After a busy day at work, not many of us want to get home and have to spend a couple of hours cooking a healthy family meal. Rather than spend our evenings cooking, many of us end up relying on takeaways and ready meals as a result. But that’s no way to live! The only way to ensure that you follow a healthy diet is to cook your meals from scratch, even if you are running short of time. If you want to make sure you can enjoy a healthy diet even when you are pushed for time, you just need to know these great little tips that can help you really speed up your cooking!
Warm Up Your Oven
What’s the very first step in all recipes? Usually, they always start with heating up the oven. There’s a very good reason for this – it can often take quite a while for your oven to heat up to the required temperature, especially if it needs to be on high. So, rather than waiting around to put your creation in to bake, make sure you turn on your oven first. But the time you need to use it, it will be nice and hot enough!
Don’t Wait For The Kettle
Another part of cooking that can really hold you up is waiting around for the kettle to boil. This is often the case when you need to get boiling water to cook your pasta in. Trust me, waiting for the kettle is a lot quicker than waiting around for a pan of water to boil on the hob! But you can even reduce the time you wait for the kettle by using hot water taps instead. These are taps that are fitted onto your sink and release hot, boiling water. Just make sure your kids don’t go anywhere near them!
Freeze Your Herbs
If your recipe requires fresh herbs, you might find that you spend quite some time chopping them up. Herb plants are often very small and fiddly, and making sure you get all the leaves off and chop them finely enough can be, to put it lightly, a real pain in the neck! But next time you have some free time, you should chop up all the herbs that you currently have, and then freeze them in ice cubes. Then, when you need them in a recipe, you just have to throw in a cube! Easy peasy!
Always Be Neat And Tidy
It can be easy to create a big mess when you are busy cooking. But all this clutter and waste can sometimes get in the way and slow you down. So, be systematic when you are cooking or baking, and be sure to clean as you go. You will also find that this helps you keep your stress levels down, as you won’t be faced with a huge pile of rubbish to clean up afterwards!
Why not help yourself to a beer with your meal – you certainly deserve it after all that speedy cooking!
