help with time management in the kitchen?

One trick is that when you are making something, make two of it, and freeze the other one. Browning hamburger for pasta? Brown the second pound and bag it for the freezer, maybe for chili or a shepard's pie later in the week.

Serve mashed potatoes on Sunday, make a double batch, and make your shepard's pie on Wednesday. .

Making a meatloaf? make two, and freeze the other. Cut the second one in half before freezing, so it thaws faster.

Chicken freezes well, cook it, and make double for to put it in a salad or some chicken and biscuit dumplings later in the week.

Find some slow cook recipes, something you can dump into the crock pot or dutch oven on stove top and walk away to study.

Rivers Loves one pan meals, that is why I use a stove top method of cooking. If you use a dutch oven or heavy deep skillet with a heavy lid, you can brown your meat, cook your onions, then turn it down and simmer things. With a crock pot, you have to brown the meat stove top, then add it to the pot. That takes time, and energy, and is two more things to wash up after the meal.

Rivers loves to brown pork steaks, and turn them down, and simmer them in BBQ sauce. Rivers sometimes makes her own sauce, or uses her favorite bottled. Just make sure there is enough of it to cover the meat well. I use Sweet Baby Ray's sauce, and thin it with water. The water cooks off, and by the time it is done, the sauce is thick again.

Chili is a great walk away thing to fix, so are ham and beans. Mom had a roast and carrots and potatoes every Sunday of our lives. She browned the meat, she poured on the liquids, she simmered the roast in them, then added the veggies, including the onion, raw and cooked them.

Cook the fast and easy stuff on weekdays, and spend some more time like on Sunday to fix more than one fancy item. .

Take advantage of easy foods, don't feel guilty about fish stick/tater tot night. Provide a slice of cheese and some tartar sauce and invite folks to make a sandwich like Mc Donald's. Frozen peas and some cole slaw from the refrigerator section is fine.

Take advantage of ham. It is already cooked, all you have to do is heat it up. While it is warming up, then do your cooking. Home made cheese potatoes would be good, make a roue, pour in milk, add cheese and cut up potatoes, shove into the oven with the ham to heat it up.

Later in the week, slap some slices of ham on some rye bread, add some cheese and grill them. Bake up some tator tots or frozen fries and serve a salad or fruit and cottage cheese.

Cut ham up and put it into some boxed mac and cheese that you fixed. Save the end to flavor ham and beans.

Pick one item on the menu to be fancy, then serve everything else plain. A meat loaf is fancy, serve it with frozen peas and potatoes out of a box, Rivers loves those sour cream and chive potatoes out of a box, and they go great with the loaf.

and think big on desserts. Make a pan of brownies, freeze them. And serve them during the week several times. Same thing with cookies, freeze them, and reach in the bag and get out enough for dessert.

Use ice cream, especially things already in a cup or on a stick.

Really the thing is to cook as much stuff together at one time as you can. While the pasta water comes to a boil for spaghetti, and while the pasta is boiling,you can have the sauce poured into the pan, have the garlic spread on the bread, the oven preheated, and a salad made, the hamburger browned, and the cheese ready. You have those cups of strawberry ripple ice cream in the freezer, and you made raisin oatmeal cookies Sunday, and those will be bedtime snacks for everybody with a glass of milk.

And the biggest time saver? Planning. Make a menu using the sale ads. then write down what you need for each recipe, each day. Go buy it, and bring it home and put it away. Put the menu on the refrigerator. Have any recipes you will need copied off computer and ready.

Wandering around the store, guessing what you want to eat, and having to go back numerous times a week is the biggest slurpper of time. And it is extremely expensive to shop like that, never mind the gas prices that are going up.

Go to the grocery store only once per week. I know some people that only go every 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, but that is hard to do with a larger family.

Make only one, you heard me, one extra trip to the grocery per week, and it had better be a quick run for bread, and milk, and eggs. Yes, you can buy something your forgot or didn't pan well about.

Hope something I said helps.

I work about the same, though usually longer hours (until 6:30), go to school online and I still manage to cook a few nights a week!

My suggestion is first to plan ahead. Go to the grocery store once a week with a plan of what you want to have for dinner. Having everything beforehand and not having to make trips to the store is a big time saver. Buy a few things to put int he freezer like a whole chicken or produce that can be frozen. It's always good to have backup plans! The day before you are going to cook prep your ingredients. Marinate meat and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Chop veggies and have them ready to be sauteed. Keep "easy sides" on hand like sweet potatoes, fresh veggies, rice, etc.

If you have a lot of the prep work done you can usually spare a few minutes while stuff is cooking to clean up the house. If you find you can't do that then plan on the day that you clean you will order out food, cook a pizza, or go out to dinner!

The trick is not overwhelming yourself with trying to do too much at once and having a plan (make a list if it helps). Good luck!

Try to plan meals where you can do as much of it in advance as possible.Make up a bunch of freezable stuff on the weekend so you can just take it out the night before you need it to thaw and then into the oven when you get home.You might not get to have "gourmet" quality every night but you could have something nutritious and satisfying.Also you could look into getting a slow cooker.Put the stuff in it in the morning and when you get home you could have soup or stew or even a roast if you do it right.

for how many people u have to cook?

If its only for 1 to 3 people, then you have manage some basic preparations when you have plenty of time.

Like making tomato puree, garlic paste and some other preparation which can be saved for a week and used while cooking.

Another thing, you can go thru some sites which shows you short time dishes.

you have to keep dish washing separately.

if you eat non-veg, eggs and meat can be stored for a week.

For morning egg omelets are very easy to make.

if i get time , certainly i will send you some good recipes and more tips for weekly preparations which will save your time.

The best solutions for a working person to still be able to prepare meals at home is to either do most of your cooking on the weekends and freeze the food for the week or prepare the ingredients (chop veggies, cut meats...etc) the night before and use a crock pot for cooking while you are at school or work.

For sure make enough to serve leftovers. Many leftovers taste better after they sit anyway. Also, try to get meats that can be re-purposed. Ham for instance, soup, big ham dinner with plenty of quick sides for leftovers, sandwich, omelet, and salad meat. Baked chicken dinner, that can turn into chicken salad, tacos, and even chicken with pasta and some type of quick sauce. Make the freezer and zip lock bags your friend!! It will save you lots of time, as well as getting as many things done at once, when you have the time to spare. Meal planning helps out a ton!

Use food processor, which really gonna save your time. Just finish your work in few minutes with the help of food processor.

h.t.h

Regards

Rachel ray has a lot of good ideas and tips for cooking one week at a time. A little bit of planning goes a long way.

http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/heat-n-...