Best family cooking hack

[mumtoallboys]

Feeding a family of 6 is hard work when you work too. What is your best hack for lightening the load?

I love applist! I set it up this morning with the things I cooked yesterday.

I have a few screenshots of recipes, there is nowhere to store them is there?

M & S, Ocado & Asda sell sofritto

@AdaColeman

I love the idea of luxury frozen mash. It takes such a long time and it is my favourite type of potato. I am also bad for letting potatoes go off, whereas I rarely waste

I buy garlic in a tube. No peeling & chopping needed - just a quick squirt.

I also have a sort of system (Monday freezer meal, Tuesday eggs, Wednesday meat, Thursday stew type meal (our Thursday evenings are complicated so it needs to be eatable at different times) Friday traybake, saturday something with more effort, Sunday slow cooker)

Re the kids they are under 6. If one helps they all help and the toddler is an absolute liability. The tidy up after they help us just a nightmare. I tend to cook while I am working and then only do the bare minimum when they are home.

DH is rarely home before 7. He usually goes in about 10am, he does a lot of hours each week and he carries a lot of responsibility in his role. I just couldn't ask him to help unless it is a day off and even then he is just tired. It wont be like that forever

A few other ideas... With ocado (and probably with other online supermarkets) you can set up a list with a name. I put together a few meal plans and put all the ingredients on a list. Then just one click and you've got everything you need for your upcoming meal plan.

Recommend the roasting tin books. Also some good freezer books out there eg the ice kitchen, which help make good use of the freezer.

And finally, if you are dealing with fussy eaters that can add loads of stress. I had a real reset on that from reading 'getting the little blighters to eat' and now it's just one meal for everybody.

Meal plan.

Make use of the slow cooker. I'd get the biggest you can so you can get a couple of extra portions for the freezer as and when you can.

If a couple of days a week need to be an 'easy tea' (beans on toast, frozen pizza and salad etc) then so be it.

I know Mumsnet loves a chicken that will feed the 5000. But the roast in a bag chickens are handy. If someone is capably of switching an oven on and sticking it in they are done in 80mkns or so. Part baked bread and a bag of salad and your sorted.

I have a few screenshots of recipes, there is nowhere to store them is there?

Pinterest. I have the same problem and have uploaded them to Pinterest via the app on my phone.

A huge freezer and batch cooking. I have one cooking day every few months. Also have jacket potatoes, pizza etc 1 night per week. Like someone else upthread I invested in an oven with a timer, so I prep a traybake the night before then put it in the oven to "be ready at" 6pm or whenever.

Second all the other tips re frozen chopped veg. I also started buying ready grated cheese this year and that's been a revelation

Just to check I am not misunderstanding, do people leave frozen food defrosting in the oven? To be turned on in 20 hours or so?

@AdventureIsWaiting Pinterest good idea. If I just had them in 2 places that would be better than my current situation

I use my slow cooker to batch cook curries, pasta sauce, bolognese, casseroles, etc in advance. Today we are having fish for tea so there is a casserole simmering away. Half for tomorrow night and half for the freezer. It might sound silly, but it really does free up time, 3 meals cooked in 1 day.

@Ihatesandwiches

You are dead right I don't do that nearly as much as I should. I find with so many small kids it is sometimes hard to get ahead of the current moment.

On the upside if they were bigger the portion size would go up and I wouldn't be able to make so many batches.

Today I made a massive batch of potatoes and DH ordered a chest freezer for the garage

@mumtoallboys

AnyList has a recipe section where you can store recipes (and import those you find online with the click of a button). You can create categories of recipes and subsequently search by that category (I think I have about 50 different categories) You can rate recipes you’ve tried and if course you can then meal plan by adding recipes stored in the app onto the app’s calendar. Then you can look at each recipe, look at the ingredients list, and check off the ingredients you need which will then be automatically added to a pre-created shopping list.