cook once - eat twice meals

[vroomvroommum]

Hi ladies,

With winter drawing in and my commute about to become an hour longer a day I need help to compile a list of gorgeous recipes, that will do 2 nights food. So that I only have to cook 3 times a week (with 1 take away) but can feed us all tasty, healthy, wholesome food everynight.

I can only come up with
savoury mince - (shepherds pie, Chilli, Spag bol)
fish pie

so please help me to make my life easier, tastier, more organised (and hopefully a little bit cheaper without the reliance on M&S ready meals)

thanks

roast chicken or turkey and then risotto or white sauce with optional wine/stock/mustard/cheese breadcrumbs and grated cheese on top. or sweet and sour.

you have nicked my best suggestion - which on occasion i've used for 4 nights running before they noticed it was same food disguised

Do you have a slow cooker? i think it would be yoru friend!

A large gammon joint - pop in the slow cooker with some water. First night have slices with cauliflower cheese, carrots & potatoes. Next night make a pea & ham soup with the stock from the slow cooker & leftover gammon.

Roast chicken - with chicken rissotto, wraps or chicken pie the next night.

Pop potatoes in your slow cooker for ready made jacket potatoes when you get home - just add cheese/beans etc.

Roast beef at weekend with leftovers for quick stir fry on mon night with broccoli and mushrooms.

Meatballs in tomato sauce - have with rice/pasta/baked pots/couscous to make it different.

Chilli con carne - one night with tortillas, guacamole, cheese, sour cream then another night with rice or baked potato.

Ratatouille is superb for this - have with lamb chops or fish or on own with rice, pasta, potatoes or as filling for omelette.

Casseroles keep well, usually taste better after a few days.

We eat like this a lot, esp when i'm working (freelance so either not working or working full time!) often have a night btwn so it doesn't feel like the same thing twice in a row.

Advantage is it is often cheaper too :)

Always factor in a stir fry - quick and healthy and can vary depending on what leftovers are in fridge - bits of meat, half a pepper, few broccoli florets etc.. Super sauce is (per person so just scale appropriately) 1tbsp soy, 1tbsp oyster sauce and half tsp sugar all mixed together and thrown in towards end of cooking.

It's cooking without thinking or planning, and avoids waste too. This is our regular Friday dinner.

I batch cook a lot for this reason. I use the bbc good food magazine website where they have a section for batch cooking. Some of my favourite recipes are:

Moroccan chicken with apricots & lentils
Lamb shank tagine (spun out 2 lamb shanks w a tin of chickpeas serving off the bone to make 4 servings)
Chinese pork with spring onions
Mini meat loaves - actually making 2 800ml foil tubs worth rather than in muffin tins.

Also anything involving a vat of mince: bolog, shepherds pie. And stews. I often do a big cook up on a sat or sun to serve 6-8, serve up 2 portions the following Monday and freeze the others. My favouites are the ones that only need rice serving with them so almost no effort on defrost day (take out of freezer before work, slop into Pyrex dish & put in oven at 160, set bell for 25 mins while bringing brown rice to boil then have a shower).

thanks ladies, I didn't know that I could cook Jackets in the slow cooker!! this is a massive revelation and may be this weeks most important discovery!!

will definitely be trying a few of these, and thanks for the nod towards the good food batch cooking pages.

keep em coming!!

I bake a load of chicken breasts/thigh fillets in a bag with some seasonings/herbs/spices etc and a big tray or two of mixed vegetables eg onion, leeks, peppers, tomato, courgette, carrot, parsnip, aubergine, mushrooms etc. and then we just reheat it the next night.

I do this a lot. As it's getting colder it can be good to use leftovers to make a hearty soup the next night. Some ideas

• roast chicken / chicken soup / fajitas etc etc
• roast veg with rice or cous-cous / mix leftover veg into cheese sauce, add pasta, eat as is, or top with grated cheese for pasta bake
• currys always taste better the next day, I do one day with rice, one day with naan. great to freeze.
• chicken, chorizo, chickpea stew. have with polenta/rice one day, as jacket filling the next. freezes well too.

If you want to avoid having same food 2 nights running, just eat 1/2 freeze 1/2. Then the next week you have leftovers from the week before. Once you've done it a few times you'll build up a nice stock of leftovers that just need to be defrosted.

Mince with apricots and toasted pine nuts, I make a large amount and freeze, I can have this with rice/couscous or wrap in puff pastry with veg on the side. It's yummy, my kids eat it so it must be good, they are so fussy.

I also get a whole chicken, cut into 8 and roast in an apricot sauce, bag up portions and freeze.

Could you make a hearty soup and serve it with cheesey scones? They freeze really well uncooked and then only take 10 mind in the oven when you need them! :)

*10 mins

I do a large amount of batch cooking on Sundays, making up lots of 1 or 2 person or family sized dinners and sticking them in the freezer. If you cook one or two things in bulk each week, you'll soon have a freezer full of meals you can just take out to defrost each morning. Mainly mince based

Chili/spag bol sauce/stuffed pasta/lasagne
Meatballs in tomato sauce
meat/veg curries and stews
fish pies, fish cakes
chicken pot pie without pastry on top, keep pastry in correct size in freezer too.
cakes, pies and soups

Also. if you get chicken, salmon or pork or whatever, stick in in the marinade in a freezer bag and then bung it in the freezer. Defrost during the day, then just fling in the oven. For some reason, once something is marinating away by itself, I feel like supper is almost done, even when I've only done a tiny bit towards it in reality.

Always keep a stash of those ready to bake french baguettes or ciabatta, as these are one of the easiest things to add to a meal as a carb. Also frozen peas very handy for easy dinners