To think that while cooking from scratch is better for you, it can be a massive PITA

[TwentyOneGuns]

I've just spent the afternoon making lunches and batch cooking for the week ahead. I'm sure the results will be lovely but it's all so bloody fiddly, messy and time-consuming.

While I was wrestling with a butternut squash (to make soup which incidentally will be nice but neither buttery or nutty so it's badly named as well as a bastard to cut up and de-seed) I couldn't help thinking how much quicker it would be to open a bloody tin. I know homemade is better but honestly I lost the will to live with that thing.

Anyone got any tips or gadget suggestions for making it all a bit quicker?

I don't think cooking from scratch is fiddly or particularly time consuming but then I done it every day for years and years. I do find absolutely everyone else tediously slow in the kitchen. I'm not saying I chop veg with a chef's speed, but I don't fiddle around either.

My top tip for saving on mess and clearing up is to take the lid off your bin. I lost the lid on my bin years ago and have never got round to replacing it. It must look awful to anyone coming into my kitchen but I have got so used to it being like that and I find it so convenient to peel veg/prepare things next to or over the bin and just sweep detritus into it or let peelings etc drop in.

Can I ask those of you who find cooking from scratch and batch cooking a joy - do you tend to do use the same recipes most weeks? I have a couple of recipes that I could probably make on a weekly basis but worry about lack of variety. can you add twists to them?

osmi is that a japanese cleaver?
Can you recommend best knife sharpener my husbandcwabted an electric one but i think they skim off too much metal everytime. I was looking at a japanese whetstone it seemed to do the job well as i was growing up. My parents swore by it and i recall it did keep the knives sharp for a,week.

Ive been through so many knife sharpeners fed up

I can't believe all the soup makers on this thread. I rarely make soup simply because it doesn't fill me up - if I'm going to go to that much effort to make a dish, it had better actually stop me being hungry.

The rare times that I make soup are when I'm at home alone in the middle of the day and there's veg at the bottom of the fridge that otherwise wouldn't get used, and a bit of faffing around is a welcome distraction from whatever I'm supposed to be doing. But it certainly plays no part in my main meals.

We always cook from "scratch", but use the simplest ingredients possible to cut down the work. During the week we would have sausages and mash or chops and new potatoes rather than cottage pie, for example. When we do cook something more involved at the weekend, we'll box up any leftovers for the freezer, but we don't intentionally batch cook.

I'm always on the lookout for recipes that are tasty and quick and we eat a really varied diet. But nothing that takes more than 20 minutes to prepare.

BNS is actually the only vegetable that I buy pre-prepped. I'd rather have the freshness and nutrition of chopping my own. But BNS is just not worth the effort.

Thank you for this thread. I bought a butter it squash today and have been dreading the thought of wrestling with it for 20 minutes. I will now go and chop it in half, deseed and roast.

You've saved me a wrestle

Ready prepared (cut) veg can often work out far more expensive. Though some not.

I find frozen veg like onion and peppers have so much more water content (obvs) that they just don't cook as nicely for some fresh food.

But for example the cost of prepared roast veg vs. a bag of frozen is considerable really and they come out fine.

So I'm on the fence with this one.

Katarzyna79 I recommend this one. Does my global ones nicely... www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/anysharp-knife-sharpener

Put the bastard thing in the oven who,e on a medium heat for about 45 mins. Then it'll peel with ease and you can deseed and chop and add to your veg for soup. Simple! Jamie Oliver did it first and I copied him

Silly typo, put it in the oven whole!

appleend
Yes I have a list of nearly 2 months worth of recipes saved on my phone that I use repititively and they are the ones my family really loves. I very rarely make something totally new now. It's very helpful because I can do them on my autopilot mode now. Plus if you repeat things after two months nearly, no one notices. And finally, lots of them are overlapping recipes so if I have left overs I use them somewhere I know so the waste is minimum. Hope it's helpful

Thanks Valentine, that's a good idea, i thought maybe a week's worth of recipes but that would end up being too boring quickly. i could probably start with a month worth of recipes and build from there

Appleend
Its also helpful to save the recipes in some form of notebook form on phone rather than just typing. And you can save pics of steps etc.

