Kitchen Appliances that Make for Easy Meal Prep
Cooking Tips for a Slow Cooker, Freezer, and Bread Maker
May 18, 2009
Slow cookers, freezers, and bread makers are three conveniences that can spare modern stay-at-home moms hours of meal preparation each week. Here are five ideas for making use of these common kitchen gadgets.
Easy Meal Prep With Slow Cooker Recipes
Most moms have discovered a distracting infant can practically double time needed for dinner prep. A slow cooker can be a life saver for those stay-at-home moms caring for newborns or young babies.
Naptime might be mom’s one hands-free time of the day. Fortunately, tossing ingredients into the crock pot at around two or three and setting the dial to high will have the house filled with a mouth-watering aroma right in time for six o’clock dinner.
Recently, crock pots haven’t been relegated to just roast and stew. Slow-cooker recipes are available for anything from broccoli casserole to chicken chop suey. Stay-at-home moms can get creative during naptime and allow cooking to return to the relaxing hobby it once was.
Meal Preparation and Freezer Cooking
A new trend called “freezer cooking” or “once a month cooking” has revolutionized meal prep for many stay-at-home moms. For those moms who prefer tackling an enormous project at once to save time over the long run, this plan might be a good fit.
The idea behind freezer cooking is to take an entire month’s worth of meals, prepare them at once, and freeze them in small portions. For example, moms would begin by choosing six to eight recipes all centered on the same meat. They’d then make a shopping list, cook up all the meat at once, and start in on preparing the dishes. If moms begin the prep before dinner, they can eat the first dish with their family while they rest up to prepare the others.
The kitchen probably won’t be back in shape until around two in the morning, but on the bright side, they’ll have meals stored away for weeks in advance and have saved hours in prep time and clean up.
Easy Meal Prep by Cooking Ahead
Even if moms aren’t quite ready for an all-night session of freezer cooking, they can still take advantage of the principle. The next time they spot chicken or ground beef on a great sale, they can buy in bulk.
Cooking chicken ahead is an incredible time saver. Moms can set a stock pot full of chicken breasts to boil then let them simmer. After 90 minutes, the meat will be so tender they can shred it with a fork. When the chicken is stored in freezer-safe baggies by two-cup portions, moms have cut a huge step from their meal prep for weeks down the road.
Easy Meal Prep to Cook with Leftovers in Mind
Another simple way to cut prep time in half is double or triple some recipes. Moms can freeze family-sized portions and reheat them a few weeks down the road.
Most dishes freeze remarkably well. Chili, soup, casseroles, meat loaf, and dishes with rice and pasta are just a few examples of meals that taste as good reheated as they did on the night they were prepared. Since most recipes last at least three months in the freezer, labeling the bag with the name of the recipe and date it was cooked can be helpful.
Meal Preparation With Bread Makers
A warm loaf of bread is luxurious. With the modern convenience of a bread maker, stay-at-home moms can toss a few ingredients into the machine during naptime and impress everyone when dinner rolls around. Additionally, if moms opt for recipes incorporating whole grains, they’ll be treating their families to great taste and a heart-healthy side all at once.
Modern stay-at-home moms have a wide array of gadgets that can make their jobs just a little easier. Women who enjoyed these time-saving ideas will also want to check out five creative meal prep tips that can cut kitchen time just as easily.
