and the cocktail sausages in the mini oven, just to get the timings for cooking those written down.

This Microwave Sunday Lunch was made from:

• Pork cocktail sausages, bought ready-made cocktail sausages, frozen in foil twists of 5 (equivalent to one sausage)
• Frozen Yorkshire puddings, the individual Yorkshire puddings, bought in a 12-pack
• Sage & Onion stuffing, just the cheap/12p box from the local supermarket
• Boiled potatoes, made from 2 “mini roast potatoes” bought from Lidl’s Pick of the Week offering.  Just because they’re called Mini Roast Potatoes it doesn’t mean you HAVE to roast them!
• Broccoli, cauliflower, peas – all frozen
• Lashings of gravy!  Using instant gravy granules.

Although you can microwave frozen Yorkshire puddings – and I often do, I wanted to compare the time/effort of baking them in the oven -v- the speed/ease of just using the microwave.

Here’s how I did it all:

1. Boil the kettle with enough water to make up the stuffing, for steamed vegetables and to defrost the peas.
2. Pour out as much stuffing mix as you want into a microwave-safe dish or jug (I use a Pyrex jug for ease). Add a heaped teaspoon of butter, add the boiling water, mix and stand to one side.
3. Cut your potatoes into small pieces – I didn’t peel them, I just scrubbed the skins.  I had picked up the Lidl Mini Roast potatoes from their Pick of the Week offer (29p for 1.5Kg) and used just two potatoes cut into a total of 10 chunks. Place these in the microwave steamer with some boiling water. Microwave for 6 minutes (800 watt microwave)
4. Put frozen peas into a mug, fill mug with boiling water, stand to one side.
5. Microwave five frozen cocktail sausages in a small pot/mug for 1 minute. Remove from the microwave and place them on a piece of foil in the mini oven. 
6. Place two frozen Yorkshire puddings on a small piece of foil in the mini oven, alongside the cocktail sausages. With no pre-heating required, turn the mini oven on with the following settings: Shelf on bottom position, 190°C, set it so the top and bottom heating elements are on, set the timer to 6 minutes and turn the mini oven on.
7. Microwave the stuffing for 1 minute and set to one side.
8. Turn the potatoes in the microwave steamer and add 2-3 florets of cauliflower and broccoli.  Return these to the microwave for 5 minutes.
9. Strain the peas and empty those into the microwave steamer, with all the other vegetables/potatoes. Microwave for 1 minute.
10. Microwave the stuffing mix (for a second time) for 1 minute.
11. Mix up a teaspoon of instant gravy granules with some boiling water (I do this in a tiny pot I have).

Serve! Eat!

The Yorkshire puddings were nice and crispy and the sausages had a slightly crispy outer casing – they do taste better cooked in a mini oven than my previous method of just microwaving them, but not everybody’s got the luxury of a mini oven and so are just wanting to make a microwave Sunday dinner for one.  Overall, in the future, sometimes I might “bother” to use the mini oven for the Yorkshire puddings and the sausages, but sometimes I might just decide to continue to use the microwave to heat up the frozen Yorkshire puddings and sausages.  It’ll all depend on how fast/easy I want to make a meal!

That must count as five-a-day, eh!  There’s three green vegetables on there, cauliflower, broccoli and peas.  A great start.

Christmas Dinner for One in a Microwave?

It is possible to use this method to create a Christmas dinner for one in a microwave – if you have to!  Most of my Christmas dinner will be cooked like this later this year, I’ll also use my mini oven though to brown a couple of items that I’d prefer browned a little.  If I only had a microwave though I’d be happy enough with what I could pull together on the day!