Cooking meals from scratch is healthier, but it can also be more time-consuming. For those of us that lead busy lives, it can be easy to give into unhealthy ready meals and takeaway food out of convenience. Fortunately, there are tricks that can make cooking homemade meals quicker and easier, allowing you to still reap the health benefits. Here are just several tricks for saving time when cooking from scratch.
Invest in time-saving equipment
When it comes to chopping vegetables, there are time-consuming gadgets out there that can save you money. The NutriBullet veggie slicer is just one of these gadgets – you insert vegetables into the top and it dices them up for you. If that wasn’t enough, there are also electric peelers on the market that can skin potatoes and carrots for you.
Cook with other people
Having other people to help you can speed up prep time by allowing you to do two or more tasks simultaneously. This could be something you do with a partner, kids or friends. Cooking with other people can be a great chance to bond and you can both share the accountability if it doesn’t turn out so well.
Try meal kits
Meal kits save you the time of shopping for individual ingredients. The ingredients in these kits also often come pre-chopped and pre-portioned, saving you the time and hassle of this task. There are lots of meal kits on the market. This comparison guide looks at HelloFresh versus Sun Basket meal kits and could be useful at giving you an idea of what to look for. Meal kits are commonly ordered online so you don’t even have to go out to the store and buy them.
Prepare pans early
Getting pans ready early can help to speed up cooking. This could include bringing water to boil whilst you’re preparing vegetables to be boiled or heat up frying pans and adding oil before adding ingredients so that they cook more quickly. The same goes for heating up the oven early before putting items into bake (most modern ovens heat up surprisingly quickly, so you may not need to put the oven too early as you’ll just be wasting energy). Just be careful with any little ones around.
Clean up as you go
Cooking from scratch often means using up more equipment, which can mean more stuff to wash up afterwards. Cleaning up as you’re going along can help you to save time. A good habit to get into is leaving pans to soak after using them as it will make scrubbing off food debris easier when you come around to cleaning them after eating.
What are your favorite tips? Please share!
This is a collaborative post.
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