If you cook at home every day, you may have faced the lack of an essential ingredient right in the middle of cooking or spend half an hour looking into the fridge trying to decide what meal plan to prepare.
These mistakes can spoil your day and your lunch or dinner. But they can be easily avoided by adopting planned meals.
Meals are often planned ineffectively (or not planned at all). Because of that, people waste time, money, and food. With planned cooking, you avoid doubts about what you’ll be serving for dinner today simply because you’ve already thought about it in advance.
People with more practice can make meal plans for whole months, but a weekly meal plan is a good start for beginners. These are six ways to get it started.
- Use Known Recipes
A good meal plan starts by putting all you will prepare on paper throughout the week. That way, you’ll know in advance what ingredients you need, if you’re not repeating the same types of food, etc. It’s also important for your financial planning.
If you love trying out new recipes you’ve seen on the Internet, maybe this is a good time to leave that hobby aside, at least for now.
Make your meal plan using only recipes you already know – especially those old family recipes already tried and approved. After all, the idea is to avoid errors and streamline processes.
- Storage-friendly Ingredients
With your weekly menu set, you’ll know exactly what you’ll need for the recipes. That way, you avoid running out of any important items while you’re cooking.
Fill your pantry and refrigerator with ingredients that will last a while, so you can ensure they’re still usable at the end of your weekly meal plan.
In doubt, choose items that can last a long time, such as:
- Canned beans and vegetables
- Dried grains like beans and lentils
- Dried pasta
- Rice
- Powdered milk
- Ramen noodles
- Cut and Sort
After shopping, avoid throwing everything in the fridge or pantry. The idea is “planning,” and a little organization is essential.
For example, if you’ve bought a whole chicken intending to use it to prepare three different dishes throughout the week, it doesn’t make sense to freeze the whole piece and defrost it each time to cut a piece. Fraction it before storing, ensuring the necessary amounts for each menu.
The same goes for fruits and vegetables: wash before storing them, so you don’t have to do it later. And if you want to save time, you can peel, cut, and freeze them all at once, so they’re ready to use throughout the week.
Cutting and sorting ingredients in advance will help save a lot of time later.
- Avoid Rare Ingredients
Considering that you need to choose easy to prepare recipes, avoid using rare ingredients (or expensive ones) in your meal planning. First, these ingredients tend to expire very quickly; and second, they will demand more of your budget.
For a good weekly meal plan, avoid foods that spoil quickly and make it difficult to buy and stock in larger quantities, such as:
- Cooked grains
- Yogurt
- Mushrooms
- Hard-boiled eggs
- Fresh fish
If you want to use some of these items, try to use them as quickly as possible at the beginning of the week.
- Set Aside Time
Remember that you will have to prepare all the recipes. You will need some free time or manage the time available to do this. It only takes a little planning to avoid stress in the kitchen.
Let’s say your Wednesdays are very busy. In this case, think of a simpler menu that you can prepare quickly. If the extensive weekly cleaning has already been scheduled for Friday, choose a recipe that you can leave on the fire to cook slowly while you sweep the house or do the laundry.
Don’t forget that you will also need to clean the kitchen after each meal. If you don’t have the proper time, things like the used oil in the pan will stay there for the next day. Try not to leave anything for later and always adopt used cooking oil recycling instead of using the same too many times.
- Mix Frozen with Fresh
Everyone loves freshly prepared food, but there isn’t always time to do it. At least you can mix business with pleasure by using some frozen stuff with fresh ingredients.
Having things like frozen vegetables in your freezer is essential for saving some time on your weekly recipes. Since they’re already peeled, sliced, and sometimes even pre-cooked, they can be life-saving when a recipe takes a long time.
Meal Planning Makes Life Tastier
A weekly meal plan is not just for saving time and money. Organizing your kitchen routine also makes your life tastier and less stressful, avoiding last-minute decisions or ordering pizza.
Meal planning allows you to think about your family’s meals in advance. That way, it’s even possible to assess whether everyone has an adequate and healthy diet. Good meal planning can mean healthier nutrition.
If you find it difficult to get organized the first few times, you can also turn to the good ol’ Internet: several sites offer pre-made meal plans to help you get started.