Since ages, our ancestors have been cooking home-cooked food every day. In bigger cities with longer travel times to work and schools, all the time that is available at hand needs to be managed as efficiently as possible. Even if you are blessed with shorter travel time during mornings, an efficient time management in kitchen gives you ample time to get ready and do other household chores without pressure.
The time management in kitchen needs a little practice, for sure. But when you consciously cultivate tricks to save time, you will be adored since you can spend more time for the family or being creative instead of being in kitchen for long. Here are simple tips that precisely answers, how to efficiently manage time in kitchen.
1. Keep It Back Every time
Organizing the kitchen in such a way that you exactly know what is where, would save you a lot of time. Take your time during a weekend to sort all the prized possessions of your kitchen. Following this simple rule maintains a mess free and well-organized kitchen.
2. Keep The Frequent Needs Closer
Keep the frequently used Kitchen equipment like pans, cooker, spatula, and ingredients that are used often, in an arm’s distance. It reduces reaching time and hence the unnecessary time is directly cut.
3. Plan Ahead Of Time
Make a meal plan for a week in advance. This helps you organize your ingredients required for everyday meal. Also, planning improves efficiency by building-in mental preparedness. Certain part of cooking can be made ahead of time and frozen for the next day’s cooking/breakfast.
4. Prepping food immediately after shopping
The stalks if needed to be chopped off from radish, beetroot or other root vegetables, do it before you stock the veggies. But also take care of certain parts of greens, like pineapple shouldn’t be separated from its crown days before consumption, since it spoils the fruit. It is the same case with fresh green leafy vegetables also.
5. Simplify Cooking Process
Processing food to prepare recipes, like chopping, shredding, pureeing, kneading can be done in a Food processor, or a Mandolin slicer. These equipment do have faster prepping of the ingredients that of regular knives. Performing the possible part of cooking as quickly as possible is a key to speedy work. Also, planning for breakfast with chopping veggies and prepping with the required ingredients helps you in the morning.
6. Manage Time Within Cooking
See what you can squeeze in between the idle time of cooking. Be it pressure cooking, marinating or baking, try to include other chores of the recipe or kitchen by doing multi-tasking. This multi-tasking in Kitchen comes only with practice. Wilful practice for a few days will bless you with the art of managing time efficiently within cooking, by multi-tasking.
7. One Hour A Week To Stock Up
Spend one to two hours in a week to stock up your fridge well. Be it frozen Tomato Puree Cubes, boiled Tamarind Extract, Chutney Podi, Chunda/Chutney, Instant Pickles, or Spice Powders. These stocked up trivial ingredients, sauces, spice powders, and accompaniments can come handy during the whole week. Accompaniments that stay for a week, like Pasta sauce, Dry Fruit Ghughra/Gujiya, Indo-Chinese Spicy Schezuan Sauce, Walnut Burfi, or biscotti can be prepared and stocked.
Have a look at the Simple Cooking Techniques that can be made ahead of time and used in various recipes at least for a week, when saved in air-tight containers or freezer. Choose the dearest recipes that can be handy depending on the recipe schedule that you want to stick to.
