We are all so busy these days that we need to find ways for cooking meals easier. With these eight top timesaving kitchen prep tips, you’ll simplify the process, eliminate stress and cook a beautiful, healthy meal faster than you ever thought.
1. A meal plan for the week can be a lifesaving change to speed up your time in the kitchen. Find seven of your favorite recipes and check your refrigerator and pantry to make you have all the ingredients to prepare them. If not, write a grocery list for the week with what you’ll need to have on hand.
2. Clean and chop all your vegetables and fruits first that you’ll need. You can do this step ahead to store in containers in the refrigerator.
3. Line up all the pots, casserole dishes, canned goods and the day’s ingredients for that meal.
4. Cutting fresh meats, chicken or sausages is more convenient if you chill them in your freezer for about 15 minutes or so before taking your knife to them. I like to use hot sausages in my spaghetti sauce, but don’t care for the skin. Freezing the sausages improves how quickly that skin glides off compared to struggling trying to remove skin from fresh hot sausages.
6. The size and cut of your vegetables and meats have a lot to do with the difference in cooking time. The thinner the slice, the faster that veggie will cook. Also, if you cut some of the vegetables you need in a recipe such as a casserole or chop suey at an angle, they cook up more swiftly than flat sliced.
7. Inspecting your knife blades for dullness matters. What really can slow you down in the kitchen is chopping and slicing what you need with a dull knife. Sharpen your knives regularly helps as well as investing in at least one good quality knife.
8. Butter in your refrigerator can take so long to warm up at room temperature. Yet, you may have an urge to bake. What I like to do is to grate that chilled butter for the recipe. Believe it or not, it allows you to breeze through creaming that butter and sugar for what you’re baking.
You’ll be surprised at how much easier that you’ll have it to prepare your meals once you implement these timesaving kitchen prep tips. You also might find it helpful to read two of my other posts on kitchen shortcuts that simply cooking and maximizing kitchen efficiency.
Some nice tips here! My friend is a teacher and on sundays she prepares her lunch for all five days. And sometimes she plans all of evening meals.