Prison Food Hacks: Inmates Share Their Tips For Making Meals More Enjoyable

1. Soak leftover pork rinds in Kool-Aid

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In prison, inmates have come up with thousands of ways to make their food just that little bit tastier. This step involves saving your pork rinds from your given meal and sneaking them back into your cell. Then, before adding the pork rinds to your meal (most likely instant ramen) you soak them in Kool-Aid, a kind of 'marinate'.

2. Make a hot tamale from Cheetos

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So, prisoners have discovered that if you take your Cheetos (preferably flamin hot) crush them up and add some warm water so that they're a mushy consistency, you can form them into balls by draining the excess water. You then press them slightly into a tamale shape  - there you have it, hot tamale.

3. Soak your rice in Tropicana apple juice

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 This is one of the best prison hacks for spending time inside and craving that little bit of tasty food. You have plenty of plain rice, but flavor it tastes like basically nothing! So first, soak in in your Tropicana apple juice (or orange depending on what you have). Then the rice will soak up all the flavour and you've e basically got a kind of risotto.

4. Crumble up your Chips Ahoy! cookies to make a cake

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To make yourself a desperate attempt a kind of cake, first you take your Chips Ahoy! cookies and crumble them up until you just have a pile of crumbs. Then mix it with milk and make a kind of crumby patty. Then warm it the microwave for a kind of cake.

5. Make a HoneyBun cake

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Now this cake takes some saving up of foods to make, but in prison it's worth it for the treat. First off you crush the Oreos and mould it into a flat layer of what will be the cake. Then, the Honey Bun will be as a base layer. The Oreo filling and peanut butter for the fillings between the layers. And to top it off, with crumble up Butterfinger bars for the top.

6. Get plastic bags from the garbage

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In prison you aren't equipped with cooking materials, not even a bowl. So it's hard to make pretty much everything. What prisoners have found is that they can do lots of things in a plastic garbage bag. The trouble is that you have to sneak them out of the garbage, under the used bag the replacement bag is there, still clean. Taking this enables prisoners to elevate their culinary opportunities.

7. Crush Cheetos into the ramen to give it flavor

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One of the most commonly eaten prison foods is instant ramen, because it costs a prisoner around 10 cents. As you can imagine ramen day in day out gets a little boring. But prisoners have many hacks to change the flavours around. One of them is crushing a bag of Fritos into the ramen so that when the water is added, it adds flavour and it is surprisingly delicious.

8. Make a prison style cheesecake with Graham crackers'

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Okay so prisoners have tried this one countless times. Take some graham crackers and mash them up for the base of what will be the cheesecake. Then, add the soft cheese tot he top. But before you do, add some lemon juice drops (or some leftovers of whatever fruit you've saved). There you have a prison style cheesecake!

9. Make pasta tasty with Cheeto crumbs.

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In fact you only need around half a bag of Cheetos or Fritos for this. If you have some spaghetti, you can mix the crumbs into the water and then add the spaghetti and you've got yourself a kind of noodle, spicy soup. Basically, Cheetos are your best friend for flavor in prison because they have the seasoning inside.

10. Make toast without a toaster

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Of course, a prisoner is not allowed a toaster in their room. And eating dry plain bread gets old real fast. So a tip that inmates have found, is wrapping  a slice of bread in paper and putting it between the hot pipes of the prison will soon make toast.

11. Make an inmates version of Starbuck's

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To do this prisoners run the carton of milk under warm water to heat it up. Then of course, they add the coffee and the most important ingredient of all, is adding some maple syrup to make it taste great. You've basically got yourself a Starbuck's...kind of.

12. Prisoners discovered a way to create their own stove

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Doing this in prison is absolutely not allowed. But they found themselves so desperate to make some food that they found a way to make their own stove - which nobody should try because it's extremely dangerous. They take nail clippers, an electrical outlet, and a cord and attach them together. And then drop it in water to heat it up - a real recipe for electrocution, never mind food!

13. Mayonnaise is a prisoner's best friend

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Oil isn't allowed to be given to prisoners due to how hot it gets when it cooks. So cooking in your cell (which is by the way, NOT allowed) without oil is very difficult. But inmates found that of they skim the oil off the top of the mayonnaise to cook with it - it acts just the same and you can fry things up.

14. Use an empty toilet roll to heat food

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Again, cooking and heating up inside a cell not only isn't allowed but finding a way to do this is very difficult. Some prisoners take a toilet roll tube and unroll it and turn it in at the ends. They then light it and the light follows the pattern of the roll making the light burn for longer so that you have some time to heat food over the flame.

