Are you a busy professional or a homemaker doing multiple things? Cooking is something which lets you save some time for yourself. You do not have to spend long hours in the kitchen.
There are effective tips and tricks you can follow to reduce the cooking time. You can now manage some time to work on yourself or to learn some skills. Besides, you can get enough time to spend with your family.
At times, people skip making food at home because of time crunch. They depend a lot on outside food. This makes them pay a heavy price health-wise in the long run.
However, it is a surprising fact that meal prep can help in speeding up cooking. This means even when you are running short of time to reach the office on time, you can manage to cook food. Pre-preparation for cooking a day ahead can help save a lot of time the next day.
You just have to utilise some of the spare time you get the other day. This enables you to save time on cooking another day. This is like adjusting and balancing to make the most out of the instalment benefits of 12 month loans for smooth repayment.
You will have to adjust here and there to balance your time. In your endeavour, meal prep can play a crucial role. The tricks you can apply while prepping for meals are going to be discussed in this blog.
Quick and easy meal prep ideas you can implement
Meal prep feels like doing extra when you are already overburdened with work. No, it is not like, but you will make use of some spare time from yesterday to complete some tasks concerning cooking. This can be done even for a week.
You can utilise any day of the weekend to pre-prepare for meals throughout the week. This way, the weekday will be sorted for you. Above all, you do not have to struggle a lot while making your meals on individual days.
Prepare a batch of grains, curries, protein-rich dishes, etc., all at once. Now, you might want to include different types of carbohydrates in your daily diet. Then, you can pre-cook based on the days when you like to have.
Follow the same steps to prepare curries or other protein-rich dishes. You can keep a batch of roasted veggies that can be used in different ways on different days. When you have semi-cooked vegetables, you can prepare a dish even within half an hour.
Your cooking time is saved, and you can have homemade food throughout the day. With pre-cooked dishes, you just have to do a few steps to get them completed. This can easily be done on the go, especially when you are running short of time.
A huge amount of time is wasted in deciding what to cook today. Now, a day encompasses three meals, and you have to finalise what you will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Imagine what would happen if you did the planning in advance.
You can do this at the weekend when you have some free time. Now, this is a part of your household routine, and you should not be ignoring it. Doing this planning when it's the weekend can save a lot of time during weekdays.
You have a blueprint to follow, and cooking will no longer be fussy for you. Above all, you will not be stuck in the trap of what to cook. Deciding can be overwhelming.
Once you figure out what you will cook, the next thing will be to shop for the required ingredients. When you are aware of the dishes you are going to cook, you can prepare a list of items you should have from the grocery.
This list can prevent you from buying items that are already there in your kitchen. This way, you are not spending time and money on things that are already available. You will bring home what is necessary and can help you in doing the meal prep.
Now, on some days, your plan might change, and you want to cook something else. For this purpose, you must keep your meal prep process a little flexible. Instead of pre-preparing some of the curries, you can prepare the base.
For example, you can make the basic pizza pasta sauce. You can use it to prepare pizza on some of the days. Again, you can use the same base while making pasta.
You just have to cook one element that can be used for two different dishes. Use your brain and find out some of the basic ingredients or elements you can pre-cook and store to use on the weekdays. Try the same trick with vegetables.
You will obviously not like to have the same veggie dish throughout the day. Now, if you pre-cook some food, it should be used in a particular way. However, if you just chop a few vegetables and steam them before storing them, you can create different types of dishes.
In some cases, you might not have enough time to even cook for half an hour. Then, you can toss these pre-cooked veggies and prepare a salad on the go. This will not eat away a lot of your time, and you do not even have to eat from outside.
Only pre-cooking will be sufficient for meal prep. You must ensure that these half-cooked food items are stored in the proper way. Otherwise, the whole point of meal preparation will be meaningless.