We want to break out of this cycle of ordering delivery but at the same time, cooking everyday has been a challenge. We also have been trying to develop some sort of routine where we meal prep on the weekends but we live in an apartment with a really small kitchen so cooking and storing food for 5 days doesn’t seem doable. Maybe cook for 3 days and then prepare the ingredients to cook again on Wednesday?
I’d appreciate if you could share your strategies and experience. The goal here is to eat healthy and good food.
Edit: Thank you everyone for all your contributions! I am a little overwhelmed by the number of replies so I if I do not reply to you please do now feel bad!!
Sustainable cooking is a function of the amount of time you’re willing to commit to cooking and the tools you have at your disposal. A slow cooker, for example, can involve almost zero prep and very little time actively spent cooking (you toss it all in the pot and hit go). A much more involved meal which requires regular attention, on the other hand, might take less total time to cook, but more active time cooking.
I think the best way to provide advice is to get a grasp on a few important factors:
- Price sensitivity/budget
- How much time do you tolerate between starting cooking and eating the food (active cooking + all other time, such as time spent in the oven or slow cooker)?
- How much time do you tolerate where you are in the kitchen actively cooking or preparing ingredients?
- Do you have any food restrictions or preferences?
- How varied do you want your cooking to be? Are you okay with eating the same thing every day or want more variety?
For me, cooking at home is less about finding the time and more about decision fatigue. I still fail at this a lot, but on the days I’m successful it’s because I planned ahead of time what I’d be cooking for dinner. That way when dinner comes around it doesn’t require thought, just a bit of chopping.
I am not great at this, but I find these things helpful:
Cook before you’re hungry. That’s kind of a Captain Obvious line, but sometimes a meal can take more than 1/2 hour to cook and that’s a long time when you’re starving.
Have a limited menu. Find a few things you can stand eating on the regular. Example, I could probably eat meatloaf once every couple of weeks till I die. I keep a list of things like this so if I’m drawing a blank, I can look at it. It’s funny how you forget.
Figure out how to make leftovers not be awful. Example, make meatloaf on a day you don’t work so there’s no time crunch to get dinner on the table. The next day a slice of meatloaf (microwaved or not) with toasted bread and mayo or whatever sauce you like makes a good sandwich with a salad. The salad doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be lettuce and dressing. No time crunch if you rinse the lettuce while the bread is toasting. The next day you could make spaghetti. It’s easy and cheap and you can throw cubed meatloaf into the sauce to be “meatballs”. If you have two days off in a row, make two different meals those nights and rotate the leftovers to last a week without getting bored.
Make a Taco Bell system. By this I mean think about the Taco Bell menu. Most of their menu items are made from the same ingredients, but are prepared differently.
I make something called burrito soup which is browned ground beef, undrained canned green chilis, taco bell sauce (you can buy it bottled at the store), undrained ranch style beans, undrained black beans, undrained canned corn, and whatever else is in the fridge that would work. Seems like it’s all cans, bottles, and beef, but it’s really good. Sometimes I’ll throw in fresh bell peppers or other veg. Anyway, a batch of this is great for burrito filling, served in a bowl with tortilla chips for scooping, in a bowl with extra milk to make a soup, on top of rice, on top of a salad to make a “bowl”. All of these are heated up, btw. One thing is used in a bunch of different ways. Sour cream and guac make this extra special.
Find a “burrito soup” that fits your tastebuds and run with it.
Keep “fast food” in your freezer. It’s no big deal to keep a pizza in the freezer (or something else you know everyone will eat) for when you’re too sick to cook or just aren’t feeling it. It beats eating just chips for dinner or calling for food. I also try to keep the fruit bowl full for snacking. Being hungry will make you quit before you start. Go ahead and eat an orange while you’re making dinner.
Bonus tip If you’re cooking something that can be frozen, double it and stash some for another meal when you aren’t in the mood to cook.
I doubt most people are good at this. Anyway, good luck.
When my wife and I were both working we faced this challenge. We meal prepped on the weekends, portioning the meals out and storing them in our freezer. You could, also, just cook 3 days worth of meals to be frozen and have grab and go type stuff in the fridge (like salads, sandwiches, etc.). We, also, would choose Saturday to have our main meal out and Sunday we would make a pizza (My wife made a crust from scratch or sometimes we would use a pre-made store bought crust) with fresh ingredients.
I’m far too lazy to meal prep on my weekends. But I will choose 3-4 dinners for the week and write it down like a menu and get the ingredients I need for them. If I know it’s going to be a crazy week, I will cut the vegetables immediately after grocery shopping that way I can just dump them in the pan or bowl or whatever when I’m cooking. Then I have options to choose from several different foods over the week.
I always make enough to have leftovers so I don’t have to plan for lunches too.
Best of luck
A mix of limited menu during the week, and food prepping are the biggest things.
If I know the upcoming week will be busy, I’ll batch cook on Sunday and just reheat the rest of the week.
