Think Outside the Can: 6 Tips to Level Up Your Canned Food

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a food emergency has probably turned to canned food for help—whether it's corned beef, luncheon meat, Vienna sausage, or something else. These are your no-fail friends when hunger strikes.

While your cooking skills at this point might be limited to frying, there are ways to step up your de lata cooking game with a few easy steps.

Ace your pasta skills.

While tetrazzini is traditionally cooked with chicken or turkey, you can take this pasta dish to another level with a simple but tasty ingredient: corned beef. All you need are an oven, some cheese, pasta, mushrooms, and cream sauce, and you can have a delicious meal that can be shared with family or friends.

Join the bandwagon.

If you've been asking yourself what the heck is going on with all the Korean restaurants in Metro Manila, then try hopping on the Korean trend at home. Stir-fry Vienna sausage with bell peppers and onions, together with ketchup, soy sauce, and a bit of sugar. Replace ketchup with gochujang or Korean red pepper paste if you want to amp it up with lots of spice. 

No time? Go back to the basics.

You can have a good bowl of soup (and, no, instant ramen doesn't count!) with just a few ingredients. When you put together cabbage, potatoes, and some tasty corned beef, you've got yourself a satisfying meal perfect for a rainy day.

When in doubt, make all-in-one meals.

Like fried rice! With a mix of veggies, choice seasonings, and slices of luncheon meat, last night's plain rice will no longer be ordinary. It’s that all-in-one ulam that will save you time without sacrificing flavor.

Wrap it up.

Don't limit your soft taco to the usual ground beef or chicken. Be more creative and resourceful. Add some luncheon meat, and combine it with cabbage, tomatoes, cheese, and salsa for a twist on this Tex-Mex snack.

Load up on vegetables.

When you feel like you need to seriously eat more vegetables (which is probably all the time), put together a meal that will make you (slightly) less guilty about having that sisig and beer from the night before. Use Vienna sausage for a ratatouille dish, which usually combines zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and onion in a bit of olive oil.

You don't have to be a professional chef to do the recipes above. Just think outside of the can and use good ingredients to make your dish enticing. Purefoods offers a variety of quality products that you can use in your next cooking session, such as Purefoods Corned Beef (in Classic, Chili Garlic and Hash variants) and Purefoods Luncheon Meat (in Classic, Cheese, Bacon, Chili Pepper and BBQ flavors).

Purefoods also has liver spread and spaghetti meat sauce on top of their best-selling canned meats. If your pure intentions had a taste, it would taste like Purefoods. To know more about Purefoods and their wide range of delicacies, visit their Facebook Page.