I recently read a statistic that households in India and Turkey spend the most time
preparing dinner- clocking in at 74 minutes! 74 minutes! That’s well over an
hour! I have firsthand seen this lengthy meal preparation, being Indian myself,
and being my mother’s right hand woman in the kitchen. All the scrubbing,
chopping, sautéing, steaming is certainly time well spent; I just don’t know
who has that kind of time anymore!
Below is my list of tips that will cut down on meal prep
time and help you get dinner on the table, well, hopefully in less than 74
minutes!
1. Make a meal plan ahead of time and go shopping
accordingly: This has saved me and my husband! When we first got
married, meal planning was on the fly, ending up in a mad dash to the grocery
store, feeling hungry during meal prep, and then, quite often, ordering in.
Now, we’ll sit down on Sunday morning and make a day-by-day list of what we’re
going to eat, delegate who’s going to cook on which day, and what we need from
the market. We then mosey along to the farmer’s market or grocery store and
shop for whatever we need. If we’re including chicken or fish that week, we’ll
buy that the day-of. Same goes for highly perishable produce. But even that
gets delegated so there’s no last-minute confusion or shortage of anything.
This way, we don’t have to waste time trying to come up with dinner ideas, and
we have all the ingredients on hand, which makes for much speedier meal prep.
2. Have a list of go-to recipes: This goes
along with my first tip. If you’re crunched for time, having a list of simple things
your family loves is a real time saver. This way, you spend less time racking
your brain for what to cook and more time getting dinner done. Even better,
keep a folder of cut-out recipes or even a printed list of favorite foods that
you can whip out when the need arises.
3. Pre-cut items that you commonly use, or buy pre-cut
veggies: I always put kale in my breakfast omelet, so I cut up a whole
bunch and store it in the fridge so that on rushed mornings, I can just take
out a handful as opposed to going through the whole routine of washing,
cutting, and cleaning up. Similarly, if you know you’re going to need carrots
on Monday and Wednesday, cut them all up on Monday so they’re ready to go on
Wednesday. Generally, produce loses nutrients with any kind of processing,
including chopping. But if you know you’re going to use the produce up in a
matter of days, go ahead and pre-cut. And remember, if saving time is your priority,
you can always buy pre-cut items in the store. They may cost a bit more, but
may save you time.
4. Delegate: If you have a significant other
or kids, give them tasks to do. Whether it’s preparing salad while you work on
the main course, helping you wash and cut food, or even cleaning up while the
food is being prepared, get more hands on deck! Not only do you get to spend
time with your loved ones by doing this, but you can also check more tasks off
your list in a shorter amount of time. I also recommend delegating one or two
cooking days to your significant other or kids (if they’re old enough). That
way, you get time to reboot.
5. Cook once, eat twice: My husband and I
always designate one day of the week as leftover day. We generally end up cooking
way more food than we need anyway, so this works out just fine. Dinner is on
the table in less than 10 minutes, and clean up is a minimum.
6. Let meals do double duty: Along the lines
of cooking once, eating twice, let meals take on various incarnations during
the week. With a little tweaking, those veggies you roasted on Tuesday can star
in a stir fry on Wednesday. That pasta you made on Sunday can be tossed into a
soup for Monday. Leftovers can be boring, but with a little modification, can
be made into brand new dishes. And when most of the dish is already made, you
will have significantly cut down kitchen time.
7. Sometimes, semi-homemade is just fine! I’m
the crazy girl that insisted on making pasta sauce from scratch. And salsa from
scratch. And chicken stock from scratch. Every time I needed these items. So do
you know how much time I would spend in the kitchen?!?! 74 minutes, probably.
Or even more. And then I’d be so exhausted I didn’t even want to eat. It was
crazy, really. Then I unclenched and realized a healthy jar of tomato sauce is
just fine. As is salad dressing once in a while. Just check the label to make
sure the sodium, sugar, and fat content on these items isn’t astronomical! When
I have the time, I absolutely make whatever I can from scratch. But when I’d
rather be chatting up my friends or husband, I don’t need to be slaving over
things in the kitchen.
Meal prep can be really relaxing for some, but for others,
there is so much going on that the priority is to just get food on the table.
With some of the above tips, I hope you can find ways to decrease the time you
spend over the stove and increase the time you spend around the table.
