Although time spent in your kitchen is unlikely to be wasted time, it is certainly time that could be spent elsewhere, such as relaxing or even socializing with friends or family. Even if you enjoy cooking, there will be times when you would simply rather be doing something else, and even more so if you are running late or things just aren’t going to plan.
However, there are ways in which you can make your time spent in your kitchen far more productive. This will enhance your enjoyment of cooking, while also saving you time so that you can get on with other pleasurable activities.
1. Organise Your Cupboards, Fridge, and Freezer
You must make time to organize your cupboards. Knowing what you have in stock will ensure that you cook the right meals, rather than getting partway through a recipe only to find that you are missing a key ingredient and having to improvise.
You should also make sure that you organize your fridge and your freezer. Checking use by dates is a particularly good idea, as it will ensure that items with a shorter shelf life are used first, whereas those items with longer shelf lives are used after. Of course, to keep this impressive level of organisation up, you should ensure that when adding new items to your fridge that they are placed behind those already in your fridge (or at least in use-by-date order with the shortest date at the front). This will save you from wasting food that has managed to go unspotted and uneaten before the date expires.
With this box ticked, you can then move on to the freezer. It is easy to forget what you have in a freezer, as new food constantly gets put on top of the older items, which, over time, gets pushed to either the back of the drawer or the bottom of the compartment. You may not be aware, but frozen foods also have a shelf life attached to them, even though they may not have a use-by date or even a best-before date printed on them when you buy them. However, to ensure that you are consuming the food at its best it is a good idea to be aware of how long it should be kept in the freezer before it gets freezer burnt.
2. Bulk Cook Meals in Advance
A great way of cutting down on food wastage, as well as time spent in the kitchen, is to start bulk cooking. Although you will inevitably be spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen while you are cooking your bulk meals, especially if you choose to cook a few different ones at the same time, when you come to eat them, it will be merely a couple of minutes waiting for them to reheat.
Of course, this will take a bit of organisation, as you will need to make sure that you have all the ingredients to hand, as well as sufficient cookware to cook everything and freezer-safe (and microwave-safe) containers to store your meals in. You will also need a dry wipe marker pen to write on the container tops or labels so that you know what each container holds. Possibly even more important than all of this is that you will have to ensure that you have enough room for your creations in your freezer.
Undoubtedly, as time goes on, you will become a dab hand at bulk cooking, and you will wonder how you didn’t accept it into your life sooner. It will give you more time to relax and enjoy yourself while providing you with a nutritious home-cooked meal of your choice within minutes of feeling hungry, instead of reaching for the takeaway menu and the phone.
3. Buy Prepared Ingredients
To speed your cooking up even further you can opt to purchase pre-prepped foods or dried ingredients such as dried minced onions. Adding a few spoonsful of these to your cooking could save you the time you would normally spend peeling and chopping onions, as well as the well-known discomfort that is associated with this task.
Although you may very well see it as a kind of cheat, there are many restaurants and chefs that make use of these types of ingredients to add flavour to their dishes. These would sit in your store cupboard along with your dried herbs and spices and, unlike regular onions, they will have a particularly long shelf life.
4. Invest in Handy Time Saving Gadgets
In addition to this, you can invest in some amazing time-saving gadgets, such as food processors, blenders, and mixers, to name but a few. For the most part, these gadgets will operate on their own so will be able to get on with other tasks while they chop, blend, or mix. This can reduce food preparation time considerably while also making all the items that you have chopped a more uniform size which will aid you in cooking times also.
Although running most kitchen gadgets is far from cheap, they will make a huge difference to the amount of time that you will spend in the kitchen. However, before you rush out and buy these desirable items, you should ensure you know from which you will feel the benefit.
To Wrap It All Up
If you want to spend less time in the kitchen, you will need to get your kitchen organised, as well as your time. Plan your meals so that you know what ingredients you will need to buy. Spend time bulk cooking meals and choose a small variety so that you are not going to be eating the same day in, day out and getting sick of it.
Use handy time-saving gadgets and ingredients to make your preparation time increase while not scrimping on the result. Also don’t forget to invest in some quality containers that can be both used in the freezer and the microwave for easy storage and reheating options.
