There are plenty of times when getting dinner ready just seems like too much. Rather than forever reaching for a takeaway and spending the next few hours or days regretting our decision (while simultaneously buying more takeaway as we haven’t managed to come up with any better ideas), we’ve come up with a list of 5 things we have done which have made a real difference to the time we take to prepare a meal.
1) Buy timesaving food. Like pre-chopped vegetables. When we are in a hurry, we tend to give up on chopping a wide variety of vegetables and slice one or two things as quickly as able. Bags of pre-chopped vegetables have meant we can enjoy a wider variety of vegetables than we would otherwise manage.
2) Buy food which doesn’t take much hands-on time to prepare. Like a chicken to roast. While it might take time cooking, if there is a day you are around home for an hour or two before dinner but have a million things to do, chuck a chicken in the oven and get on with your other tasks.
3) Plan your week of meals. This takes a bit of time to get into the routine, but rather than repeatedly visiting the supermarket, and then repeatedly staring at the fridge thinking about what to eat, plan the meals for the week and make sure you are stocked up prior to undertaking your main shopping. We use click and collect shopping quite regularly for our main shop, it means we can draft a meal plan and make sure we have all we need at times convenient to us, then drive-by to collect rather than trudging round the aisles searching for this or that.
4) Make extra. This one is reliant on having enough fridge or freezer space, but it makes a big difference. When cooking a meal we often cook enough for two meals. We eat one that night, but save the other one for a later date, ready to whip out of the fridge or freezer and heat and eat. The extra time needed to cook the extra meal is far less than if we made it again on the second night.
5) Develop a repertoire. When we make new recipes, we always take much longer than when we make meals we have made several times before. As with item 3, think through what you make, what you like, what you feel happy cooking and eating. Expand your repertoire if needed so that you have a list of 8-12 dishes you can comfortably make. Then make them. Make them frequently enough that you don’t have to get out the recipe each time, and you know what to do if one of the ingredients is missing. Once these meals are popping up at least monthly on your meal schedule, you will find that the time you take to shop for, prepare and make them is shorter.
