Prep Work Can Save Tons of Time in the Kitchen

Are you too busy to fix a whole month's worth of meals in a day, OAMC-style? Never fear, you can still put your freezer to work for you. Soon, you'll be turning out meals in just minutes!

The secret is in preparing as much as you can ahead of time, often while you're doing other things. It takes only a few extra seconds to toss a second onion in the food processor. If you pre-cook your ground beef, meals can be ready in just a few minutes. You can even cook and freeze rice. See how easy it is?

Add several sizes of zip-lock bags, some waxed paper, and aluminum foil to this week's grocery list. You'll be needing them. If you can find it, get some freezer tape as well. It looks like masking tape but stays on in the freezer. Also, if you don't own a cookie sheet, purchase a very inexpensive one.

As soon as you get your groceries unpacked, take a few moments to sort out anything you may be able to prepare quickly, along with an easy dinner for tonight's meal. Pull out all of your onions, celery, carrots, green peppers, and other fresh vegetables, along with any ground meat you've got.

Quickly prep the vegetables by washing them, removing seeds, and peeling (if you choose to). Get out your trusty food processor (or a knife and cutting board) and chop everything up. Depending on how you cook, you might want to bag each item separately, or just cut them all up together. Label each bag with the contents and the date. Make sure there's no air in the bags, and lay them flat in your freezer. Leave out enough to cook the ground meat, though!

What are you doing with your ground meat? Portion it out so you can make hamburgers, meatballs, and cooked ground meat. To make hamburgers, fashion patties and slip them between sheets of waxed paper. Wrap the stack tightly with aluminum foil, and freeze in a large baggie. To make meatballs, mix the raw ground meat with breadcrumbs, and egg, and spices. Form meatballs and bake on a cookie sheet until JUST done. Cool in the refrigerator, then freeze in baggies. If you'd rather be able to take out just a few, transfer the cookie sheet to the freezer and allow the meatballs to freeze solid before transferring to a bag. While the meatballs are baking, transfer the rest of the ground meat to a pan along with onions, green peppers, celery and carrots. Cook until just browned, but do not add any spices at this point. Portion it into small ziplock bags and freeze flat.

Rinse about six cups of rice and put it in a huge pot with 12 cups of water. Cover and let boil until just barely done. Allow to cool enough to handle, and portion it into quart or gallon sized freezer bags (depending on how many you're feeding).

While the rice is cooking, process any other meats you've bought in bulk - chicken, pork chops, steaks, etc. With chicken parts, simply bag a meal's worth in a single bag. If you like to marinade your chicken, dump in some italian dressing or worsteshire sauce, then freeze. Pork or steak can be marinated in the same fashion, or you can reserve a piece or two and cut it into smaller bits for stir-fries and stews.

With a little practice, you should be able to do all of that prep work in an hour or so!

Now that you're done with the perishables, you should have about a dozen meals in a ready-to-cook state. You've got browned meat for sloppy joes, shepherd's pie, or spanish rice. Hamburgers can be made in a jiffy. Your frozen meatballs can be added to a crockpot with storebought pasta sauce before you leave for work, and all you'll have to do when you get home is cook the pasta and set the table. Likewise, you can put chicken in the crockpot with some of your chopped vegetables and let it stew in its own juices. Pork chops and steaks are ready to go on the grill or under the broiler, and stir-fries are as easy as popping the meat, pre-chopped veggies, and a little soy sauce in the pan while the rice thaws in the microwave.

Want to make your life even easier? Start cooking two meals every time you cook until you have a number of meals in the freezer. How easy is it to make a double-batch of chili? It freezes wonderfully and is easy to re-heat. When you make pasta, cook it until it's not quite al dente, rinse, drain, and freeze an extra portion. You can even put the sauce on it and have a whole meal in a bag!

Do you like biscuits? Make a double batch. While tonight's batch is cooking, put the other biscuits on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper and allow to freeze. Then bag them. When you're ready to eat them, just pull out the number you'd like and bake a couple extra minutes. You can do the same thing with cookies!

If you allow prep work and doubling to become habitual, you'll find that you spend LOTS less time in the kitchen - especially on busy nights. You'll also find that, since a wonderful meal is nearly ready, you'll eat out a lot less!