5 Time-Saving Cooking Tips

Cooking can be one of the most tedious things to do three times a day, every single day. It seems like just when you have washed up from one meal, it is already time to start preparing for the next.

It does not have to be that way - some simple time-saving cooking tips can transform those hours toiling in the kitchen to leisure time. Here is our list of some of the best ways to reclaim your day.

1. Organise your kitchen

There are few things that waste as much of your time (and cause so much frustration) as a disorganised kitchen. If you are spending time looking for utensils, knives, peelers and measuring cups, you are also increasing the odds that your dishes will end up overdone, burnt or not up to mark.

Organise your shelves and cabinets by category; label them if that helps. Gather the tools you need for the meal in advance. The triangular arrangement of kitchen sink, refrigerator and stove has been shown to be most conducive to time-saving cooking.

2. Plan ahead

One of the best ways to save time in the cooking process is actually to invest some in planning.

Sit down on the weekend and plan your meals for the week. You will soon realise that many of those meals share ingredients in common. Preparing frequently-used ingredients in one go will save you a lot of time over the week:

• chopped onions;
• cabbage;
• tomatoes;
• other vegetables. 

Just remember to store them properly in Ziploc bags in the freezer so they retain their flavour. 

3. Write it out

Planning a meal in your head can be a daunting task. No matter how organised you are, the odds are that something will fall through the cracks or that you might mix up the preparation of different parts of the meal that you are working on simultaneously.

Having a simple notepad with what you have to do, when and its duration will allow you to come up with a helpful timeline. The best thing is that you can save these notes just like recipes (perhaps even add them to your recipe book) for use over and over again.

4. Delegate

The next time you hear, “What’s for dinner?” use it as an opportunity to recruit some troops. Get your kids and your husband to contribute to the preparation, if not the cooking itself. Of course, start them off with simple things like stirring a mixture or, for older kids, chopping the greens or the salad.

Always be careful when children are in the kitchen. Make sure you supervise and ensure that they do not get their hand on knives if they are not supposed to, or get too close to the stove and hot utensils.

5. Learn some kitchen tricks

There are literally hundreds of videos of time-saving cooking tips out there that can help turn you into a kitchen pro.

Learning how to slice and dice safely in a jiffy, peel a potato or a tomato quickly and perfectly, proper grilling and even how to peel a hardboiled egg will come in handy time and again over the years. Better still, they usually help in giving your dishes a boost in their visual presentation.