Healthy batch cooking for beginners: take care of your diet!

Are you working all week and don't have time to cook? Do you eat anything when you get home? For example, pre-cooked and frozen dishes that turn out to be very expensive. Bad move! Nutrition is the foundation of our health, and you have to take care of it no matter what. For that, the trend of healthy batch cooking has arrived. Don't know what it means? Keep reading because this article will interest you.

What is batch cooking?

Batch cooking literally means 'cooking all at once'. It is a way to cook the dishes for an entire week in just a few hours. For this method to be effective, it is very important that you organize yourself well and get appliances that help you cook in less time and in a healthy way. You can use oil-free fryers and kitchen robots from Mellerware. They almost cook by themselves thanks to their multiple functions. In the fryers, you can prepare all kinds of food almost as if it were a small oven. Meanwhile, in the kitchen robots, you can blend, cook in a water bath, poach, and much more.

How to start a batch cooking?

To start a good batch cooking, the first thing you need to consider is optimizing your time to the maximum. This is important to really make it worthwhile and achieve the goal with this cooking technique: eating well all week by cooking the least amount of time possible, in just a few hours.

First, you should plan the meals you're going to make and go to the supermarket for everything you need. Write down the meal plan on a sheet of paper. Organize them by day and by time (lunch and dinner on Monday, for example, and so on).

Secondly, once you have everything, get to it. Take out all the food and utensils you are going to use and place them strategically to have them at hand. They should help you cook quickly, but without getting in the way when you don't need them.

Finally, get to work and try to make as little mess as possible. Clean as you cook to save time and effort. And if you have a helper, even better. While one cooks, the other cleans and stores the meals and utensils. You'll finish much sooner.

Now, you're probably thinking 'all this is very easy to say, but how do I plan meals from Monday to Friday, for example, in just a few hours?'. Think of meals that can be prepared in a short time and that you can even customize in a couple of minutes. We'll give you a couple of examples:

• Chicken and vegetable broth. With homemade chicken and vegetable broth, you can eat almost all week. One day, you can have it with rice; another, with noodles; and another, with croutons. On the other hand, in the afternoon, you can prepare some croquettes with the chicken from the broth or cook the chicken with a simple tomato sauce.
• Salads. Salads are a great dish for lunch, along with a grilled fish or meat fillet, for example, or for dinner. Believe it or not, you can have a salad almost ready in the fridge perfect for several days. Chop the lettuce and add some cherry tomatoes closed. Store it in a tupper and put it in the fridge. When you're ready to eat it, you just have to add some white asparagus, a can of tuna, dress it, and it will be ready. Plus, it's much cheaper than the pre-made salad from supermarkets.
• Pasta. With pasta, you can make a wide variety of dishes in a few minutes. Cook pasta in a pot or saucepan, wash it, drain it and store it in a tupper in the freezer. During the week, you can add a tomato sauce, some anchovies, or garlic and parsley. It will be ready! If you prefer, you can leave the pasta already made, for example, Bolognese style.
• Paella. Would you love to eat a paella, but you don't have time to cook it during the week? It's super easy. Make the sofrito and store it in the freezer. When you come back from work, you just have to add the rice. And, if you want, that sofrito can serve for another dish: chicken in sauce, which will be ready to heat.

As you can see, batch cooking has no great mysteries, aside from a bit of cleverness and skill when cooking. When you start, you'll see how little by little you create and invent faster and more versatile dishes. It's just a matter of having a little time. Here we leave you with some inspiration with our recommended cocotte recipes, finger-licking good!

How long does batch cooking last?

Batch cooking shouldn't take too long. After ending up tired from working all week, the idea is not to spend much time cooking and cooking. You could spend 2 hours on Sunday afternoon-evening to have all your meals for the week ready to just heat them up.