How do you sort family dinner on working days?

[InsolentAnnie]

I work pt, DH works ft. Really struggle on the days neither of us get home til 6 (DCs in childcare after school). We need to eat straight away, ideally, or it’s too late for the little one who is only 6, but we never manage to eat before 7 because it takes time to make things! We like cooking, do most stuff from scratch, but even basic things take 45 mins unless it’s something like tuna and sweetcorn pasta, which we can’t have all the time! What do other people do?!

I use my slow cooker when I’m working, I get home at 7 and it’s nice just having to plate up, I make all sorts in there - beef stew, bolognese, curry, sausage casserole, I’ve even seen people make things like pasta bake, lasagne, jacket potato. There’s slow cooker groups on Facebook for ideas and recipes

Mushroom omelette- 10 minutes
Beans on sourdough toast 5 minutes
Pasta pesto with bacon & sweetcorn - 10 minutes for pasta to cook

Slow cooker dump bags, you can buy the dump bags on Amazon and taming twins website has plenty of recipes for dump bags 0 minutes just dish up, as slow cook was put on low in the morning or set on timer

batch Cook at weekend, take out freezer in morning, then minutes in microwave in evening as only heating up. Chilli, curries, stews etc. if you want extra veg that takes minutes to cook in pan. we lived on these when we both worked and weren’t home until 7-8 in evening.

We have this some evenings a week and tend to have a few quick meals in our repertoire such as:
Diced chicken in a yoghurt sauce with spices in oven for 20 mins, cucumber slices pickled in vinegar for 10 mins, warm some flatbreads up and then serve with salad, rice and garlic mayo.
oven pittas - chuck some oven chips, pepper, diced pork/chicken, onion and spices/herbs in a tray all together for 20 mins and serve with flatbreads.
chicken mince smash burgers - so quick and easy - they take literal minutes to fry and can serve with anything!
quesadillas are usually super quick too.
All different types of pasta meals, spaghetti carbonara, pastini pasta, one pot bolognaise (you literally add alll the ingredients including the spaghetti to a pan and leave to do its thing - it’s fab and tastes amazing!)
veg stir fry in a simple peanut butter/honey/sot sauce combo.
And any sort of slow cooker combo is always fab for a stew/soup etc.
i find instagram is great for quick, nutritious recipes.

Can you cook something in your days off that you can freeze for working days?
pasta is quick so you could have things like salmon or prawn and peas, broccoli and cheese (boil broccoli in the last few mins of pasta cooking) using some garlic and crème fraiche as a sauce or tomatoes.
omelette or chicken in a wrap
stir fried rice if you cook enough rice for leftovers from the day before.
noodles with stir fried veg, prawns or chicken and use a bit of garlic and ginger paste and soy sauce. Can add some sweet chilli sauce too.

Another super quick one in our house: a pouch or two of Kohinoor Daal Tarka, plus a bag of frozen king prawns (defrosted in a bowl of water) and a chopped red pepper. All in the pan 15 mins prep tops when you get in.

Slow cooker. Failing that, lowering my standards and accepting that some nights it might be something like pizza, pasta made with jarred sauce etc. I’m quite lucky in that my LG is currently at nursery and they feed her breakfast lunch and dinner, so I don’t have to worry too much about feeding her those days. Does mean as Mum and Dad we don’t eat until after she has gone to bed.

My kids get a hot meal during the day at school, it is always something lovely and healthy. So that takes the pressure off me in the evening. If I manage to make something from scratch it is a bonus. For quick dinners I do - sandwiches with veg sticks and hummus, dippy eggs with soldiers, omelette, pasta with a blended vegetable sauce I have premade in the fridge, pizza Fridays (sometimes homemade which we make together, sometimes from frozen with toppings added on).

I always thought I would be the mum who had something lovely cooked every night, but with work and a commute and picky kids, that just doesn’t work. They get a healthy offering for lunch and something somewhat decent for dinner at home. At weekends we do big breakfasts - crepes, eggs, pancakes, porridge etc…today I am currently slow roasting a whole duck for lunch with cabbage and dumplings, and yesterday we went out for sushi for lunch.

its all about balance, so what you can to make life as easy as possible for yourself 😁

I have adult DCs so this is behind me now, but if you do a roast at the weekend do a bolongaise/chilli at the same time, let it go in the oven when the meat comes out- that's monday sorted In the winter we would have a hearty soup another night ( minestrone, leek and potato, spicy lentil) and usually a stir fry- also v. quick. Shepards pie/ cottage/ fish pie is easy to do in advance ( but not less than 30 miins) and potatos for mash can be peeled, chopped small and left in water during the work day, just boiled and mashed in the evening along with sausages or fish fingers and frozen peas. Salmon is quick in the oven ( although not cheap).

we just precook something like a spag Bol sauce or curry and when we get home just heat it in and make some pasta or rice.
carbonara is my other quick dinner

We both don’t get home til 5.30/6 though the week.
we have toddlers twins and a 9&10 year old.

