5-minute Tea Kettle Meal for One

Like many people out there, I want to eat healthy, but don't have much time to spend cooking healthy meals. This recipe is quick, simple, healthy, and takes less than five minutes to prepare. You can even bring the ingredients to work and cook it during your lunch break, as long as you have a source of hot water! You can also try varying it with different (cooked) meats, vegetables or even add a soup base.

The basic ingredients are:

- vermicelli (mung bean) noodle, you can get a pack of these for about $2 at Asian grocers
- boiling water, enough to cover the noodles

The additional ingredients that I use are:

- some kind of meat, be it canned eel/tuna, or a few slices of cooked ham or turkey deli meat
- one raw egg
- frozen pre-cooked vegetables
- garlic salt and pepper (garlic salt is delicious!)

I have also experimented with adding:

- miso soup mix
- kimchi
- dried seaweed
- hard-boiled egg

Basically, anything you might expect to find in a noodle soup, you can probably add here!

Step 1: Lay Out the Noodles and the Raw Egg

I find that two bunches of vermicelli are enough for a filling meal for me, a 5'6" female of average build.

Place these at the bottom of the bowl. Crack the raw egg on top.

Step 2: Cook the Egg & Noodles

Find your source of boiling hot water! When I'm at home, I use my electric tea kettle. When I'm at work, I use the boiling water from the water cooler. Both are convenient and don't require me to watch the pot while it's boiling.

Pour the water directly onto the raw egg. Wherever the boiling water hits, the egg will cook there. Move the water around so different parts of the egg get cooked. Raw egg white isn't so tasty - semi-raw egg yolk is delicious!

Keep adding boiling water until the noodles are completely submerged. If just a little bit of noodles is sticking up, feel free to poke it into the hot water. Key thing is for the noodles to be completely submerged.

Now wait for about three minutes!

Step 3: Add Extra Ingredients, Wait, Then Eat!

After about three minutes, use the fork/chopsticks to push the noodles around, and check that the noodles are now flexible and swirl with the water. That means they're soft too!

Add the cooked meat and frozen veggies. These will cool down the water, and simultaneously warm up the meat and veggies.

Add whatever other seasonings you'd like. In this example, I added white pepper salt, black pepper, the curry sauce that came with the canned meat, and a tiny sprig of basil for decoration.

Enjoy!