One of the hardest tasks in any home is to cook the right meal that makes everyone happy every day. People who don’t cook might not realize the mental effort that goes into cooking on a daily basis. After a few days, you are at a loss of ideas as to what you should cook today. Not to mention, everyone in the house has their own priorities when it comes to what they want to eat. Some people in your family are pleased to eat anything but some can be really hard to please. Of course, you don’t have all the time in the world to cook a different meal for everyone.
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If you are a mother and you have to manage a busy schedule every day, it must be even more difficult for you to prepare food for yourself and your family. With a tight schedule, it becomes difficult to do everything right. You might be able to complete all the tasks on your schedule but the real challenge is to do everything as it deserves to be done. When it comes to cooking, you need to have some tips with you to prepare your food faster. This saves you time to do other things and allows you to cook delicious meals despite your busyness.
Here are some tips to help you cook faster:
Think before you cook
You don’t want to spend all day thinking what you should cook, but you definitely want to spare two minutes to think before you start cooking. In these two minutes you have to think through the whole cooking process that you are about to execute. You want to sort things out in your mind such as what needs to be cooked first, what cooks faster, what takes more time to cook and if you have all the ingredients that you need available. Most good cooks end up destroying their dishes because they realize there are missing ingredients and a lack of a process in the middle of their cooking.
Use bigger pans
You might not have realized it but the size of your pans has a big role to play in how long you take to cook something. Quite a few times you will find yourself doing a lot of hand movements when frying things in the frying pan. The reason why you have to do this is because you have a small pan. You want every ingredient in the pan to touch the surface but the surface area is too small for all the ingredients to touch at once. Bring in the bigger pans and see how much time it saves you when it comes to frying stuff.
Use the right appliances
You don’t always have to come off as a wannabe chef when there are high-tech appliances that can save you half the time on cooking. The best thing to have in your kitchen is a food processor. Spend some time with a food processor to know its true power and strength. They can do just about anything that is required in your daily cooking from shredding, slicing, dicing, chopping to kneading the dough for your pizzas. Get a food processor with a big enough capacity to throw in a lot of ingredients at the same time. You will be surprised to see your cooking time reduced to half than normal. Similarly, when it comes to getting yourself a toaster oven, do a good bit of research and choose the one that suits your needs the most.
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Grate and slice your ingredients into smaller pieces
Grate and slice the stuff wherever you can to reduce the time of cooking. For example, if you are going to cook something that requires butter in its preparation, you might want to shred the butter to melt it immediately. In a similar fashion, you want to slice your food items in thin pieces. The thinner your food items are cut, the faster they will cook. You can take the example of chicken breasts that can take quite some time if you were cooking the whole intact breast. By cutting it in thinner slices you can save a good amount of time.
Label your kitchen supplies
This could really make a huge difference in your cooking. If you cook on a daily basis, you must be aware of the frustration that comes with not being able to find the stuff you need on time. You are scrambling through the cabinets and drawers but can’t find that ingredient you need to put in your food within the next minute to avoid ruining the dish. The best way to deal with this problem is to label things. You will be compelled to put things back in their places. You would not want to put a spoon in a container you have allocated for knives when the label clearly says “knives.” This keeps your kitchen organized and saves you a lot of time while cooking.
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Originally published on BlogHer
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