It may not be glamorous, but it tastes good, and what more can you ask for in quarantine?

This is pretty simple: you’re going to cook some meat that you can eat on a sandwich, in a taco, or with steamed or fried rice. It’s versatile, tasty, easy to make on a stove, and not too expensive! You can also make a pretty big batch to save yourself the effort of cooking for a few days if you have a fridge and some Tupperware. However, it’s not vegan or kosher or halal (sorry), and also objectively just… not SUPER healthy, but whatever. In quarantine, the important thing is that your food makes you happy.

Buy some chicken breasts, and some bacon or spam (people always sell spam short, but it can be delicious when cooked properly), as well as shallots, garlic, soy sauce, sriracha, and olive oil or butter. You should use about equal parts chicken and whichever pork product you’ve bought, chopping them up into small pieces. This is less essential with chicken and bacon, but spam should be cut into very small cubes so that it can get nice and crispy and soak up flavor better.

Put the meat in a frying pan with only a little olive oil or butter—you don’t need a lot, just enough to keep the chicken from getting scorched or whatever before the spam or bacon releases some of its fat. Pour on sriracha and soy sauce to taste (I have not measured, I just pour with a very heavy hand and it works pretty well). Obviously do this before you turn the heat on; all of it caramelizing and reducing together is part of the deliciousness.

Turn the heat on high—I recommend having your shallots and garlic chopped before you do this because it cooks up pretty fast. I usually do about one shallot and one clove of garlic for every two chicken breasts, but you can eyeball it based on how big yours are or how much you like shallots and garlic. Put the shallots and garlic in after the meat has cooked a bit, keep the heat on high, and wait till everything is nicely browned (you want the shallots and the soy sauce to be caramelizing). The spam and bacon should be crispy and looking like they’re about to start to burn. If you don’t usually eat spam and are consequently suspicious of me, I will tell you this: the important thing is to make sure it’s crispy. If it is, you will be happy.

Once you’re done, put everything into a bowl, and use it for whatever you want. Personally, I’ve used it in tacos, rice bowls, and sandwiches, each of which requires a few additional ingredients. For a taco, you can make yourself some guac with avocado, lime, salt, and scallions (or whatever other stuff you like in your guac), get any other condiments you like (salsa verde, limes, pico de gallo, etc.) and put it on a warm corn tortilla. If you’re doing this, I’d recommend spam over bacon—it can soak up the soy sauce and sriracha and brown up in a way that makes it almost like chorizo, which I think combines nicely with chicken. For a sandwich, I recommend bacon—you can then use toasted french bread, and have it either with just some mustard, or with avocado and mayo. For a rice bowl, you can use either spam or bacon (or go nuts and do both), and I often throw in a fried or scrambled egg and scallions, put on some lime and rice vinegar and soy or fish sauce, and end up with a very solid meal. If you have extra, you can put it in the fridge, and reheat it in a pan or the microwave.

I know this recipe has no measurements whatsoever, but you won’t need them. It’s pretty intuitive and easy—and if there starts to be a lot of smoke, just stop and assess what you’ve fucked up, and then sort out how to salvage the situation.

Image not of the actual recipe (sorry) but what I got from Googling “cooking meat in a pan” via Pxfuel