Can't believe all the butternut squash hate on this thread. I love it but not as soup.
When you roast it (unpeeled in chunks), the seeds are the best bit. We fight over the seedy bits in this house. I used to throw them away before cooking until I ate some and they're so lovely roasted, I throw a few handfuls of pumpkin seeds in halfway through.

My favourite recipe is salad: layer of dressed leaves, then cooled roasted squash plus the roasted seeds, baby tomatoes and feta crumbled over the top. Dress again. Works with any sweet roasted root veg - can substitute beetroot, sweet potato, carrots, roasted hazelnuts or pine nuts or goats cheese on top.

Nice in a massaman type curry as well (peel and steam the squash before adding).

My other top tip is not to peel potatoes. Just quarter and boil then peel the skin off in one piece when cooked. Can also roast the skins with salt and olive oil as well.

emma,thanks for the link!

Ive stopped peeling potatoes apart from roast - just mash with the skins on gives a much better favour. Also dont bother for oven roasted or dauphinoise. Hardly ever make a white/cheese sauce but use creme fraiche. If its a cheese sauce add some musta rd and salt and pepper - pour over cauliflower and cover with lots of grated cheese. Also use this for fish pie.

I don't get all the butternut squash hate lol! I just use a veggie peeler, then cut in half and scoop out seeds with a spoon. Doesn't take long at all. And butternut squash soup with ginger, chilli and coconut is a thing of beauty

If you put a whole BNS in the oven to roast, please poke a few holes in it first. There are better ways of spending an afternoon than scraping shards of exploded BNS off the walls of an oven.

Dumbledoresgirl yy to taking the lid off the bin. I also recommend using a plastic bag for peeling spuds into place on counter, hold it open with your wrists and peel inside the bag, so you don't get splashes of starch all over yourself.

I don't find soup filling either, and the only soup I make regularly (if it can be called soup at all) is gumbo. I also make split pea soup but I am the only one who eats that, so I freeze single bowl servings. Oh and pasta e fagioli (again maybe not a soup) but I find it doesn't freeze very well.

I have a bread machine that has a dough setting. Actually I make dough much more than bread. So I can ask the DDs to throw in pizza dough ingredients when they come home from school and fire up the machine, and there will be dough all ready to go when I get home. Last time I asked DD3 to get the whole pizza together as I was running late, I had her make some tomato sauce using a recipe that involved a tin of crushed tomatoes, garlic, herbs, wine, etc., but she used the entire pot of sauce on the dough -- I normally have enough sauce for a dozen pizzas from that particular sauce recipe.

yes 3dogsnorth can't believe you are the first to say put it in whole.

Why are you all wrestling with peeling / deseeding BNS let alone chopping the buggers raw?!

Just put the whole thing in the oven. Do not cut in half first, no need to cut top off, or bottom, or deseed, or score or any other bollocks. 40 mins and it then becomes soft enough to do all of the above painlessly.

I chop up the BNS because the chunks get caramelised round the edges.
It's not going to be as nice as that if I were to roast it whole.

I roast my butternut squash and eat it with the skin on tastes fine. Would love to get into batch cooking but never seem to be able to stick at it.

Well there is soup and soup isn't there? Soup made with a few veggies and a stock cube might do for lunch with some nice bread.

But I mostly make soup from homemade stock (mumsnet chicken bones or gammon boiling water) and it contains tons of veggies, some kind of thickener like lentils or split peas, and a good portion of leftover meat. It's a very filling meal.

yes 3dogsnorth can't believe you are the first to say put it in whole.

Er, she wasn't. It's already been suggested 387 (approx.) times on this thread!

It takes longer whole so I halve it which is relatively easy.

Prefer Swede tbh ( scottish turnip). Stew without swede is missing that certain something!

Make butternut squash much easier to peel and chop by pricking it all over with a fork and putting it whole into a hot oven for about 20 mins. I pop it in the oven whilst something else is bubbling away. Also you can leave it in a little longer and then skin with your hands (wait for it to cool a little first and watch the stalk it seems to hold the heat) and then puree for baby and/or soup.