pull down to refresh

I've been cooking for myself more than usual lately so I've been optimizing my cooking by prepping everything but meat.
I've been prepping:
  • bacon bits
  • onions and garlic
  • grated parmesan
If I cook eggs in the morning, I'll add these in the scramble. In the evenings, I'll cook some kind of meat (cubed up steak, broken up frozen hamburger patties, and/or shrimp), then add the prepped stuff to make a kind of meaty bowl. I also buy frozen fruit to mix with plain yogurt to discourage myself from eating something naughty when I crave it. And today I made a week's worth of mashed purple sweet potato - hoping to give myself better recovery for contiguous yoga days.
It takes me a an hour or two to do this prep. As a consequence all of my meals take about 20 minutes to cook, and dirty a minimal amount of dishes. I do this mostly for the time and cost savings, but also to make it easy to eat what I consider healthy - even though I'm not counting macros or calories or anything.
Do you do any meal prep?
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichro 13h
I enjoy cooking, but don't enjoy that it has to be done so often. So I do meal prep.
My current system is to do a big batch that would last me 4-5 days, and then double the portion and freeze half. That way, after a couple of meal preps and rotating through different types of meals, the freezer has a bunch of accumulated portions so I can just start thawing them and be on a more "lazy mode" schedule for a while where I just thaw, heat/microwave and eat. Cooking break of sorts.
Not minding eating the same thing several days in a row helps. Eating only one big meal a day helps too. Not really "OMAD", but my breakfast is almost the same thing: eggs, cheese, bread, banana, steak, in different combinations. Stuff that fills me up and won't leave me hungry 2 hours later. So I just worry about breakfast and the bigger dinner, and leave the rest for snacking. Never really bother planning or meal prepping a lunch.
Usually stick to doing recipes that optimize cooking equipment. E.g. I'll sometimes do 2 meal preps at once. Chop things up to roast in the oven, like chicken and veggies, and while its cooking, do an instant pot only recipe where I just throw things in and hit the button. If I'm doing a double batch, I try not to do two oven-heavy recipes.
Things get more difficult and time consuming if I need to eat a lot more than average (when bulking).
My system is nowhere near perfect and I'm always looking for improving, but that's where I am at the moment.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nichro 12h
A chart like this has helped optimize and waste less time by chopping and adding things to the oven sheets in the right order so they all finish cooking at the same time:
reply
You activated the chef in me. I prep all things whenever someone or all in my family demand momos or chilli potatoes.
Momos
  • Grate and chop vegetables like cabbage, carrots, onion, peppers, Ginger, Garlic etc.
  • Boil some tomatoes, red chillies, ginger, garlic and Schezwan for the chutney (sauce or relish).
  • After it boils, let it cool and grind it into mixer, mix green chilli sauce a little vinegar and salt.
  • knead the dough
  • Roll the dough and cut it into small pieces
  • Fill the rolls with the vegetables, close it.
  • Half Steam the raw momos
  • Let them cool
  • Steam them again whenever someone wants to eat them.
  • Serve them the hot and juicy momos with spicy chuttney.
However I just don't it when they press for it a lot and say I make the best momos in the world..haha.
If you want I can tell you the whole recipe in detail.
reply
42 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 18h
I'd love to see, and I'm sure so would others, your momo recipe in ~food_and_drinks!
reply
Will surely do it the next time I cook. Already thinking about doing it under a camera this time. I think that would be the best.
reply
My wife makes huge batches of onion masala and freezes it into a bunch of small pucks for easy use in her cooking.
reply
21 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 17h
No, I prepare what I will eat every day.
Certainly, I need to learn more about preparations that I can make and leave ready to save more time when I have to prepare my meals.
reply
deleted by author