Batch Cooking For Beginners

Life is busy. You know how it is. Long working hours, fighting your way through traffic, getting home late. Then you realise there’s nothing in the fridge and you haven’t got anything to make any tea with. So you either order a pizza, sling a ready meal in the microwave or pop some finger fingers in the oven. Not the healthiest way to live. One easy way to avoid this situation is to start batch cooking. Find out more in our batch cooking for beginners guide.

What Is Batch Cooking?

Wouldn’t it be great to have home made healthy meals ready when you need them? That’s exactly what batch cooking is. Batch cooking is preparing your weekly or perhaps even monthly meals in advanced. You then stack them in the freezer and when you need them, you can defrost them and pop them in the oven. A delicious home made meal whenever you want it! By batch cooking your own food you can ensure it is cooked exactly how you like it, with the ingredients that you love and no nasty additives you so often find in ready meals.

What Do You Need?

Batch cooking can seem a bit of a facing if you plan for it in advance. You’ll need to look at your calendar and come up with a meal plan to stick to. Knowing that you have the right meals in for the right days is imperative. You’ll not only need all the ingredients for your meals, enough to make maybe ten portions of each meal type, you also need containers to store your meals in. Labels & a marker pen are also a great idea! Of course, you need to make sure you have room in the freezer too!

What Are Easy Meals To Batch Cook?

Batch cooking for beginners is easier when you concentrate on three meals or less. Don’t run before you can walk. Or in this case, focus on an entire month instead of a week at a time. Some simple meals to start with include cottage pie, lasagne and fish pie. You can cook a pie in a large baking dish, before dividing it into portions for freezing. If you’re short on freezer space you could make a large chilli con carne or spaghetti bolognaise, spoon portions into freezer bags and slot them in around items already in the deep freeze. Perfect to defrost and serve up with some freshly cooked pasta.

What Are The Benefits Of Batch Cooking?

Batch cooking has many benefits including healthy tasty food that you love, when you need it. Your own batch cooked frozen ready meals are far cheaper than store bought ones. You also know exactly what’s going into your food so if there are any of you with allergies, it’s easy to avoid those ingredients. This is also a benefit as you know how much salt and sugar is in your food. You can also hide extra vegetables in sauces if you make them from scratch. This means you know your children are getting healthy vegetables without them really knowing. You can also get your children involved in cooking, to pass on the love of healthy food from generation to generation.

If your life is as hectic as ours, spending a few hours planning and preparing meals for the coming weeks is ideal. It takes away the stress of not knowing what you’re going to eat after a busy day at work and school. Follow our batch cooking for beginners tips and you’ll be eating your favourite meals, stress free, in no time!