Apart from being an art, science, and craft of using heat to prepare food, cooking is also a healthy habit that you can maintain only if you can eliminate or reduce some common obstacles. Obstacles such as:
- It’s too difficult
- It’s time-consuming
- I don’t have time
- I don’t feel like it
- I have no idea
- I’m not a kitchen person
- I have nothing in the fridge
We have gathered a few tips for these obstacles to help you get up more often. Here are 13 tips to help you save time in the kitchen.
1. Cook together with someone
An average meal takes between 30 minutes and an hour. More complex meals like chicken or spaghetti and meatballs take 60 minutes. If the cooking time is 60 minutes, I have to plan more time. I can do something else while the chicken is in the oven, but I still have to clean up and do the dishes at the end.
If I always had to cook and tidy up alone, I would be less motivated. That’s why I’m happy that my partner often helps me. Just chopping onions and garlic saves me time and tears.
If we choose a quick and straightforward dish like pancakes and mushrooms, we’ll be ready in less than half an hour. Cooking can be a shared experience like other healthy habits in a relationship.
Related: Why You Should Start Eating Real Food
2. Share the cooking
You can take turns cooking if the kitchen is too small to cook at the same time together. Your partner or roommate may cook today, and you next tomorrow. It’s going to be a lot of fun. After all, it is also good to give something. You are happy and the other person is too.
3. Cook extra servings for a later time.
You don’t have to cook every day. It can be stressful and time-consuming as well. What you can do is cook a few more servings about three to four times a week. Then freeze them or keep them in the fridge. You can’t make a rice dish for two in one day anyway.
Read: 10 Healthy Delicious Super Foods You Will Surely Love
4. Split the work
It will help if you can split the work for a dish over several days. Today you will cut or slice ingredient, tomorrow ingredient, and then cook the day after tomorrow – just like that. Needless to say, that doesn’t work with fresh, quickly perishable ingredients. It is best to use fresh, real food.
So you could try cooking an ingredient for dish one and use this same ingredient again for the next dish. Today, for example, there is pasta with vegetables and deliberately a few portions too much.
Don’t just cook a little too much; otherwise, you’ll probably eat it up! You can also continue with the starting product tomorrow and use it to make a pasta salad or a casserole.
5. Invite someone over to join you.
Have a friend over to join you from time to time. Then you can also visit this friend sometime too as well. Whenever you visit each other, you eat together.
That will motivate you guys to cook something decent, and not just noodles with tomato sauce, even when cooking for dinner parties. It’s a lot of work, but it’s certainly fun cooking for someone. Give it a try!
Read: 15 Healthy Recipes for Dinner (For Fast Weight Loss)
6. Have Fun: Take pictures
It motivates some people to capture their culinary skills and achievements with the camera. You can take photos of your dishes and keep them for memory’s sake. Why not give it a try.
Take a shot at the start, halfway through it, and at the end. That way, you will also be inspired and motivated the next time.
7. Use good cooking utensils.
The proper equipment makes cooking more enjoyable. It doesn’t have to be high-tech but should be quality enough.
- Good knives stay sharp longer.
- A good frying pan prevents food from sticking to it.
- With good knives, you can chop vegetables and fruits effortlessly.
- A good pot is easy to clean, and it’s not heavy.
All these in one place make the project more manageable and faster.
8. Find a delicious recipe
If you don’t know what you want to cook, you will lack the desire to go into the kitchen.
Sometimes, I research recipes with ingredients that I’d like to eat. For example, I may search for spinach, puff pastry, or goat cheese on Google, and a different variety of recipes will come up.
I put together recipes suitable for everyday use—recipes for casseroles, soups, salads, and more. There is not only the appetite but also the desire to reach for the wooden spoon.
Read: Should You Have Cheat Meals? And Why
9. Make a schedule
Suppose you find it difficult to pinpoint three or four days a week that you can be free; it will help if you just set yourself up on the calendar. Plan the days and evenings firmly and commit yourself so you don’t procrastinate.
10. Cook something easy and fast with your favorite ingredients.
Look for a 30 or 45 minutes video recipe or a recipe that seems manageable even while reading. You can also recognize simple recipes by a shortlist of ingredients. Don’t make cooking more complicated than necessary.
11. Cook together with someone who can
Do you know someone good at cooking? A friend, grandma, or your mom? Cooking together may even be more fun. As a beginner, you can certainly learn a lot from them. It may not be easy during the week. How about on the weekend?
Even if you’re on a family visit, you can stand in the kitchen and learn a few things. Your friend or grandma will also undoubtedly love it when you ask them questions about their cooking skills.
12. Stock your refrigerator with a plan
You certainly wouldn’t want to go near a kitchen if your refrigerator is empty. Look for recipes at regular intervals, maybe once or twice a week, and shop for them specifically.
Also, it will be best always to have some basic ingredients and spices in stock. Buy fresh food such as fruit and vegetables in small quantities at short notice.
Read: 15 Recipes For Healthy Living
13. Think of the benefit.
Perhaps you can motivate yourself to the extra effort of chopping food and cooking if you keep in mind the benefits and positive results of home-cooked food. Here are some of the benefits.
- You are full for a long time.
- You take in less of the addictive fast-food combination of sugar + fat + salt.
- You maintain your weight or lose weight.
- Your body is better supplied with nutrients.
- It tastes better
- Less industrial junk
- You eat very little or no preservatives and also fewer artificial flavors.
