How to Cook in Jail

Understand the differences between getting food in jail and food in prison. In jail, you have a lot less work to do as far as food and resources are concerned. In jail, there are two main sources of food––the first is your meals, usually a breakfast tray, a lunch tray, and a dinner tray. One way to get extra food is to file a medical request claiming that you're either diabetic or underweight. Sometimes, depending on the facility, you can get an extra later evening snack, usually consisting of a peanut butter sandwich and maybe an orange or something along those lines. In many cases, jail food is, by nature, designed to be as inedible as possible.

• Your tray will usually consist of a piece of meat, a piece or two of bread, a piece of fruit, and a vegetable. Now that you know what you're working with, you see why it's important to learn to cook your own food in jail.

Make use of the most important source of edible food, the canteen. This is where inmates with money on their accounts are allowed to order food items from a menu. All institutions have different menus and different limits on how much you can order. One main staple available in every institution in the country is Ramen noodles. Ramen is a staple in prison/jail culture food and the base for many prison dishes. The most popular is known by many names, goulash, breakdown, whatever––it's all the same though. It starts with a base of ramen noodle soup, with various other ingredients added.

• Make spicy beef ramen: make the noodles, drain off the water, add the seasoning pack. Then cut up a beef stick, a cheese stick, crumble a handful of spicy chips in it, and season with hot sauce to taste. It's really pretty good.
• A lot of times, several inmates will all bring a ramen soup and one extra item, combine them in one large goulash and then divide it up evenly. It's as much a social event as it is a way to eat.

Use hot water to cook with. Since most often you won't have access to microwaves or other forms to cook, hot water is the best option for jail or prison cooking. If this is not available, then warm water is at least hopefully available. Usually, you can purchase a plastic bowl with a lid from the canteen as well. You put your noodles in this, add hot water, put the lid on, and then take it to your bunk and cover it with bedding and a pillow to hold in the heat. This method is usually pretty effective, and after 10 minutes or so you have your ramen.

Try other things. For example, save your boiled egg from your breakfast tray, combine mayonnaise packets from the canteen and chop up a pickle from the canteen, and maybe a mustard pack. Save your bread from your lunch or dinner trays, and then you have an egg salad. You can do the same thing with tuna packs that are sometimes available from the canteen.

Trade. Often, if you don't have canteen money, you can trade a tray (breakfast, lunch, dinner ) for one or, if it's a particularly popular tray that day, for up to 3 canteen items.

• For example, one person might give you their lunch tray for a ramen noodle pack. But if it's Sunday, the day you might get, say two pieces of coffee cake and grits and eggs and toast, or biscuit and gravy day, you might be able to get a ramen soup and a bag of chips.
• Some of the more popular items from the canteen to trade with are candy, spicy chips, and the king of all jailhouse items, instant coffee. A smart inmate might order a lot of these more popular items, then around the middle of the week when others run out, make loans, for example, give someone a cup of coffee, on canteen day that person owes you two cups.

Use packaging. Another way to cook your goulash is to use a large chip bag, or a clean trash bag, full of hot water, or if not available, put the bag under the warm water in your sink and let it run over the bag for ten minutes or so. If you're lucky enough to get cornbread, you can collect pieces of this up, mix with a little water, and make a dough up. Use whatever you can find, like a toilet paper tube stuffed tight with toilet paper and wrapped in saran wrap from another food item as a rolling pin to roll out the dough, then wrap your filling (usually a goulash) and let dry, or place in the warmest place possible, to dry it faster. Then you have a large "burrito".