Tell Birds Eye about your midweek meal tips - £300 voucher to be won!NOW CLOSED

[AmeliaMumsnet]

How do you get tasty, nutritious food on the table when you’ve been busy all day? After all, when it gets to summer, the last thing most of us fancy is spending more time than we need to tied to the oven. So do you have some clever shortcuts or cheats? Whatever your tips for midweek family meals, Birds Eye want to know.

Here’s what Birds Eye have to say: ‘Tea time can be a stressful time of day and coming up with nutritious and tasty meals the kids will enjoy isn’t easy. But Birds Eye frozen chicken is quick and easy to prepare, and made with 100% chicken breast, barn-reared chicken, and no artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives.’

Are you a whizz at preparing ahead or batch cooking? Do you have a fast, nutritious recipe that’s too good to keep to yourself? Maybe you’re just great at making sure the whole family pulls their weight when preparing dinner? Whatever the secret to your midweek meal success, particularly if you’ve something summery in your repertoire, share it on the thread below!

Every MNer who posts on the thread with their midweek meal tips will be entered into a prize draw, where one lucky winner will be randomly selected to receive a £300 Amazon voucher.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

I like to cook a big batch of quinoa which I can then use as a side dish / in fritters / in porridge / in salads. Tasty and healthy and super-quick!

I try to make something "one-pot" or "one-tray" midweek to keep things easy. So I will make a pilaf using rice and stock and put in leftover meat from a roast, a chopped fried onion and some frozen vegetables or olives from a jar. Takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. Or pasta with tinned tomatoes, bacon and some chopped up small veg such as carrot or courgette. If I have a little more time I might do a tray bake - chop up potatoes and roast along with chicken thighs, red onion, chorizo and tomatoes. Ingredients vary depending on what leftovers I have! But usually less washing up and always some healthy veggies in there!

I'm a big fan of frozen peppers, garlic and chilli. By the time I've stir fried it with a goreng spice mix, the noodles are cooked. At the same time I do a quick omelette which gets sliced up and put on top. Lots of chilli sauce and it really is cooked and ready to eat in 5 minutes.

I try to keep a stock of spaghetti hoops, baked beans, soup, mini pizzas and breakfast cereals, all of which are good after school as both of mine are young enough for the free school meals and eat well there. Otherwise, mashed potatoes, fish fingers, curries work well. I try to plan ahead but it doesn't always happen!

I have a constant supply of frozen leftovers! Whenever I use the slow cooker there is at least one portion leftover so each portion gets frozen individually to use as a home made ready meal when needed.

We like to use the slow cooker. My favourite is veggie chilli, it's quick to make and we serve with tortillas, salsa, sour cream and cheese.

Pancakes served with savory fillings - simple to make and if you make extra they freeze well.

Eggs, really quick to cook and feel like 'proper' food

I look at what we are eating over the week, rather than each day, so I don't beat myself up about beans on toast once a week.

Quick and easy (and popular) beans, waffles and cheese, wrap with chicken or cheese and vegetables, pizza, home made or shop bought (see earlier comment re not beating myself up), fish finger sandwiches or sausage sandwiches.

I make pasta sauce from scratch, and can bung vegetables in it, although their favourite is Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce, which is ridiculously easy.

I make a chilli with mince, chick peas, kidney beans and some diced carrots, served with rice, quick and filling for the whole family

My go to midweek dinners for the children are my son has the birds eye charde grilled chicken with chips carrot cucumber sweet corn and my daughter has the crispy chicken (she calls it the big chicken nugget) with red pepper sweet corn carrots myself and my partner enjoy home made spicey rice medditerain salad and grilled chicken

well this is a midweek evening and as the nights have gotten lighter and ds (10) has finally found friends on the new build estate we're living on he has taken the opportunity to play out and i wasn't sure when he'd be ready to eat or how much time would be left before baths and bed plus i'm shattered.

so he has a plate filled with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, olives, two boiled eggs cut in and some some crackers with hummus waiting on the side for him. the boiled eggs were extras i made earlier. i've also put a little pot of grapes and strawberries out for him.

lazy, quick but actually quite healthy. he has just walked through the door and gone 'when will dinner be... oh it's done'

and i had oats with berries and nuts soaked in milk for a couple of hours that i bunged in the fridge earlier. we do a lot of lazy mid week style living in this house.

