This one is right up my alley. Here are my standards...

• Steak 2 minutes per side in a hot iron skillet plus 5 or so minutes in the oven for thick cuts. Nothing fancy is needed with a good cut of meat.
• Sauté of random stuff -- Heat your fat of choice in a pan and then toss in sliced onion, garlic, mushrooms, your meat of choice (stuff like chicken breast and pork loin seem to work best), and your veggies of choice (broccoli, kale, spinach, brusselsprouts, etc.). It takes some practice to get the timing right, i.e. cooking the meat enough without burning the onions, but I'm at the point where I can grab random ingredients and come up with something good within 10 minutes (hint: start the long cooking ingredients while you're still gathering and chopping the short cooking ingredients). Bonus points for getting bacon into the mix.
• Leftover stew -- the ultimate real-food for bachelors. This requires some time to prepare but can be stored for days of quick meals -- good for a quick lunch at work or dinner during the week. Heat your fat of choice in a pot, sauté some onions and brown some cubed stew meat in it, then add a liquid (usually water, broth, or stock), some veggies (carrots and potatoes are good defaults if you do potatoes), some spices (bayleaf), and simmer for a long time (the longer the better). You can find tons of good stew recipes on the internet and it's easy to Paleo-ize them if needed.
• Bacon & eggs -- I can have a plate of bacon & eggs done in less than 5 minutes. As a bonus, omelettes are great for stuffing with leftovers and random stuff.
• Big salad -- I usually start with a base of spinach and/or kale, add some random stuff -- sliced veggies, berries, etc., add a meat if I have it (shrimp, canned fish, etc. work well and are easy to keep around), and then douse in olive oil. This can be tricky to get right and tends to only be satisfying with sufficient fat and protein from oil, meat, avocados, etc..

You'll notice that there's a lot of overlap with the random stuff used in these. That's intentional. I find the base ingredients that I like, stock up on them at the grocery store, figure out how to prepare them, and then do random stuff with them depending on my mood.

Though not a complete 10-minute dinner hack, I suggest entering the delicious world of slow-cooking and stews. Get a Crock Pot, hack vegetables (try a 2:1:1 ratio onions, carrots, celery as a base, then add anything else) and meat up, add spices, a glug of wine, and some stock to the thing before stepping out for the day.

This may require either prep in the morning or before bed, but it's worth it. And a few days working on knife skills, and getting a good sharp chef's, and the prep should take 15 minutes, max.

Chopped up chicken or steak in a pan with olive oil. Add a couple bell peppers and an onion. Mexican seasoning, chili peppers, hot sauce for flavour. Top with avocado & salsa. Takes about 15 min.

I wanted to share this 'recipe' because I did this a couple of times this week with much success:

• Put favorite pan on stove and turn on burner
• Throw big slab of butter on pan (approx 1/8 - 1/4 cup)
• Cut up 2-3 gloves of garlic
• Place garlic in now melted butter with S&P plus add'l spices as needed (I like chili powder)
• Cut up big chunk of cabbage (about 1/3 of full cabbage) and place in pan
• Cut up some sausage into large bite-sized chunks (not too small -- they'll burn) and cook in pan

Boom. The butter cooks the cabbage quickly and the sausage cooks quickly -- especially when in small pieces. The kicker here is to find good sausage -- I had some farmer's market merguez for my meals this week (and thus the logical use of chili powder or red pepper). Also super easy clean-up.

Sausage (good quality), bacon, mushroom, and onion all chopped up and fried in Lard/Ghee... Cover in a locally made low-sugar tomato sauce, and pop a couple of fish oils and your good to go!

I'd say literally 15 minutes from open the fridge to put the plate in sink (Grok didn't wash up!!!)

Eggs, however you fancy them, and good quality bacon. They have a reasonable fresh shelf life, so always keep some in, and only 5 minutes to prepare.

Well, if you're really hard-core paleo you could just grab that thawed mastodon steak and gnaw on it on your way over to your neighbor's cave. :-)

1. A soup made of spinach, dijon mustard, ground muscat, tabasco, salt and coconut milk (optionally, serve with halved hardboiled eggs) - easily prepared in the microwave oven; or
2. Can of coconut milk - add vanilla flavouring and you'll have an instant milkshake!

