When it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, it’s helpful to look for ways to shorten some of your daily tasks. The perfect candidate for a chore that can be made more efficient is cooking and baking. Let’s look at a few great ways to reduce your time spent in the kitchen so you can free up more time for your friends and family.
Meal Prep and Batch Baking
On the surface, meal prep may not seem to save time overall, but consider everything that goes into cooking a single meal. You have to get your ingredients, preheat the oven, chop your vegetables, season the meat, etc. When you meal prep, you are preparing a week’s worth of meals simultaneously, which allows you to group tasks.
For example, you preheat the oven just once. If multiple meals use potatoes, you peel and chop them all in one go. Reducing each task to just once per week instead of across numerous days will save you time.
Order Takeout and Get Baked Goods Delivered
While it’s crucial to balance saving time and money, there are situations when the time savings are worth a little extra expense. This is where ordering takeout may be a good option. While you don’t necessarily want to order out every night, doing so a couple of days each week will result in less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying your family.
If you and your family enjoy baked goods — and who doesn’t — you could even order macarons, cupcakes, or pies and have them delivered right to your door. When you get baked goods delivered, you save yourself a lot of time as it can be very time-consuming to bake even the most straightforward recipes.
Plan Quick Meals
Another way to make dinner more efficient is to precisely plan your menu each week based on the recipe’s cooking time. A simple spaghetti with marinara dinner, for example, takes no more than 15 minutes to cook and serve. Creating a menu based on fast dishes like this can save a significant amount of time each week.
If your dinners typically take 45 minutes to prep, cook, and serve, cutting this down to 15 minutes per day is a net savings of 3.5 hours each week! If you’re stuck for ideas, there are great resources online, such as AllRecipes.com, that provide meal ideas. Each recipe on the website also includes an estimated prep and cook time right at the top so that you can narrow it down to quick meals.
The Slow Cooker is Your Friend
Is there anything better than coming home from a long, stressful day of work to a home filled with the aroma of a delicious meal?
A slow cooker is a great way to save time when cooking meals. Sure, there is some upfront prep time to get the ingredients into the pot, but this is typically no more than 10-15 minutes. Once your ingredients are in the slow cooker, you leave it on all day while you’re at work and come home to a delicious meal.
You can find some great-tasting and simple slow cooker recipes online.
Final Thoughts
Family time is essential, but it can be scarce in today’s busy world. Fortunately, you can free up quite a bit of time each week by adjusting your dinner plans to reduce your kitchen time and make it more efficient.
Whether you choose to meal prep, use the slow cooker more, or rely on delivery, you can free up several hours for yourself each week.
