How to Put Meals on the Table Fast
In the time it takes to wait for take out, you can have a delicious dinner on the table. You just have to be a little organized.
Up next in Family Meals (8 videos)
Make family mealtime easier with the tips and recipes in these Howcast videos.
You Will Need
- Meal plans
- Frozen vegetables
- Advance preparation
- Meal exchange (optional)
Steps
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Step 1
Plan ahead
Plan a week’s worth of meals in advance so you don’t waste time staring into the fridge, wondering what to cook.
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Step 2
Rely on frozen vegetables
Rely on frozen vegetables. Because they’re flash frozen as soon as they’re picked, they’re usually just as fresh, or even fresher, than non-frozen.
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Step 3
Cook in batches
Always cook in batches. It’s just as easy to roast two chickens as it is one – or three for that matter.
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Start a meal exchange with friends: Each person makes several batches of a main course, and then swaps with each other. Everyone ends up with several meals for just one cooking session.
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Step 4
Do prep work
Do prep work in advance, like boiling a whole bag of rice that can be reheated in portions later in the week, or cooking a big batch of potatoes that can be served scalloped one night and made into home fries on another.
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Step 5
Get kids involved
If you have kids, get them involved in prep work, like washing and spinning greens for salad, and setting the table.
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Kids who help make a meal are more likely to eat it, even if it’s something they don’t like.
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Step 6
Think in threes
Think in threes when you cook, as in how you can get three meals out of one main course. A ham dinner one night might be ham paninis two nights later, and the scraps can be thrown into a hearty bean soup or vegetable-heavy stir-fry that you freeze for another time.
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The average American cooks and eats a frozen packaged dinner about six times per month.
