Planning Ahead for Hassle-Free Healthy Cooking

Anyone who looks into providing more healthy foods for their family to eat quickly realizes that they must do more cooking from scratch, which requires more time in the kitchen. Sure, there are more healthy versions of convenience foods available, but those are typically more expensive. Now we’re back to having to spend more time in the kitchen to provide healthier foods for the family.

I wish I could share some a secret way to cook healthfully without spending more time in the kitchen. If there is such a way, I haven’t found it. Instead, I can tell you the ways that I make cooking from scratch less daunting, less overwhelming and more doable. What it takes is a little planning — some preparation ahead of time to make the before meal cooking experience less harried and more enjoyable.

In order to know what preparations to make ahead of time, making a menu (just for a couple of days, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly) is helpful. Choose the time frame — couple of days, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly — that suits your family’s schedule best.

You can use your menu to guide you in knowing what components of your meals can be prepared ahead of time, which will save you when it comes time to put the meal together. So many foods can be prepared and stored for a few days up to a few weeks, depending on how they are stored. Generally, foods can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week. Foods can be stored in the freezer for a month or even more. The following list (not exhaustive) details many of the procedures I follow in my kitchen to help myself with future meals. Basically, all the effort savers I employ boil down to preparing more food than I need at that time.

1. When cooking dry beans, cook more than you need. I routinely cook 6 cups of beans in my 6.5 quart crockpot or 11 quart stockpot, which generates around 18 cups of cooked beans. I use some that day and freeze the rest of the 4-cup portions in quart size freezer bags. Cooking them in the crockpot makes them relatively hassle free because using that method, they don’t have to be monitored at all during the cooking. For more information, see How to Cook Dry Beans.

2. When chopping nuts, chop more than you need. I chop 3 or 4 times what I need at a given time and store the extra nuts in quart size canning jars in the freezer. Then they’re ready for the next recipe. When they run out, I repeat the process.

3. When grinding flax seeds, grind more than you need. I grind a few cups of flax seeds — to use as an egg and fat replacer — and put the extra amount in the freezer in quart-size glass jars for later use. However, when we consume flax seeds for the Omega-3 benefits, I cannot grind them ahead of time, as they lose that particular health benefit through exposure to light and the passage of time.

4. When grinding flour, grind enough flour for the weeks’ baking needs. However, flour is most nutritious within 24 hours of its grinding, so optimally, it would be best to grind it just before use. However, much of the time, I prefer to grind enough flour at a time to last me a week. I grind flour either the evening before or the morning of a bread baking day. I grind enough for the day’s baking and the rest of the week’s baking projects. I store the unused portion in the freezer, which is best for preserving as much nutrition as possible during the time between when it was ground and used.

5. When baking bread, bake enough to last a week. When I used to bake bread, before we went gluten-free due to allergies, I would bake 6 loaves of bread, which was enough to last my family a week. I would leave one loaf out to consume that day and bag the rest of the loaves and freeze them. They require about 4 hours to thaw completely, so pull a new loaf out of the freezer the night before or the meal before it is needed. For more information, see my favorite bread recipe, Whole Wheat Bread. Nowadays, I will bake two batches of crackers or 3 loaves of a gluten-free quick sandwich bread — enough to last several days.

6. When making tortillas, prepare enough for a few days. In our gluten-containing flour days, I would prepare at least 36 whole wheat tortillas at a time. Now I prepare our gluten-free, batter-style corn tortillas or gluten-free flatbreads, batter style. Either way, this feeds us with various roll-up type meals for two to three days.

7. When cooking grains for main dishes, double the batch. This works for most grains — like brown rice, millet or quinoa — and grain products — like whole wheat or other whole grain pastas — which comprise the carbohydrate element of our main dishes. I set aside what we don’t consume that day in the refrigerator for the next day’s meal. Grains are delicious when warmed up in a cast iron skillet using low heat and few tablespoons of good oil (like extra virgin olive oil or red palm oil) along with sea salt, pepper and other spices. Grains and pasta only keep well if stored in the refrigerator — not the freezer — and consumed with a few day’s of their initial preparation.