Otherwise, learning simple recipes I can whip up quick. Practice makes perfect after all, and the more I cook, the faster I get.
Honestly, this might be a hot take but when it comes to food in the modern western world, people are really privileged lol. Why is the expectation that you eat something different every day for every meal?
I cook 6-7 nights a week for a household of four adults. I work a full-time job, but it’s WFH so I don’t have commute time. This is part of the strategy, but I could do and have done it while commuting to and from work each day as well.
Each Monday, I plan out the meals for the week. I write them down. The meals are based on ingredients we have on hand as well as things which are on sale from the local ads, or which someone from the household has requested.
If any ingredients are needed for the week which we don’t have, they are added to a mutual shopping list and someone picks them up while they are out.
When I’m done with work, I relax for 30-60min and then it’s time for cooking. I bring out all the ingredients for the meal and get them set up near my cooking station. I bring out pans, cutting boards, utensils - whatever I feel I will need.
I try to fill “dead” time with prep for other parts of the meal - that way time is used efficiently. Sometimes I’ll rope one of the others into cutting veggies or doing other prep, but i usually like to fly solo. Just some music to keep me moving and maybe a beer.
As I’m cooking, I’m also cleaning up. Utensils which are no longer going to be used are getting rinsed and put into the dishwasher. Pans are getting rinsed and set aside for washing up later. Counters are getting wiped down as needed. The idea is to have as little to do at the end as possible.
After the meal is ready, if stuff needs to cool, that’s a great time for a smoke out on the porch. Then back in to eat.
Rinse and repeat. I enjoy cooking, it keeps me centered at the end of the day, and a good meal at least once per day is important. The key things I have learned are mainly to prep everything in advance which you can, to clean as you go, and to buy ingredients which overlap for multiple meals in a week.
Bonus: Make a few extra helpings and freeze them. Freezer containers are cheap, and it’s generally only a small extra cost for the additional food. Then you have ready to go meals when you don’t feel like cooking.
I’m a big fan of instant pots. chili, curry, risotto, etc all without any prep other than chopping.
Our primary motivation was weight loss ahead of our wedding, but the guiding principle should transfer: make it super easy. We’ve found that the lowest effort method will win out over all our intentions, so we’re rolling with it.
An example: chicken curry with rice. Also a disclaimer, we have a couple of appliances that make stuff slightly more convenient but I’ll put the alternative down too.
It takes around a minute to wash the rice then chuck it in the rice cooker. you can get microwave rice cooker pots or just use a pot on the stove. Once you’ve got the weights and timings dialled in this produces perfect rice just as you’re going to serve with no interaction during.
Then cook the chicken breast and set a timer for when the rice will be ready. We use an air fryer, but used to use the oven.
5 minutes before the chicken is done whip up the curry sauce.
Then it’s just serving - rice goes in the bowls, slice the chicken and put on top, then pour on the sauce.
Whole process looks like this:
- start rice cooking
- start chicken cooking, set timer for 25 minutes
- go do something else for 20 minutes
- start heating the sauce
- when chicken timer goes ding, put the rice in bowls
- slice the chicken, add to bowl
- pour on curry sauce
Total cook time is around 26 minutes. Total interaction time is around 10 minutes.
It’s also super cheap.
Edit: forgot to mention that you can cook whatever veggies you want in the same thing as the chicken and don’t need to adjust your timings
Yeah, we use a rice cooker and an air fryer. Both are huge time savers.
We got a rice cooker that can also be a slow cooker, which is another useful strategy. Chop stuff up in the morning, chuck it all in, set it going then eat whenever you want.
Another good strategy.
By cooking meal types that are fast, like stir fries.
We usually cook a large meal or two during the weekend. And will generally get two to three meals out of the dish.
We usually go out for food once a week (unless we’re having a hard month). Beyond that, it’s usually the same 5–6 dishes over and over again.
We use and sous vide or the instant pot. I can throw a steak in the sous vide we I leave in the morning and then finish it in the cast iron pan when I get home.
We eat yogurt marinated chicken breast pieces cooked on a frying pan with curry sauce, alongside rice-cooker steamed veggies. We usually get 6 lbs of chicken, chop and marinate in an evening, then eat that for ~4-5 days; also keep on hand things like pasta and frozen meatballs for the days where we’ve run out of chicken but haven’t shopped yet. We allow ourselves to order food once or twice a month but no more; this usually happens on days where we’ve run out of chicken.
That both of us are totally cool with eating the same thing for months on end really helps cut down on cooking time. 😅
Meal prep! I cook once a week, enough to last me most of the week.
I’m terrible. If I’m cooking for myself? I won’t make anything that takes longer to prepare or clean up than it takes to eat. LOL.
Breakfast, generally, is a small can of whole kernel corn mixed in with a can of chowder.
Lunch is a couple of sandwiches.
Dinner maybe a couple of burgers. Sometimes a big salad.
Now, cooking for OTHER people… that’s a different deal. :) But, yeah, it takes planning, sometimes a week in advance.