I cook one evening for the next evening so we just have to heat it up.

Never underestimate the power of a whole chicken! Keeps us going for 3 whole days for night time meals such as Delia's paprika chicken and lunch time salads or snacks.

Every so often i batch cook and freeze - especially when it's somethinf fafftastic like canneloni. Other than that I have a fairly go to list of quick stuff. Stir fry with noodles, a courgette lingine dish amongst them

We batch cook and freeze often, my toddler enjoys 'helping' with the cooking at a toddler pace in the morning after the school run, it then means dinner is just re-heated in rush after work and activities. Quorn Chilli, lentil bolognese, saag alloo and Linda mcCartney sausage stew are all favourites.

I love to cook healthy meals from scratch for my children so I know exactly what is in them. I use mainly the hairy dieters cook book (the recipes I find easy to follow and can be quite quick to make),the Annabell karmel baby weaning book as although my children are now 3 and 4 we found some recipes we all enjoyed so much we carried on using them, this includes ratatouille, spaghetti and meatballs,fish pie,tuna pasta bake,egg fried rice as well as many others. I also use online websites such as BBC goood, I have many recipes saved on my phone and iPad,including quick family meals such as casseroles,fish dishes etc.
I tend to plan meals that take longer to prepare and cook for when both myself and my husband are at home.
One thing I find can help is to involve my children in preparing meals such as helping to prepare the food such as cutting up vegetables, weighing and mixing ingredients and making deserts such as fruit muffins,crumble,chocolate brownies or home made fruit salad for example.

I buy lunch things for all week and try to mix it up so we don't get fed up with the same things

As I home ed my kiddies, I find its good practise now to do a batch of meals up with the kids, it saves time, is a lesson for the kids, and because they have helped me, they usually eat more of it! We plan our meals every two weeks so that we only buy what we need and don't end up throwing away good food because it hasn't been used!
Anyway, as for the food we like to cook up, home made pizzas are a favourite, they love chopping up the veggies and making faces....home-made burgers are another favourite, but my two youngests favourite dinner at the moment is rice and peas with salmon! This so surprised me, but they are loving it!

My DC have a lot of after school clubs, so on those nights I don't cook anything that takes longer than half an hour, or the one who gets home at 6.30 has a sandwich, or we eat out at a café nearer to school than home is.

I have a super quick meal that I make for my kids using Birds' Eye Garlic and Herb chicken. I cook it and then cut it into little pieces, add it to cooked pilau rice with some cooked peas and grated carrot and that's it! I called it "Garlic Chicken Rice Bowl" and it always goes down well mid-week when I need to feed them quickly.

On the nights the kids haven't got after school clubs I tend to cook dinners from scratch. On the nights where we are whizzing in and out of the house I pull something from the freezer. I always double up when cooking so I can freeze half. Great with a jacket potato or the rice you can pop in the microwave.

We have a couple of go to mid week meals.

I think the most time saving ones are:

Left over chicken and leek pie.

Usually we have a Sunday lunch and if we've had chicken, we chuck all the left over meat into a pie with some leeks, a bit of bacon. Some creamy peppered sauce with a crust topping. Perfect with a bit of mash and some green beans.

Chicken, bacon, walnut and pear salad.

Basically as it sounds. Left over chicken and bacon from through the week with crushed walnuts and sliced pears. Usually with lettuce leaf or rocket. We add a bit of blue cheese to ours- it's delicious!

Spaghetti bolognase.

Mince, a jar of Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce, a bit of tomato puree, onions, peppers, carrots and mushrooms served with pasta.

Salmon and rice with choice (left over) veg or salad.

Probably the easiest thing we put together. A piece of Salmon each- topped with salt and pepper, sometimes lemon. Uncle Ben's boil in the bag rice and green beans, or asparagus or salad.

My husband is a great cook and my daughter loves prepping food. She likes putting things in and taking things out of the oven. She's very hands on in the kitchen and we always make sure everyone has a say in what we're eating.

We normally go with spaghetti bolognaise which is fairly quick to cook especially when using quote mince, we try to have a meat free night every week.
But for super quick dinners we turn to pasta (just with butter for the kids- which I still find weird) or eggs- boiled, scrambled or occasionally poached