All this is lacking in protein, but if you're very hungry, you can have this as an appetizer and then continue preparing meat, eggs, fish, cheese or similar.

If you're on your way home from the store, pick up freshly ground meat or a big piece of cheese. Edible (and delicious!) as-is.

One of the quickest proteins to cook is fish pan-fried in coconut oil or butter. Serve it with a big salad which you can throw together while the fish cooks. Or saute some spinach or other greens to accompany the fish. My favourite is wild salmon.

It may not be a 10 minute hack in the sense that work has to be done in advance, but I choose to spend one day a week prepping a lot of meals (Paleo soup, baked chicken). It all goes in Tupperware or GladWare or whatever, and then gets frozen. I hit it in the microwave for 7 minutes while I'm putting away my stuff from work, so when I'm finally ready to sit down and eat, the food's ready.

If it's a matter of cooking from scratch, my default is to saute up some 95/5 or 90/10 ground beef with half a head of cauliflower (cut up into florettes) or a crown of broccoli, along with some garam masala, white pepper, black pepper, cumin, and a little cayenne. It's not the most visually appealing meal, but it tastes pretty good, it's healthy, and it's filling.

I would turn on the grill, pop on one regular sausage or blood sausage, which takes 10 minutes on high, put in bacon after 4 minutes, and after 5 minutes crack two eggs into a frying pan of lard and fry till done. Many a time I will eat this on a bed of young greens or wilted spinach/swiss chard - or is this what you mean by your austere bachelor dinners?

If it is, then I would make it a little more interesting, perhaps a three-egg omelette made with milk or water cooked in lard, with scraps of bacon, onion and maybe goats cheese added to the middle nearing the end of cooking, (if you are that way inclined with the goat's cheese) add to this some spinach or other dark green leaves such as arugula, which can be thrown in and will naturally wilt in the heat, then the edges of the omelette can be folded over. Keep the eggs verging on raw in the middle as they continue to cook as the omelette sits on the table. For variety try marinated pepper (capiscum) slices inside, sliced sausages, chicken chunks or whatever else you have hanging around in the fridge as a filling; mushrooms, anchovies, salmon, whatever - the possibilities are endless. This meal takes under ten minutes and can be eaten on its own for a satisfying and chic meal for one.

Haha, here are a few recipes I enjoy every week. They are very cheap and you can prepare them in 10 minutes, but they take another 20 to cook.

• Stir-fried sauerkraut with cooked pumpkin and sausages
• Grated zucchinis with seafood
• Meat-stuffed Squash
• Grated cauliflower couscous with lamb and carrots
• Baked nightshades (tomatoes and eggplants) with sardines and anchovies
• Seaweed-wrapped burritos/temakis with guacamole/ground-game-meat/tapenade and salad.

Paleo tacos - saute ground beef, add taco seasonings to taste (e.g. chili powder, garlic powder, crushed red pepper flakes, oregano, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper) and some fresh salsa and avacado. Serve in lettuce wraps instead of taco shells.

Hot wok, coconut oil, meat from the fridge (or chicken breast or shrimp from the freezer), whatever veg I have handy, shaoxiang wine and soy sauce and/or stock and/or bean paste and/or hoisin or oyster sauce and/or chili paste (or coconut milk, curry paste, and Thai-style seasonings instead)... boom, lunch.

Sure, it's "meat and a hot pan"... but with a little knowledge and a few extra ingredients, there's absolutely nothing austere about it. Chinese and Thai cooking are totally adaptable to paleo if you don't mind a bit of fermented soy in passing.

Here's my really quick dinner hack: a Wendy's double burger (throw away the bun) with two side salads (replace their dressing with my own vinaigrette that's half EVOO, half vinegar). And if I'm not able to take it home, I'll bring the vinaigrette with me in one of these Nalgene leakproof jars from the Container store.

quick one pan chicken alfredo: slice chicken into medallions or strips so it will cook quickly in a stick of butter. once chicken is no longer pink add 8 oz cream cheese and .5-1 cup heavy cream depending on how thick you like the sauce. Takes about 15 minutes! Season to taste with garlic salt and lemon pepper.

