Cooking daily is much of a hassle for busy working women but there’s nothing to worry about as we have so many meal prep hacks to save your time and preparing in advance will also be of great help during cooking meals.
It is a well-known fact that time is money and we all want to do the best possible to save our time. In this fastest evolving world of corporations and multinationals, busy women are even more occupied than ever. Even when they are at home, they wish to spend their quality time with their children and family, not in the kitchen.
In this blog, we have discussed some quick meal prep hacks that you can follow to save your time in the kitchen. Let’s dive into it and see what hacks we have for you.
Top Meal Prep Hacks for Working Women
Plan Your Weekly Meals
Going to the kitchen and wondering what to cook is enough for wasting your time. If you have your weekly menu ready and it’s in front of your eyes like in your refrigerator, then you can get straight to cooking. Now, the question arises about how to plan the menu.
Your weekly menu should have a combination of meat, lentils, and vegetables. Select meals that are liked by most of the family members. On weekdays, you can keep simple menus like a rice bowl or marinated chicken and on weekends, you can indulge in some fancy cooking.
Getting your weekly menu sorted out is the initial and most important thing you can do for your meal prep.
Use Pre Cut Vegetables
There’s no need to waste time chopping off vegetables when you can get the perfect cuts from the nearest mart. Keep freshly cut vegetables stocked in your refrigerator and use it over the week. You can use these vegetables in salad, make a rice bowl or mix veggies soup. It will only take a few minutes to get the food ready when the pre-cut veggies are available.
Order Grocery Online
Going to the supermarket and buying groceries is surely a tiring and time-consuming experience. It wastes your time and also drains your energy. By the time you head back to your home, you are not in the mood to go to the kitchen. So, why not save your time by ordering groceries online? You know exactly what you want to order; just search the ingredients, add them to your cart, pay online, and you are good to go. It will also save you the excess money that you spend every time you go to a mart when you end up buying random things that you don’t even need. Ordering groceries online is a great step and will greatly help you prepare your meals.
Buy in Bulk Quantity
It’s very frustrating when we run out of a certain ingredient during cooking. It’s practically impossible to go out and buy that item, and sometimes, skipping that ingredient is also not the solution to the problem. To avoid this problem during cooking, we suggest you buy in bulk quantities. Plan a schedule for monthly or fortnightly grocery trips. Buy all the necessary items you need. It is wise to stock up on staples like rice, flour, sugar, oil, sauces, meat, and poultry. The rest of the things, like vegetables, fruits, bread, or yogurt, can be bought weekly. Buying in bulk will also give you some other benefits, like a certain percentage off on bigger economy packs.
Batch Cook and Freeze
Another lazy hack for meal prep is to cook in big batches on your day off and then freeze it for later use. You don’t need to cook and freeze the whole dish, instead try and freeze some base ingredients like tomato puree, pasta sauce, salad dressing, fried onion or shredded chicken.
The next time you start cooking, you will be thankful for the frozen stock you have prepared. It can be of great help as well when you are not in good health and someone else like your husband or elder children takes charge of cooking.
Use Pre Packed Ingredients
There are lots of pre-packed ingredients available in the market nowadays to help you in the kitchen. From pre-cooked pasta sauce to shredded cheese, tortilla wraps to pickled olives, frozen pizza crusts to flavoured yogurt, you can avail all these items to enhance the taste of your meals and reduce the cooking time.
There are also lots of sauces, dips and spices available that enhance the taste of your food when you can’t figure out what to put in. Let’s try some pre packed ingredients like these and you will be surprised to see how quickly you end up cooking meals.
Make One Pot Dishes
It makes no sense to use two or three utensils while cooking a single meal. Select a menu that has one-pot dishes because these dishes are easy to cook, save you the hassle of washing a lot of dishes, and are also economical for your budget. Some popular and famous one pot dishes are casserole, lasagne, macaroni & cheese, baked pizza fried and chicken rice bowl.
One pot dishes are ideal as they create less mess and are tastier. You can also toss all the ingredients in a baking dish and keep it in the refrigerator. When you are hungry, you just need to bake it in the oven and your piping hot meal is ready.
Final Thoughts
We have covered some main hacks that you can follow to always be a step ahead for your meal prep. We understand your tough schedule and close deadlines that you deal with every day.
We know that providing healthy and quality meals for your children is your top priority and we assure you that these hacks will prove to be your best friend in meal preparation as you will save a lot of your precious time and focus on more productive things without compromising on your family’s health.
Save these hacks today and try them out to prepare the meals within no time. We guarantee you that all your friends and family will be surprised that you are managing your work and kitchen duties so well.