15. Chop up hot dogs and add it to anything

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Once you've got your hot dogs - probably you've traded something to get them, then you really open up your tasty food options. Adding hot dogs to anything will make it taste better. And you don't need to add much. For example, chop up a third of a hot dog really small and add it to any dish for a little bot of flavour. Or if you boil your hot dog keep the water and use it to make your rice/ pasta in!

16. Make dumplings from macaroni

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Macaroni is a staple dish, and you start to want more. So save the macaroni, and then mash it together when it's cooked. Then, roll it into a ball and squish a hole into it using your thumb. You've got yourself a dumpling. Then with whatever veg/ meat you've saved, stuff the inside with it to create the filling.

17. Banana skin left in milk - banana milkshake

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This one is a good one. Nobody wants their leftover banana skin, but prisoners sneak it back to their cell. Then, they warm up some milk with the banana skin inside the milk. Then, when they remove it it really does taste like banana milkshake. Ingenious.

18. Crush up some Oreos for an Oreo milkshake

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When doing time inside you become desperate for things that are actually tasty. Little treats that you used to have at home etc.. One good way to mix things up is by heating up your milk, crushing Oreos and mixing it in for a kind of make shift Oreo milkshake.

19. Anyone has leftovers, take it

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If anyone has any leftovers, take them! Prisoners can doo all sorts with the leftovers. And, even if you think that it has no use, there will be a way for it to be turned into added flavor or nutrition someway or somehow. So don't throw it in the trash, save it for later.

20. Make tinned mackerel taste better

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So aside from ramen, another prison staple is tinned mackerel. And apparently it stinks. Anyway prisoner's had to get creative with ways to consume this. So they would  keep their crumbs from lunch and then add the crumbs to the mackerel pieces before frying it in the breadcrumbs. Much tastier, and a better texture.

21. Prisoner's created an illegal stove

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Prisoner's are allowed to buy a hotpot, which is a way to warm coffee but it is too small and not hot enough to be able to really cook anything. But, prisoner's would rewire the hot pot so that they had an actual kind of stove which they could could whatever they liked.

22. Sneak out bits of meat in plastic bags

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Meat is something that should be savoured in prison. You don't get much, so don't waste a thing. Even of it's a little bit of fat. That fat later could be used as a cooking oil. Or, it could be chopped up, fried and added to a ramen to add some extra flavor.

23. Keep your pickle brine

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So if you have a jar of pickle brine or you manage to keep some from leftovers, don't thro it away. Because, any veggies that you don't eat, you can throw in here and pickle! Not only is it tastier but it stops wate. And, adding some pickle to a meal can make anything taste better.

24. Boil rice in the bag

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So we already know how prisoner's take the garbage bags to make food. But what they also do is use it to boil rice, the same concept as boil in a bag rice. They fill it with water, add the rice and warm it up. It doesn't sound like a good idea however, when you consider all of the chemicals from inside the bag being consumed.

25. Making 'pruno', a prisoner's cocktail

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This of course is also illegal. But it's a common occurrence amongst prisoner's who want to make their own alcohol. They use all of the leftover fruit and seal it in a bag. The bag fills with the gases released from the fermenting fruit and slowly it starts to produce alcohol. In prison this is called 'pruno' juice.

26. Make your veg crispy again

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Limp veg might taste okay, but when it looks like that, and the texture's all floppy it's not so enjoyable. An easy hack for making it crisp again is putting it in come really cold water. Easy. And this means you can save leftover veg in prison and it won't go limp.

27. Cigarettes are credit

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Cigarettes are your bargaining power and your currency in prison. If you have cigarettes, you can by food or ingredients by trading. So be wise, and keep your cigarettes for when you need to buy food. Different kinds of foods are worth different amounts of foods. It's an important prison currency.

28. Add mayo to make things creamy

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It might sound gross, but when you're making anything in prison the bets way to make it creamy is adding some mayo. This could be to your cheesecake bass, mix the crumbs with some mayo it will literally seem just like butter and it will help them mash together better.

29. Bananas, beans and bacon

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What an awful sounding combination. But apparently in prison this is a real thing. And it tastes better than it looks or sounds. Plus, all of these ingredients can be used from leftovers and put together to make a meal out of basically nothing! If you dared to try it that is.

30. Keep your fruit skins for flavoured water

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Keep all of your fruit skins. You can scape it to add zest to milk, water or even your prison-made desserts. It really is a great and easy hack to add different kinds of flavours. You can even scrape orange peel to add to your savoury meal for a little bit more flavor.