Run Your Kitchen like a Restaurant to Save Time and Money

Restaurants are businesses and need to turn a profit. This means they get their best value from food they can produce cheaply and quickly. Home cooks can benefit from learning how restaurants maximize their profits by minimizing their expenses. Take, for example, a Chinese restaurant.

Chinese restaurants are unique in that they generally produce and serve in family sized portions. This allows them to reduce the time and man-power spent per serving portion. Most main dishes are a chopped meat, vegetable, and sauce combination, with the vegetable being the bulk of the meal. Many Chinese dishes are also highly spiced, providing a lot of flavor in a single bite. And, of course, you cannot forget the ever-present rice or the classic dessert, the fortune cookie.

So, what have we, the budget cook, learned from Chinese restaurants?

Cooking in bulk saves time and money. It is often just a little more work to prepare a double-batch of anything as it is to prepare a single one. There are several online resources devoted to bulk cooking, often called "Once A Month Cooking" (search for OAMC recipes). If you've never done bulk cooking before, I highly recommend just reading the sites for effective tips on prep and storage and trying doubling and freezing a family favorite. I do not suggest jumping in full on as it can be a daunting task to prepare a month's worth of food in a day.

Reduce the amount of meat and substitute cheaper ingredients to add bulk. Or, just reduce the amount of meat by a little each time you prepare a dish until you find your minimum acceptable amount. For a substitution example, in a Turkey Tetrazzini, increase your peas and/or mushrooms to make up for reducing the amount of turkey meat.

Cut expensive ingredients into smaller pieces. If you are still getting some meat in every bite, it won't seem as obvious that you are using less. Sure, it's a psychological trick, but any place you can cut savings without changing perception makes it that much easier.

Don't forget to season your food (or even better, make it SPICY)! This might not seem like a frugal tip on the surface, but think of it this way: what does spicy food do? Make you drink more water and eat something bland (like rice) to cut the heat, thereby filling you up on less expensive ingredients and stretching your meal even further.

Always serve an inexpensive side with your more expensive main course. Or even better, incorporate that inexpensive side as part of the main course, as we see in the many fried rice variations available at Chinese restaurants.

End your meal with a smile. Okay, maybe not a frugal tip, but it sure doesn't hurt and as anyone with teenagers knows, any little thing you can do as a shared experience with your teen is a GREAT thing. Tell a joke, a silly story, share something funny on you-tube....something that makes every one walk away from the meal feeling happy and satisfied.