Break your other arm and have your stepmom cook for you.

Sir this is a Lemmy’s. Not a reddit.

A pressure cooker is also great for cooking rice if you have one. I used to swear by cooking it on the stove, but now my pressure cooker rice is just as good as the stove but way more hands off.

Can you provide the timing and water rice ratio? A pressure canner doesn’t release as much steam so I’m thinking less water? But also it only takes about 15 minutes of zero stress in a pot but if you get distracted with a pressure canner on such a small amount of time it’s going to burn.

I do 1 part rice, 1.5 parts water by weight. My usual recipe is 400g rice, 600g water. Rinse the rice until it doesn’t make the water cloudy when you mix it anymore and drain thoroughly, then add your recipe water. For my instant pot I do 6 minutes and let it do a natural pressure release which takes about fifteen minutes, so it does end up with the usual twenty minutes at temperature. I don’t think I would bother using a stove top pressure cooker for rice, though.

Ah. All my 5 pressure cookers are stove top. I don’t trust appliance based ones to live longer than a year or two because the heat destroys the electronics in them. A stove top one is a BIFL item.

With pull tabs you’d still need to hold the can down anyway.

The SPAM can had a pull tab. I was able to pull it with leverage and just the one hand.

I never have needed to cook with jist 1 arm, but I guarantee if I had to, I’d be making crockpot meals. Just dump everything in the pot in the morning, turn it on, let it slow cook all day.

The problem in my kitchen is that you look around and there’s nothing to eat, just stuff to make food from. I don’t have a lot of the ingredients you can just dump into a crock pot. Everything needs some kind of treatment before it can be used as an ingredient in something else. It’s part of how I keep my cost so low.

Mashed potatoes seems like it would be pretty hard to stir one handed, so credit to you for that. Thinner soups or things you can boil and drain would probably be an easier choice, so you don’t have to keep hold of a pot while stirring.

Things which keep their shape and that you can fry in a large flat pan and use tongs to move about, like the spam, are probably going to be much easier and safer overall though.

If you can afford one, a mandoline that is heavy or you can fix to a surface is something that will be useful even if your arm improves, they make chopping vegetables fast - but can be risky if you’re not paying full attention. I have one similar to this, but the more industrial ones are even sturdier.

If that isn’t an option, pre-cut frozen veg are usually not hugely more expensive than fresh, and are often more nutritious than stuff on the supermarket shelves. Tinned tomatoes or sauces are easy to throw on pasta too, which doesn’t need any real stirring - just be sure to only cook smaller pots so they’re lighter to deal with. Tinned beans are also great, my go to meal is that plus tinned tomatoes, a bunch of dried herbs/spices, and whatever veg I’ve got around at the time. You can fry some meat, throw in the rest, let it heat through and you’re good to go.

If you have an oven, a whole cob of corn in-husk is 30 mins. You can throw it in there, walk away, then after 30 take it out of the oven. Just gently tug the silk out from the top, which will now come out easily with no real mess, and you can then pull down the husk to use as a handle while eating.

Don’t write off microwaves either. Washing a few potatoes and nuking them for a few minutes per potato will get you a perfectly good meal base that you can load up with whatever. Microwaves are my go to for the frozen veg to help bulk out anything else I cook too.

My speciality is not arm-based problems but I’ve had to change a lot about how I cook for medical reasons, so hopefully some of this is helpful to you too. Good luck and I hope you don’t need to adapt for long!

You can make pasta. Take the pasta out of the water with a pasta spoon, throw it into the pan with premade sauce and veggies. Tadaaaa

I befriended an older lady in a wheelchair when I was young, she was paralyzed on one side. She used a scissor to cut a lot of things, even chicken meat, which I found funny at the time.

It might not be an obvious one, so it might be a useful tip.

Wow, that’s any tough question that probably you’re the best to answer over random lemmings.

But I’ll play. My thoughts as someone who has never been limited like that are …… its the preparation more than the cooking

• electric can opener if you don’t already. My first thought is how do you open those cans one handed.
• rice cooker is dump in two ingredients and forget it until dinner. It’s like 15 minutes so you can be making the rest of dinner in the meanwhile
• knives are tough. Someone suggested a mandolin but mine is clearly two handed operation. Perhaps one of those larger ones built into a bowl? I guess you want something that is secure in the counter
• mini food processor/chopper. I always found the full sized ones Overly complex for most tasks, but the mini ones are great. Single button, parts go in the dishwasher.
• one skillet meals. They seem easier to me, but even if not, your selection of meals is probably important. Internet can help with recipes if you can think of a search term
• mini potatoes. I can’t stand instant potatoes, but can understand it’s a hassle to peel and cut. Mini potatoes, or generally cooking baked potatoes, are great with less prep work
• my far out thought of the day: glass top stoves suck. I transitioned from gas to induction last year, and it’s nicer in several ways. But now I can’t stir or mix without holding the pan to keep it from sliding around

I hate this doctor

I’m not so sure about that. But maybe you know more than I do. What are the odds of a full recovery from an infected deltoid muscle at the shoulder joint resulting from bursitis? Right now I don’t have even a quarter the range of motion as John McCain.

And given that I’m a handyman this means I can’t work right now even when I’m not in pain.