Meal prep/Cooking routine

[IDinnaKen]

So I seem to spend so much time in the kitchen, I would prefer to put some time limits in place 🤣

If you cook from scratch, when do you do it? Are there certain things that you prep beforehand?

I’m a SAHM, one DC at home, others school age. So in theory it should not be time consuming. I admit, that I enjoy searching for and trying out new recipes, probably waste some time there. But I spend far too long cooking various bits and pieces.

Any tips/guidance appreciated!

Well question one is, does your family all eat dinner at the same time? I’ve found on days with kids’ extracurriculars or when dh is home after 8pm it makes the cooking more time consuming so I make sure I meal plan at the weekend for the “shape” of the week ahead and then shop for meals that can maybe stay warm in the slow cooker or can be easily quickly cooked/reheated for a “second sitting”.

Really decent, sharp knives for chopping veg. Plus I don’t worry about perfect chopping - lumpy/knobbly bits of veg are set aside and go in a stock or soup or stew.

Acceptable shortcuts - decent quality stock pots/cubes so you don’t have to make everything from scratch.

Make sure your meal plan rotates meals that don’t make a huge mess of the kitchen/grill/oven. eg a chicken traybake or a chilli in the slow cooker

Get up 20 mins early and do all your veg chopping and prep (or night before if you prefer).

I batch cook brown rice and freeze in portions. I soak overnight first to cut cooking time.

You MUST cool it quickly, I use ice-packs. You must also re-heat thoroughly, easy in the microwave with a spot of water on it.

I also batch cook vegetable sauce, based on Jamie Oliver's 7-Veg sauce, but basically I use anything needing used up, as long as it has some tomatoes as a base, and something like carrots or butternut for sweetness.

I think if you like cooking, it's easy to fall into the trap of meals that are a bit more fiddly/take longer. Add in the complexities of any fussy eaters/food intolerances and, if you're me, the reality that sometimes cooking dinner is the one bit of "downtime" I get.... and bang, dinner is at least an hour a day .

I try to plan certain specific meals that I know I can easily prepare in less than 30 minutes for the days I know I don't have as much time. eg tonight we're having salmon fillets which I'll cook in the air fryer and then we're just having a sort of stir fry/sauted vegetables made with sliced red onion, cabbage, cavalo Nero and garlic with some rice noodles that just have to be placed in hot water. In all, the whole thing shouldn't take more than 20-25 minutes, tops.

Basically, anything that has multiple steps, or multiple "elements" (as they say on Masterchef!) usually takes longer. Anything that can all just be tossed in one pan/pot - is quicker. Ditto, the more chopping and slicing you have to do, the longer it takes, no matter how good you are at chopping/slicing.

That's my basic rule of thumb. So spaghetti bolognaise might take a while to actually cook/simmer, but it's 20 minutes or less of active preparation time then I just leave it while I'm doing something else. But if I cook the mince in our other favourite way which is a sort of asian-style stir fry, it takes longer. Partly because I do more chopping as I add LOAD of vegetables, and partly because I can't cook it all at once in one pot so have to do the mince, then the veg, then the noodles then bring it all together.

I work from home so I also sometimes use lunch time to do prep. so Spag Bol, as above - I might do the prep at lunch then leave to simmer for part of the afternoon. Sometimes I do puff pastry tarts and I usually pre-bake them earlier in the day and if I have time, sauté the onions/leeks or whatever I'm adding so that I just have to assemble and heat the tart at dinner and make a salad while it's in the oven.

Apart from batch-cooking meals, I also do various parts of meals.

I make a large batch of basic tomato sauce, freeze in suitable portions, then I might need to add something like basil, oregano etc according to what I'm making.

I cook a lot of onions (half-moons) very slowly in olive oil, remove half when they are soft & golden, then carry on cooking until caramelised, & again freeze in portions.

I'll make a double quantity of bechamel or cheese sauce. It looks odd when defrosted, but is fine when re-heated.

Part-cooked soffrito in the freezer is also a time-saver.

Have a look at the slow cooker recipes on the taming twins website. Also if your able to do double the amount and freeze half for nights when you have after school activities that would be great.