Let’s face it that making a home cooked meal from scratch takes more time and effort than taking a frozen entree from your freezer to later reheat. Another truth is that those commercial frozen dinners are hardly as filling and healthy as ones that you prepare in your own kitchen with all the preservatives they contain. Yet, you may argue that you simply lack the time due to a busy schedule. Therefore, I want to pass on some useful tips on cooking vegetables faster to speed up the process to lessen your time in the kitchen.
The easiest way to peel an onion is cutting off the ends of both sides. Afterwards, just slice the onion in half. Then peel each side. If you’re using small white onions, you don’t even have to bother slicing them in half like the larger onions. Instead, blanche them in some boiling water for about a minute and then cut the ends for the skins to slip off.
Garlic can be tricky to peel, but you can get around that by laying the clove flat and pressing down on it with a heavy knife, jar or a can. Using pressure on that garlic will shock you at how fast that peel comes off to speed cooking prep.
If use a lot of fresh herbs like parsley, sage or basil, try bunching them up into a firm ball and then slice them as thinly as you can.
The way to speed cooking prep of iceberg lettuce for your salad is by cutting it crosswise into slices about one inch. You can further slice in the other direction to make the pieces smaller or just spoon on salad dressing and mix with other ingredients.
You won’t need to struggle again separating the lettuce leaves if you hit the core down on your counter top to speed cooking prep. You’ll be surprised at how easily that core will come out and allow the leaves to separate.
To speed cooking vegetables such as for oven baked potatoes, try putting them in a covered cast iron skillet will greatly cut their baking time.
Peeling the skin off fresh tomatoes without ruining the flesh can be challenging. On the other hand, dropping them into a pot of boiling water for about 20-25 seconds first before retrieving them with a slotted spoon and quickly rinsing with cold water helps. All you have left to do is to take a sharp knife to the peel and it seems to slip off.
These prep tips for cooking vegetables faster may not get you completely out of the kitchen, but they will definitely speed up the cooking process. You also may want to read my post on kitchen shortcuts .
