By Ana Margarita Olar | Foodfindsasia.com
Haste makes waste and it’s the same with cooking. Hurrying when preparing your meals could end up in kitchen disasters that lead to waste of energy, money, and time. Here are some tips to save more time in the kitchen and prepare a delicious, savory meal:
- Have a meal plan. This is a very crucial part especially when you are busy but still want to enjoy home cooked foods. Consider your budget, your family’s food preference, and how much time you’ve got for cooking every single day. In that way, you can cook food that takes a longer time to prepare when you’re not so busy, and vice versa, cook a food that can be prepared in a snap when you are loaded with work. The tips that follow are connected with meal planning.
- Have the ingredients processed before cooking. Depending on the order of cooking you have in your meal plan, start to slice and marinate the meat, wrap the dim sum, chop the onions, mince the garlic, pre- cut your carrots, cabbages and other vegetables and store them in your fridge. In this way, you just have to toss the ingredients to the pan when you need to cook your dish.
- Save little bits of meals. Store small scraps of meals in your fridge for future cooking. Samples are bacon grease, gravy, chicken fat from soup, and leftover veggies. They can be used to add flavor onto your next meal. You saved preparation time and money as well.
- Cook once, eat twice or thrice. This tip depends on your method of cooking and preparing meals. For example, you have fried chicken for lunch then make chicken strips, add mayonnaise and seasoning, stuff it in bread and voila!! You have a chicken sandwich for dinner. Another is when you cook pork sinigang for lunch, save the kangkong stem and the leftover pork. Chop the kangkong stem, sauté it along with onions and garlic, add your chopped leftover pork. Now you have adobo kangkong for dinner. Did you get the idea? Have fun making your own two-in-one meal.
- Preheat your pans. Make sure that the pan is hot before you pour in the cooking oil. It cooks faster rather than putting oil on a cold pan. You can also make the necessary preparation of ingredients while you are waiting for your pan to get hot.
- Clean up as you cook. Put all your used utensils and kitchen tools in the sink and wash them piece by piece while you are waiting for your soup to simmer or for your meat to get tender. After dinner, you’ll be glad that you have cleaned up.
