How to Make Cooking at Home Easier to Manage
Is ordering takeout starting to weigh heavily on your household budget? Perhaps you want to improve your health and wellness? Whatever the case is, cooking at home is a practical solution. The only problem is that your hectic lifestyle makes it difficult to prepare nutritious meals every day. Luckily, you can make preparing meals yourself easier to manage. Continue reading for advice.
Create Weekly Meal Plans
One of the biggest obstacles to cooking at home is deciding what to eat. When you order out, the restaurants have a list of delicious ideas to choose from, making your job a lot easier. That’s where meal planning comes into play. By mapping out what you’re going to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you don’t have to spend hours trying to figure it out throughout the week. Use a menu planning template to write down your ideas for the week.
Go Grocery Shopping In Advance
Another reason people have a hard time cooking at home is they don’t have the necessary ingredients to prepare the meals they’ve planned. So, they revert to old habits of ordering out instead of trying to fit a grocery run into their already busy days. You can eliminate this problem by going grocery shopping in advance.
Once you’ve planned your meals for the week, head to the kitchen to see what you have in stock. If you’re missing something, add it to a list. Then during your regular grocery trip, purchase the items on the list. If going shopping doesn’t fit into your schedule, you could always use home delivery services and have the things you need to be brought to your house for you.
Prep Your Ingredients
When you’re pressed for time, the last thing you want to do is spend hours in the kitchen cleaning, cutting, and seasoning food for your meal. You can shave a lot of time off by prepping your meals. Select a day when you’re less busy to prep your ingredients. Clean, cut, and season your meats and veggies. Then, place everything in air-tight storage containers or bags, label them by meal for the week, and place them in the freezer. Now, when you come home, all you have to do is remove the items and start cooking.
Batch Cooking
There are certain foods that you prepare multiple times throughout the week. Consider preparing these things in batches rather than wait until the day you intend to cook. For example, if you plan to eat rice, pasta, or chicken three times, cook enough to get you through the week. That way, you can use the microwave to heat them up when you’re ready to eat.
Easy Recipes
Monotony is another reason that people tend to order takeout more often. You get tired of eating the same dishes every week and often want a variety. If that’s the case, you can expand your horizons by looking for recipes online. Adding a new recipe each week to your meal plan will help spice things up, so you don’t get tempted to eat out. Try to look for meal ideas with short prep and cook time so that you’re not stuck in the kitchen for hours.
Comparable Alternatives
Sometimes your cravings get the best of you, prompting you to want to order takeout. Unfortunately, what you crave often isn’t ideal for your health. Do yourself and your family a favor and consider comparable alternatives to add to the mix. For instance, instead of french fries, try sweet potato or zucchini fries. If you love fried chicken, you can opt for oven-fried chicken, which is just as delicious and crispy without all the grease.
Cooking at home really is the best thing for your health, wellness, and finances. Be that as it may, it’s not always the easiest thing to accomplish. If you’re ready to reduce the amount of takeout you consume, there is hope. Simply apply the suggestions listed above to make cooking at home easier to manage.
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22 Comments.
I always meal plan and batch cook. It’s such a time saver. I love to make meals that are easy to freeze so I can quickly heat them up later.
It really is! Thank you for stopping by!
We meal plan every Saturday evening and my husband does the weekly grocery shopping every Sunday morning. Then we have what we need for the week and know what we are making personally and for business purposes. It truly saves so much time!
Your family has certainly got meal planning down to perfection!
There’s nothing better than a home cooked meal! I love that you made it easier for us to cook at home more often. These tips are great! Thank you ♡
You are welcome!
We get carry out far too frequently. Cooking at home is certainly a better option and I have found that, for us, using meal planner delivery services has worked well. The meal ideas and ingredients are shipped straight to your home, so you have everything you need to start cooking.
Carry out can also be very expensive as well. Meal planner delivery services are wonderful!
Yessss!! I agree to all of these. Being organized…meal planning and batch cooking can make things so much easier!
Organization is the key to a happy and successful life! LOL
I need to get back to meal prepping for sure. Great tips here for making cooking at home a lot easier!
You are welcome!
I used to preplan meals. These days, I really don’t, and you’re right it’s harder to decide what to make at home, than when going out to eat. Worth it though because it’s gratifying to make a delicious meal. 🙂
It is definitely gratifying when you take the time to enjoy a meal that you made yourself!
Well, I thought it would take a lot of time to prep things. So, I kinda just do quick recipes to balance my time with other things.
Do whatever works best for you!
Hhhhmmm…I like the sound of creating meal plans. That way, you will be motivated to buy only what you need and eat what you need to eat!
Exactly! I do meal planning, but need to be more consistent and stick with what I have planned!
We definitely get takeout too much! Sometimes its just easier to pick up vs. prepare on own.
Guilty of this myself! Trying to do better.
I’m honestly terrible at meal planning. These are great strategies to make cooking easier.
I hope they work for you!