When you want to prepare your food, the sky is your limit. With all the colorful, diverse, and tasty ingredients out there, you get to create a wide variety of dishes – the only issue is your imagination. Add in a few different spices each time, and you will never have the same meal twice! Cooking is not always about complex recipes and techniques; you can create mouthwatering dishes with simple ingredients. Meal prepping is always more efficient and practical than ordering takeout. Here are some handy ways to prepare delicious food at home.
Have a Plan
Mapping out what you want to eat helps you to cook better. It is also more beneficial if you are on a certain diet, and need to eat certain things. Meal planning is a beneficial method to determine the portions, ingredients, and tools to use. It saves you the time spent in the kitchen wondering what to do. This greatly helps you on busy days after work. It also lets you set a budget for food by controlling your grocery list, and planning your meals will help you reduce food waste and that is great for the environment.
Select the Right Recipes
When it is time to get to cooking, you can start with what you already know. Searching for recipes and learning about ingredients may be overwhelming at first, but, you will soon get the hang of it with a little time and effort. A good way to get with the program is by making meals with overlapping ingredients. This means you get to try new variations with the same ingredients. You will be surprised by how a dish composed of pasta, sauce, veggies, and meat can be made in a million different ways.
Invest in Quality Kitchen Tools
Kitchen tools do not have to be extravagant but they should be handy and sustainable. For instance, you will be using utensils, containers, cooking pans, and pots all the time. So, it makes sense to invest in good-quality products that will last. The right tools get you better results in every aspect of the cooking process, such as dicing, sautéing, boiling, and seasoning. For example, if you need to chop veggies or steaks, you need efficient and refined knives. You should treat yourself to the best Japanese knife you can find since such knives are very lightweight, so you get more balance and control while using them. This will not only ensure that you prepare the ingredients to the best of your ability, but these high-quality tools will be with you for years.
Moreover, measurement tools will help you get the right amount of ingredients to craft the perfect dish. If you want to bake a cake, a measuring container will help determine how much sugar and flour you need, and that can be the difference between a delicious cake and a sagging, tasteless sponge.
Use Blends of Spices and Sauces
As we mentioned before, you want your meals to be rich in flavor. It is ingrained that we use salt and pepper to season any meal, and many people get bored with how their food tastes. Luckily, you can buy mixtures of spices and sauces to give your meals a significant boost. It also helps you explore new flavor combinations. You can try many great blends and sprinkle them over your meat, chicken, fish, and vegetables. Spices come from different countries, so you get to have a variety of tastes from all over the world.
Chop and Store
If you want to prepare meals fast, your ingredients need to be ready. To save time, it helps if you have your veggies and meat ready for cooking. After you get back from the market, you should wash a considerable amount of vegetables and cut them. Store the pieces in containers ahead of time before prepping your meal. You can also use slow cookers or instant pots with any type of meat to use later in your recipes. At the end of the day, ready-to-cook ingredients decrease cooking time in the kitchen.
Batch Cooking
You may not always be free to prepare a meal from scratch. So, cooking larger portions gives you the advantage of having food for a couple of days or even a week. You can cook a big batch of chicken, pasta, or lasagna and then keep a portion in the freezer to serve whenever you want. Batch cook and freeze multiple portions or freeze the prepared ingredients so that you can easily batch cook when the time comes.
Meal prepping can be fun if you know where to start. There are many things to consider, such as shopping for ingredients and trying out new recipes. One thing is for certain, preparing your food in advance saves you a lot of effort, time, and money. All you have to do is get the right equipment, devise a solid meal plan, and channel your creative spirit.