I tried the BEAT salad from MDA (http://www.marksdailyapple.com/bacon-egg-avocado-and-tomato-salad/) over the weekend & it was quick easy & yummy. BEAT = Bacon, Egg, Avocado & Tomato. I fried eggs in coconut oil, but recipe was for boiled. Preparation is to chop it all up and mix together.

I love to just put some duck fat on the pan and cook up a few eggs and a slice of bacon. Then I'll saute some veggies in whats left of the duck fat and bacon grease. Quick and delicious!

For leafy veggies, I like to tear them into large pieces, spray with some olive oil (I use a can... not quite paleo maybe but convenient. tho I think you can also get bottle that you pump with your hand then spray out oil) and put on a little salt if you eat that...then broil for about 5 minutes.

They get crispy and you eat them like chips!! Usually I use kale, but the store was out today and i tried it with... something else... think it might be swiss chard. Anyways its good too.

I would miss the TV show and make myself a nice dinner!

Whenever I do have time to cook, I cook LOTS - providing me with leftovers that are quick and easy most of the time.

Last weekend I made two different soups/stews - one in the crock pot (beef bones with lots of chunks and marrow + veggies) and one on the stove (tripe with home-made tomato sauce, garlic, onions, etc).

Both batches gave me easy to re-heat meals for days.

This weekend I'll be throwing a pork shoulder and some other assorted meats on the smoker. Next week's 10-minute meals won't be an issue.

The kale chips thing works, though I find you've got to bake them for 20-25 minutes. And while you need a touch of oil on them, it does need to be just a touch. Too much oil and they will never properly crisp up. Low oven temp too - 250 degrees. But if you get it right they are pretty good.

If you are Primal a few fast lard fried eggs would do the trick.

Also a handful of macadamia nuts takes no time to prepare and less time to eat. They are my emergency, I can't find anything primal/paleo/gluten-free to eat snack.

Also this scenario would be be an interesting time to try some IF.

Eggs, eggs, eggs. The best thing for quick meal

Keep a crock pot going all the time with cheaper grass fed beef and bones cooking slowly in it. I love avacados on the run by themselves or with fried eggs on top of them.

Fast if you are really caught short. IF works best when it is NOT planned, like Grok. Planned IF_ing allows the body to anticipate it. Learn to fed off the fast as an addition not a subtraction to your diet.

Meals are far more satiable when planned in advanced. Just knowing you have this feast, regardless of size ahead of allows the body to wait and enjoy it better.

A wonderful meal is the combination of micro-greens topped with a can of skinless/boneless sardines in olive oil including the oil from the can. Just add a couple of squeezes of lemon, some black pepper (and cayenne if it's one of those nights), a clove of garlic smashed and diced and it's a wonderful dinner, rich in flavor and nicely balanced with a nice dose of Omega-3. Stopped at TJ's for both this evening. Was very satisfying and is a favorite.

I didn't have good luck with the TJ's smoked sardines with the skin and bones. The skin had too weird of a mouth feel, sharp and wrinkled. Blech.

2 cans of tuna [in water of course], 1 avocado. Throw into a bowl and mix, season with salt/pepper/lemon juice/whatever else you like. Quick, easy, healthy, filling, delicious.

Shredded pork (cooked in pressure cooker two days ago) shredded with a healthy helping of Ras al Hanout (Courtesy of Melissa Joulwan---Ingredients: 2 (level) teaspoons salt 2 (heaping) teaspoons cumin 2 (level) teaspoons ginger 2 (conservative) teaspoons black pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon coriander 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1/4 (slightly rounded) teaspoon nutmeg optional: 1 teaspoon saffron threads (I still don’t have saffron.)

avacado on side with quick squirt of aged balsamic and salad

Easy meal hack

2 cans of tuna in olive oil does the trick (no drain) either mix with tuna or drink it so yummy. If that is not available do sardines or get en in water drain and add your own oil. Or mix with avocado, fry in ghee? I never tried the last option though. If it's light you need try 1 can with olive oil and one in water or just one olive oil can of tuna is good enough for a light meal. No carbs just protein and fat :)

Omelette with whatever meat, cheese, veggies and fats I have handy. Easy breezy. Takes 5 min to make and 2 to eat. You get 3 minutes to spare to burp and clean up.