8. When browning ground beef, prepare enough for two to four meals. I brown ground beef in a large stock pot, drain the grease, and add diced onions. I allow the onions to soften. Then I add 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and 1/8 teaspoon black pepper for each pound of ground beef. I set aside what I don’t need for that meal and save the rest for future meals. I store the ground beef in glass bowls in the refrigerator (if using within a day or two), or the freezer (if not using for more than two days). If using plastic for storage, please allow the meat to cool completely before putting it in a plastic container or plastic bag. Otherwise, the heat will melt the plastic, resulting in plastic particles being incorporated into our food.

9. When roasting chicken, roast two whole organic, free-range chickens. I use a roaster pan or a large crockpot, which will easily accommodate two chickens. When the chickens are cooled, I debone them and store the meat separately from the bones, either in the refrigerator or freezer, depending on when we will be eating the chicken. My family is able to eat varied meals from two roasted chickens for up to four days, including all dinners and lunches. See Cooking Whole Chickens in a Crockpot.

10. Wash produce, at least lettuce, ahead of time. I soak a few heads of lettuce for about 15 minutes in a sinkful of cool water. Then I gently agitate them to shake off the loosened soil. In a few batches, my salad spinner can spun the excess moisture off the leaves. I use about a head of the lettuce for the given dinner’s salad and I store the rest in covered glass bowls or plastic zipper bags in the refrigerator. If you don’t have a salad spinner, you can lay the leaves out between layers of towels on the counter. Periodically change the position of the leaves to allow all the moisture to drip off. When dry, store in the refrigerator. Other vegetables can be washed ahead of time also, if desired. I have found that if I at least can wash and dry the lettuce, this is the biggest time saver for salad preparation.

11. Double up on hot or cold grain-based breakfast dishes. Our favorite breakfast meals are muesli in the summer and a hot porridge in the winter. Since the muesli must be prepared the night before eating it to allow the grains to soak sufficiently, this makes serving breakfast extremely easy — it is all ready to go when we wake. As for the hot cereal, I make a double batch. We eat it fresh one morning and then I save the rest in the refrigerator for the next day. On the second morning, I warm up the extra on the stove in a pot with a little water added to make it the consistency of fresh oatmeal. For more information, see my recipes for Muesli and Decadent & Hearty Oatmeal and Gluten-Free 4-Grain Breakfast Porridge. Also see Reheating Foods Without a Microwave.

The ideas I mentioned previously help me prepare the components of our meals ahead of time. There are other components of the meals that I can prepare beforehand, such as sliced olives, grated cheese, diced onions and other chopped vegetables. However, instead of prepping these up to a few days ahead of time, I usually complete these tasks with the help of my children in the morning or in the afternoon as part of that day’s meal preparation. Then I take all the components — beans, grains, meats, and vegetables — and combine them with spices and sauces to create our meals.

In addition, I often cook double batches of a meal, so it will last for two days’ worth of dinners and lunches. Some main dishes and side dishes that lend themselves easily to this are spaghetti sauce, chili, tacos, refried beans, and stews. Sometimes we are not in the mood to eat a particular meal for two days, or four total meals, so I freeze the second half of it to eat the following week. No matter whether we eat it the next day or the next week, it saves me work to do the cooking of both meals at the same time.

You might be thinking, “Okay, so you do quite a bit of your work ahead of time, but even that requires a significant amount of time — so when do you find the time to do that?”

It is true, that even these preparations take time. So I do them when I can. I try to accomplish some of my doubling-up preparations every day or every other day. Some people are great proponents of once-a-month cooking. That means they do all their cooking for an entire month during one cooking session. The way that works best for me is to double up on the results of the efforts I am already making each day. Some days I cook more than others, because that’s the way it works out. The result is that about half the time, I really don’t have to cook much at all.

The point of all this is to get you thinking about what things you can do while you’re already in the kitchen working, to save you a little time in the days ahead. If you’re baking bread, why not bake enough to last a week? If you browning ground beef, why not brown enough for tomorrow and the following day’s meals? Most of us probably grew up making double and triple batches of cookies. The principle is the same. Why not make double and triple batches of other meal components and/or main dishes? I love it that when I make a little extra effort (but not much, because I’d really already be doing most of the work anyway) I save myself some work later on.

© Copyright 2006-2008 by Wardeh Harmon.