One of the biggest hang-ups and roadblocks for cooking at home is time. It’s not even the cooking time, it’s the prep and clean-up that everyone dreads. When you’re tired after a long day at work or just got home after a day out with the kids, the last thing anyone wants to do is clean a mountain of dishes. Even loading and unloading the dishwasher seems daunting at times.
Still, you’re trying to eat out less frequently, and as tempting as it is, you just had pizza on Tuesday, so Marc Anthony’s is going to have to wait. We’ve got to eat healthy tonight and do so with minimal effort.
Here are my 5 hacks to minimize kitchen clean-up time.
1. Salad Jars.
These are great. Get yourself some decent mason jars, put your dressing of choice in first, then add your hard veggies, nuts and seeds (as they’ll benefit from marinating), then stuff your shredded leafy greens on top. Make a bunch of these on a day you’ve got some spare time. When you’re ready for one, take it out of the fridge, give it a good shake and either eat right out of the jar or put in a nice jar. They make a great quick meal or a good side dish. Depending on the types of greens you use they’ll last for 3-5 days in fridge. 5 is pushing it, though, those veggies on the bottom like to marinade, but you don’t want your unions to completely dissolve in the vinegar!!! Still, you can make 4 days of sides for both lunch and dinner for the whole family in under 20 minutes with minimal dishes!
2. Pan-Chan.
Pan-Chan (반찬) is the Korean word for a widely popular concept in East Asian cuisine where you have a dozen little side dishes scattered all over the table for everyone to pick at. In a restaurant setting this is presented as a million little plates that would certainly be a major pain in the butt to clean. However, at home, the glassware used to store these dishes are just put on the table and stuck back in the fridge when you’re done. This is fantastic because you don’t have to do ANY cooking or cleaning until something runs out or spoils. What’s more is that you can have an incredible amount of variety in a single meal with no effort, which is perfect for those days when everyone wants something different. Seriously, you can have mashed potatoes, steak tips, broccoli, hard boiled eggs, sliced peppers and carrots, berbere lentils, Thanksgiving turkey, hummus, chili con carne, vegetable curry, assorted nuts and seeds, pickled jalapenos, olives and a gazpacho all at the same time. All you have to do is reheat the stuff that needs to be. The rest is in and out of the fridge. There you go, a five-minute meal that makes everyone happy and you’ve only got to wash the cups and silverware.
3. Kitchen scissors.
These are probably the most undervalued tool in the kitchen. These things are so effective at cutting (pun intended) prep and clean-up time it’s amazing. Obviously, they won’t work with foods like tomatoes, potatoes and whole unions, but for most everything else in the kitchen, these are great. You can make an entire salad without a cutting board. You can cut your food directly into your pan, pot or wok minimalizing the chance of dropping food off your cutting board and onto the floor, and they’re arguably faster than knives as well. Once I realized how much time I was saving with these, I haven’t looked back.
4. Be a “One Pan Man.”
There are a huge number of meals that you can make using a single pan. Think stir-fries, soups and stews, sheet pan dinners, and everyone’s favourite: the grill. Stir-fries are the fastest of the option because you can usually just throw in a bunch of veggies, the protein of your choice, some rice or pasta, and a sauce and be done with it in 10 minutes. But every method has their own benefits. Soups and stews can be made in bulk and kept in the fridge or frozen to be eaten for weeks afterwards. Most grilled foods can be eaten as leftovers the next couple days (not to mention no pots or pans to clean!), and even the downtime waiting for the oven can be used to clean the kitchen.
5. Marinate in the freezer.
Like the salad jars, if you’ve got a day with some spare time, you can make some marinade for meat and veggies, stick them in freezer bags and freeze them. When you’re ready to use them, let them thaw in the fridge over night and cook them the next day for dinner. This saves all sorts of time because you’re not making a meal the night before and making a mess of dishes then. You can pull when needed. The other option is that you can use microwave safe containers and defrost them when ready. This is a good option if you’ve got fickle kids who change their minds after you’ve spent all day making their favourite meal! Ask and cook immediately! Don’t give them the opportunity to change their minds!
These are all things that have helped me in my journey and I hope they can help you, too. Several of these methods can be combined to maximise efficiency. The goal is to create habits that stick, and the less mundane work you’ve got to do outside of cooking and eating, the more likely you are to have a healthy meal. Good luck!