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!!
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:
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.