Here are a couple of ways you can really up your game in the kitchen and get a meal on the table faster.
1. Beef up your equipment with small, simple purchases. Everybody knows about the benefits of a well-stocked pantry. But you can also stock up on the tools in your drawers and cabinets to make meal prep go much faster.
For starters, buy additional sets of measuring cups and spoons. Rather than washing them as you work, toss that 1-teaspoon measuring spoon in the sink to wait for cleanup when you’ve finished, then pick up another to get on to the next step of the recipe.
For a little more money, invest in two or three large mixing bowls, rather than a multi-size set. You can usually make a little something in a big bowl, but you can never make a lot of something in a small bowl. Sometimes, you can’t even make a little something in those little bowls. Wow, it can be a mess on the counter when you try to stir together a small tuna salad in a small bowl.
Finally, get a pair of dishwasher-safe kitchen shears. There’s nothing like them for snipping the fat off chicken thighs or pork chops, for mincing herbs, for dicing fruit, or even for cutting up a cooked chicken on a cutting board.
2. Shop the salad bar at your supermarket. No, not so you’ll make your dinner there. (Okay, maybe sometimes.) But instead, so you’ll pick up pre-chopped celery, diced onion, maybe thinly sliced onion rings, sliced zucchini, and more. Think of the salad bar as the professional prep station for your kitchen.
Yes, many supermarkets now offer prepped vegetables in bags in the produce section. Often, you don’t need that much sliced celery or chopped bell pepper. You can buy much smaller amounts at the salad bar.
Sure, you will spend more. No doubt about it. But you won’t crowd up your fridge with waggly bits of unused vegetables that are inevitably bound for the garbage in a week, or maybe just a few days.
One warning: Watch out for marinades, sauces, and spice blends on those items at the salad bar. They can create flavor confusion in your dish. Look for the pure, straightforward ingredients, the kind you’d chop or prep yourself at home.