Batch Cooking - Save time and money!

Posted by Cilla on January 12th, 2008 at 09:22pm

Since before the birth of my second child, I have been attempting to cook healthier homemade food. However, it is time consuming and “shopping intensive” for all the ingredients. Not only that, my husband eats a mainly Vegan diet whereas I eat a pretty standard diet - including meat. There was a time when I ended up eating mainly vegetarian because of this - but I ended up resenting this and also not enjoying cooking because I wasn’t always enjoying the food that I was eating.

My solution to cope with this is to do BATCH cooking. Making a bulk lot of whatever I decide to cook, then freezing it in individual portions (having eaten one portion each before freezing). In terms of preparation - yes of course you need more of each ingredient, but to be honest it is no more hassle to chop up a whole aubergine than quarter of one, or to peel 4 carrots rather than one. You can buy ingredients in larger quantities which often works out cheaper (per portion)

Over time, I will attempt to add recipes of things that I cook in this way… for now though, I will just list them.

• Lentil Daal
• Vegetable Rojan Josh (with Tesco Organic Rogan Josh cook-in sauce - which is Vegan)
• Chicken Rogan Josh (with Tesco Organic Rogan Josh cook-in sauce)
• Vegetable Moussaka Sauce
• Lamb Moussaka Sauce
• Vegetable Chilli
• Beef Chilli
• Pasta Bake
• Carrot and Coriander Soup
• Spicy Parsnip Soup
• Leek and Potato Soup

With each of these recipes (excluding the pasta bake), you just need to decide on the ‘carbohydrate’ to accompany the dish, i.e Rice, Pasta, Jacket Potatoes, Tortilla Wraps etc.

Then simply defrost and heat the dish to be served for the day.

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