AIBU to ask how you manage to cook from scratch?

[orangeblossomgirl]

i work long hours, full time. DH and i are both vegetarian and prefer to eat food cooked from scratch / not processed. How do you manage to cook healthy and delicious food every day without spending hours in the kitchen, or eating the same thing every other day?

I have loads of recipe books I never open and spices I never use and just cook the same 3 meals in rotation! Gets me thinking I should try simplycook or another recipe box to simplify the process...just bored really and tired of spending every evening cooking

Freezing I make extra of any meal I make and freeze portions. Defrost in fridge overnight and reheat when I need them.

Some stuff can be prepped in advance, so stuff that forms the basis of the majority of your weekly menu such as chopped onion/celery/peppers etc and stored in the fridge in tubs.

Batch cook your favourites, then try something new at the weekends. Gradually the ‘new’ things can be weekday meals, when you’ve got them down pat, and keep going like that.

I think the key is not cooking every day, so when you do cook it counts. Batch cooking helps that.

I'm a big scratch cooker. I buy a lot of things like pre chopped frozen onion and peppers which helps a lot (and before anyone says anything, frozen veg have as many, if not more, nutrients than "fresh"). Batch cooking and freezing is good too.
And learning which meals are quick. As you are veg this probably isn't one for you, but I have found baked salmon with steamed vegetables as quick to prepare as oven food or a ready meal.
Slow cooker is great too. Chuck a load of stuff in in the morning and it's a delicious meal by evening.

Also meal planning. Eg. Make huge batch of roast veg on Sunday and then use through the week - in a wrap with feta cheese, stirred into cous cous, added to pasta, side dish to a main course

Out of interest what’s long hours? What time do you get home? How long do your usual 3 dishes take to cook?

Gusto. Takes all the prep, planning and shopping out of it. Delivered to your door. Disadvantages are not all the meals are quick to Male (can be up to 45 mins) and they’re all pre planned so you can’t just have whatever you fancy on the day

Cooking from scratch doesn't have to mean complicated. We had salmon with soy sauce and ginger with broccoli tonight. Ready in about 20 mins from scratch.

I make a "carbonara" by stir frying bacon and veg, mixing in cooked pasta, creme fraiche and parmesan. Takes about 20 mins too.

Sometimes I prep veg for the next night while dc are washing up.

Frozen vegetables, especially ready chopped onions, leeks, peppers and I’m going to look for frozen chopped ginger and garlic. I know it only takes a few minutes to chop each veg but by the time a few varieties have been choppped and I’ve cleared up it’s taken an extra 20 minutes.
Batch cooking and freezing help as well.

Slowcooker. Best invention ever.

And like many have said, cooking in large batches. I never spend more than 4-5 hours total per week in the kitchen cooking and it's all from scratch.

Batch cooking for me. I have a recipes for veggie chilli & curry which i always double the quantities. Then i know if we eat it for dinner i have one or two portions for the freezer.

Plus I have invested in a couple of Pyrex dishes with lids so i can freeze fish/shepherds pie. Again i'll cook two at once with one for the freezer.

I find it useful for when DH and I are working late and my MIL is in charge of feeding the DC.

Do you have the 30 Minute Vegetarian cookbook?

Do you cook for children as well?

Two adults making a meal for themselves shouldn't take too much effort, meal plan at the weekend or whenever you do your shopping then no head space has to be wasted thinking about what you are going to cook, get home, get on with it and don't go for faffy stuff on the days you work

Yep, batch-cooking here too. Well, not in the sense of spending whole weekends preparing and freezing things, but on the days I do have time to cook I make 6 portions rather than two, and freeze 4 for the nights I don't have time.

Then a selection of quick meals: pasta and veg, stir-fries, etc. Oh and slow cooker chilli/bean stew that I prep the night before, stick on before I go to work, and eat when I get home

Batch cooking and freezing so a meal's quickly ready when time's short. We tend to eat vegetarian meals, as the youngest DC doesn't eat meat or fish. Omelettes are very quick and easy and not to be sniffed at. Pasta sauces can be frozen and dishes eaten with a side salad.

It's not the cooking that's the issue, but the planning and shopping.

Variation on the omelette tonight - about to have chips, eggs and baked beans!

Getting a seasonal veg box (Riverford are ace) made me cook a better variety of meals. I plan our weekly meals around what we get in the box. There are loads of recipes on the Riverford site, or buy a food magazine, or search BBC Good Food or similar to get seasonal recipes. When you've got it all planned out and have done a weekly shop, it is a lot easier.

cooking 'from scratch' doesn't have to mean long complicated recipes every night.

We cooked 'from scratch' this evening. We had a basic omlette (fried onion and peppers first), with some runner beans and peas on the side (just boiled then a bit of butter thrown on them). It was basically using up random leftovers in the fridge, and took around 15mins.

We eat a similar 15-30min meal probably 4-5 nights a week, then usually something longer on the weekend (hopefully leaving leftovers for another weekday meal)

Simplycook is great for during the week and it is nearly cooking from scratch. We are doing HelloFresh this week as it was on a Black Friday deal, but it is a lot more effort, quite time consuming and lots of pans required.

I save my proper cooking from scratch for the weekend though.

I think it's easier at this time of year stews, curries and soups are easy to make and healthy. You can make in advance and leave in the fridge or freeze.
It's more about getting into the habit of doing it.

It is a combination of things

Have a good set of quick and easy recipes. And know the gaps in them so you can do other things in between. Roast dinners are great mid week because they can be thrown near the oven and then I can go for a run.

Pre make things like curry pastes - it then only takes the time it takes to cook the rice to get dinner on the table.

Go heavy on the yeast for pizzas

Quick cook carbs - noodles and cous cous are fab.

Eat late and start work early.

Sharpen your knives as you wash them.... Having a good knife speeds things up considerably.

Cooking from scratch doesn’t need to take a long time. I’m on mat leave at the moment, but when I was working I always managed to cook fresh meals every day, and I work ridiculous hours in London with an hour’s commute. Loads of stuff can be done in less than 45 mins. I’m not veggie so can’t help much with meat free suggestions, but I do a really nice spinach and ricotta lasagna which takes no time at all. Pasta dishes are generally very quick. Veggie chilli also a good one. Halloumi fries go down really well in my house. Like a PP says, practise at the weekend, and cooking from scratch will become more instinctive. Good luck!

Batch cook and freeze so on days we are too tired/it’s late we have a home made ‘ready meal’ to defrost and heat or we have something simple like jacket potato, veg & fish (insert veggie swap here) that is ready in 20 mins.
We write a menu weekly so we shop for what we need and that way we can also save the longer prep meals for when we have more time.

thanks for the suggestions! we live in a tiny city flat with only an under counter fridge (no freezer or microwave!) which is what makes it tough i think...i work 12+ hour days and so does DH so its like 9 pm by the time we have cooked and washed up. im going to look into gousto, simplycook etc and see if they help take the thought / planning element out of it which is just as tiring as the cooking!

Last weekend I made :

A big pot of veggie soup
A quiche
Chicken, coconut and squash curry
Plain chicken and potato casserole
Roasted veg
Jacket spuds

We'll have chilli wraps tonight, chilli out of freezer from last week

Know you said you're veggie but these are just examples

Only thing not from scratch was the quiche pastry

Slow cooker my friend...slow cooker.

Cooking from scratch is quick and easy. It doesn't have to be a complicated ordeal. At all. Plan your meals, have a very well stocked pantry and you're set.