Cooking can be time-consuming, and you may sometimes worry about how much time you spend in the kitchen preparing meals. This may be even more challenging if you have a busy schedule and little time to cook your favourite dishes. As a result, you may not always eat as healthily as you’d like, especially when the average dinner time ranges from 6 to 9 p.m. The time you get home after a long, stressful day at work may not allow you to spend more time in your kitchen. Thankfully, these three time-saving cooking tips will fit perfectly into your schedule.
1. Embrace meal planning and prepping
This step is a widely known time-saving strategy where cooking is concerned. Meal planning involves using your free time to draw up foods you intend to eat while prepping the needed ingredients. It works best when you have a menu and, more importantly, have the ingredients ready for all the recipes. One benefit of this strategy is food waste reduction because you are compelled to prepare meals in quantities you already planned.
Prep your vegetables, marinate your proteins, and portion all ingredients you will need when you’re ready to cook on another day. The caution is to do your prepping closer to the cooking day to help keep the ingredients fresher for the meals. Certain ingredients lose their quality when they stay in the refrigerator for too long. Three to five days of prepping before the actual cooking day is recommended. Anything more than that must be kept frozen until you’re ready.
2. Never run out of key ingredients
The key to efficient cooking is to never run out of certain ingredients. That may differ between households and is often due to preferences and culture. Most of these key ingredients are versatile and can be used for different wholesome meals for an individual or a family. Take the sweet potato, for example - it is a versatile ingredient that does well with any cooking method. It can be boiled, steamed, grilled, or fried, depending on your preference.
You can also bake a sweet potato pie or create other mouth-watering recipes with this single ingredient. Keeping your kitchen well-stocked improves the chances of never running out of key ingredients. You won’t waste precious minutes running to the store to purchase certain ingredients when that time could be used to start cooking. Those last-minute grocery runs can be a thing of the past when you deliberately try to keep your kitchen well-stocked.
3. Try one-pot meals
One-pot meals will be your best friend if you live on a timed schedule. It only takes one cooking method without wasting time on other techniques to prepare food. Even better, there are fewer utensils to wash, making one-pot meals time-saving. Like the name, everything goes into one pot or saucepan to be cooked. One-pot meals are said to be more nutritious because they contain all the beneficial enzymes that would have been lost with other cooking methods. They are also more flavorful.
Try cooking one-pot meals like pasta, stir-fry dishes, and hearty soups that don’t require much cooking time. You can get more than one serving from one-pot meals, which is welcome news for a busy person who wants to reduce cooking times. Believe it or not, you will find many varieties of one-pot meals to save time while eating healthy.
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Info Ibu Hamil & Bayi | Resepi Viral | Motivasi | Malaysia Blogger Influencer & Content Writer
