Want to get your health back on track? Start cooking more meals at home where you control the amount of oil and butter used and the portion sizes. Need to conserve finances? The cost of groceries to prepare a delicious meal in your kitchen is drastically lower than eating out at restaurants or getting takeout. Want to minimize your screen time and spend more quality time with loved ones? Gather nightly around the dinner table with family and friends for that valuable face-time, made even more intimate with a home-cooked meal.
While the incentive is certainly there, it’s not easy for beginners to start cooking more often without some initial guidance and habit-building help. So here are some kitchen tips that can help make cooking for yourself happen more than once every other week. If a recipe calls for just a small amount of one ingredient, like a few sprigs of thyme, try to choose other recipes that call for that same ingredient to avoid waste and a novel-length grocery list. Eventually, you will have an assortment of go-to meals that use similar ingredients, and your grocery shopping will go a lot faster because you’ll already have some pantry staples on hand. For veggies, look into services like Misfits Market, which rescues “ugly” fruits and vegetables from being wasted and delivers them directly to your home. The best part is that you could save up to 40 percent on your produce order. Convenience, sustainability, and affordability? Count us in. However, no matter your best intentions, when you arrive home after work on a Tuesday night, you’ll likely resort to takeout or a frozen pizza if you don’t have a clear plan that you can complete within 30-45 minutes. To save time, use an instant pot to prep several types of food that you can incorporate into meals throughout the week. A good jarred sauce like Indian curry or enchilada sauce can make even the most basic chicken breast and broccoli meal feel exotic. You can also find flavorful seasoning blends to sprinkle over roasting veggies or meats in the spice aisle of your local grocery. For authentic Chinese flavors, try the sauces and seasonings from Fly By Jing.
