Efficient Kitchen Processes saves time and Money

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there are many tasks in the whole food kitchen that can be done efficiently to save time. Warning: I’m about to babble on yet AGAIN about how great meal planning is. Here it goes. If you have a menu printed out with the ingredients in each meal, when you go to chop your onions for the first meal of the week it is super simple to scan the rest of your week to see if you can chop up 4 onions instead of one for later use. Throw the unused portions that you have chopped in a container and throw them in the fridge. This kind of efficiency can be used in so many ways to reduce the time you spend in the kitchen without sacrificing a whole food diet.

Besides dinner meals, I efficientize (ooo, a made up verb) several breakfast processes also. Whenever I make pancakes for instance I will get out my bowl plus two airtight containers. I measure out my dry ingredients first and triple my recipe into each container. I then label with the kind of pancake and the needed ingredients on the airtight containers since we have 4 or more different pancake recipes regularly. I also do this with several cookie mixes and muffin mixes and most anything that I bake often.

Other ideas include tripling rubs or spice mixes. We like a yellow tumeric rice recipe but there are about 5 or 6 dry ingredients to it. The recipe goes so quickly when it is already mixed up and it takes so little extra time to quadruple the recipe when I already have the ingredients out. I also have a blackened catfish recipe that I like to make so I make a big batch of the blackened seasonings and it lasts many meals.

I believe that the more of these processes that you approach with efficiency in mind the more second nature it becomes for you. It’s like trying to establish a new good habit or way of thinking. You can approach many tasks with an efficient mindset but the kitchen holds the most opportunities.

This efficient approach also lends itself to less waste and therefore money savings. For instance, we love our pumpkin pancake recipe but it only calls for 6 T of pumpkin puree. One can of pumpkin puree holds a lot more than 6 Ts so unless I want to get myself into trouble with those browned buttered frosted cookies (and I have in order not to waste pumpkin puree), I will measure out as many 6Ts in containers or baggies to freeze as the can holds. Then when I get out my premixed pumpkin pancake mix, I just microwave the frozen 6Ts of pumpkin puree, add my butter and milk and we are cooking. Also, in October my menu had three dishes that used canned pineapple chunks. This was no coincidence. The pineapple chunks were needed for two recipes and a third recipe just called for pineapple juice to marinate the meat. When I cooked the first entrée that called for pineapple I scanned the rest of my meals and saw that I needed to divide the can for the second recipe (rather than let the kids gobble up the pineapple) and save the juice for the third.

So when you are all wondering how I cook so much with 3 young kids, I swear to you that I do not. I have freezer meals, crockpot meals and simple pasta meals during the week and I efficientize processes as much as possible for the other meals. The most time I spend in the kitchen for a meal is when I am making a massive amount to freeze or when I am trying a new recipe. It can be done.