Ja Rule wants to release a cook book inspired by his time in prison.

The rapper - who spent almost two years inside for gun possession and tax evasion - insists every recipe in the book will be ''microwavable'' as that was how he had to make dishes in jail.

The 'Always on Time' hitmaker - whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins - revealed his plans during an unexpected appearance on Geoffrey Zakarian's SiriusXM show, 'Food Talk', which airs today (23.10.13).

An insider told the New York Post's Page Six: ''He explained that while behind bars he learned to cook anything and everything in a microwave.''

Ja Rule has admitted prison food wasn't ''too good'' but he was able to eat well by making his own dishes, which included lasagne and cheesecake.

He told TMZ: ''[The food?] Protein. Eat a lot of protein. Eat a lot of fish, a lot of salmon - [the food inside] is not too good but you get packages and stuff like that. You can eat pretty good. You can eat decent enough.

''I ate everything. In jail, they're pretty crafty. We made lasagna, we made cheesecakes, we had lots of things. I really didn't eat prison food. I didn't go to the chow line too much. We usually just cooked in our dorm. Yeah, yeah, we cooked our own stuff. So what we made was pretty decent. It wasn't bad.''