I try and give the kids our leftovers from the night before so they eat as soon as they come in, I then make a new meal for us. The following evening the kids will eat the meal I made for the adults
last night.
Hope this makes sense! We don’t eat with the kids through the week at all as it’s just too time consuming xx

Pot Noodle?

Obviously kidding, chicken roast on a Sunday, left over kept in fridge to do a quick curry in the week, yes i use a jar as the kids prefer that to when ive made from scratch, ungrateful buggers. Cooks in the time it takes to do some rice and/or oven chips.

Pasta dish using a simple sauce of Pasatta, onion and butter with dried or fresh herbs if you chose, cook pasta and mix with sauce, pour into oven dish and sprinkle with cheese, Cheddar or Mozzarella.

Batch cook some casseroles

Batch cook spag bol sauce

Batch cook curries

ooh that sounds nice

We as standard eat 7-8pm ish. They have fruit or veg before that if they’re hungry. My youngest is 7, but we’ve eaten later since he was probably 2/3. Alternatively, if you really want to eat at 6 ish, make dinner for the day the night before and then you just need to reheat and cook the next day’s dinner some point that evening. With the occasional, cold just throw it on a plate meal.

Questions for you regular batch cooker’s please!
So to cover 5 busy week days how many hours do you allocate to this at the weekend?
Do you cook the plastic portion tubs from frozen or defrost first by leaving them out all day or by defrosting in the microwave? I find microwave defrosting doesn’t really work, chicken especially seems half cooked and half frozen.
I assume the tinfoil tubs can be cooked from frozen in the oven or not?
How long would you oven cook a precooked frozen spaghetti bolognaise for?

@PurpleDiscoalways take out the frozen portions in the morning and leave them out to defrost. We tend to portion bolognaise/pasta sauce, stews, chilli, curries, risottos, soups for 4. Then heat in a pan while cooking pasta, rice, or cutting up bread to go with it. Takes less than 15 minutes, except rice which takes 20 minutes.

I wouldn’t freeze spag bol. I would freeze the bol sauce and cook the pasta whilst defrosting the sauce in the microwave

Dippy eggs and soldiers is our go to quick meal. Hot water from kettle, rather than waiting for saucepan water to boil.

Yes the foil tubs can go in the oven. I make shepherd's pie I freeze 3 portions and eat one (I live alone). Just take the lid off and put in the oven for 20-30 mins.

Pies also freeze well as does curry. As a PP said I would not freeze spaghetti just the bol sauce. I would freeze a pasta bake though.

This is what our week looks like....

Saturday - Batch cook pasta sauce, and the base for a curry.
Slow cooker casserole served with bread. Make double the amount needed and freeze half

Sunday - Sunday lunch, Roast pork

Monday - pork rice stir fry with leftover meat from Sunday and veg. Make double the rice needed in the microwave.

Tuesday - Chicken pasta. Stir fry some veg and chicken add the sauce from Saturday, serve with pasta.

Wednesday - prawn and veg curry with leftover rice from Monday and ready made sauce from the weekend

Thursday - Fishfingers, jacket potatoes and beans

Friday - Pizza, add your own toppings

Saturday - Sausage and mash
Sunday - I'm away so husband will heat up the left over casserole and serve with potatoes.

Luckily I live in Spain so don’t face these issues. When DD was primary age she would have lunch at 2:30pm and a snack late afternoon, timings based around whatever activity she was doing, then dinner around 8-8:30ish. Bed at 9:30pm and up at 7:30am. We lived in England until she was 7 and it was always a rush with work and early mealtimes. It’s so much easier here.

I would probably spend 2 hours. It's time well spent. I reclaim my evenings and shop online.

I am organised though. I get everything out on the side ready to use and just go for it. Food processor to chop onions and veg, soup maker and a couple of pans on the hob.

I use glass Pyrex dishes for big family meals, but often portion up individually in plastic tubs. They also stack well in the freezer. I also have tubs to mix and match. Tonight we had a tub of rice one of cooked chicken, and one of Mediterranean veg.

Tomorrow will be the chicken curry I made 2 weeks ago. Day after might be a tub of mash with a tub of cooked pork, and I might push the boat out and do some frozen peas while that's heating in the microwave. I never reheat in the oven.

I think I have very low week day culinary standards😆