Very often, work takes top priority over everything else in our lives. Our desire to succeed professionally can push us to give less priority to our own well-being and other related activities. Creating a harmonious work-life balance or work-life integration is critical, to boost not only our physical, emotional, and mental well-being, but equally important for our career.
Amidst all the hectic activities, one is left with very little time to think about food. However, cooking your own food is usually healthier than getting your meals from outside service providers. Regardless of how busy you are, there are some cooking hacks that will make your life a bit easier by saving precious time.
Most of the ideas that I am enlisting are derived from my mom who was also a working woman. Surprised by her excellent kitchen management, I had observed each and every activity of her while in the kitchen. These are the top cooking hacks for busy women who are very busy and do not have enough time to spend cooking food. Most of the cooking hacks and tips are very simple and do need any prior cooking knowledge. You can also refer to top cooking websites for various cooking tips.
Listed below are the
cooking tips and tricks for Indian working moms.
Plan and prepare in advance.
Make extra for further use.
Check stocks every week after planning next week’s menu.
Use Induction stoves instead of cooking gas.
Use pressure cookers instead of traditional cooking methods.
- Foods cooked in a pressure cooker are faster, with less liquid. The liquid is evaporated away leaving the food with most of its nutrients.
- Pressure cooking is far more efficient than cooking in multiple pots on separate burners and can result in significant energy savings.
- Pressure cookers reduce cooking drastically. Up to 70%, this is a great reduction in the cooking time.
- Heat and steam generated in the pressure cooker does not escape to heat up your kitchen. Therefore, results in a cooler kitchen.
- The well secured lid in a pressure cooker prevents any splashes from escaping the cooking vessel. This also eliminates any spillage of food into the pressure cooker which require further cleanup. The most important time saving thing is that after cooking, there is only one vessel to wash.
Use time-reducing kitchen tools.
Prepare in bulk certain common ingredients and refrigerate.
Cook extra servings and refrigerate.
Use the extra space in the pressure cooker to boil vegetables in advance.
Make your dishes delicious for children.
Allocate sufficient time for cooking.
Planning for meals in advance might seem to be difficult, but practicing this might make your life easier later. Usually, weekend planning is ideal and gives you enough time to mentally prepare your next week’s menu, and helps you check your ingredients stock and re-order if necessary.
I would even go one step further to also take into account an alternative menu in case one fails due to various reasons.
It is always better to knead an extra quantity of roti/chapatti dough; the extra dough can be refrigerated. Care is required to check the dough before use as it might develop fungus or discoloration (possible reason due to power shutdown). Never store dough for more than two days in the refrigerator. The same can be done with the batter used to prepare south Indian food varieties like idli, dosa, or uttapam.
Extra vegetable curry, side dishes can also be stored in the refrigerator but needs reheating before use. You can do this by placing the vessels in the pressure cooker after cooking rice so that you save fuel.
Frequent checking the stock and quality of herbs, seasonings, and spices/masalas would help you wasting time running to the nearby store. It is better to check the stock when you are adding these ingredients while the cooking process. Maintain a scratch pad to note down stocks depleting below minimum levels with a date.
The same can also be done with quick meal fixes like bread, eggs, corn flakes, oats, pasta, etc.
Induction stoves are clean and safe. The time required to cook is much less than a gas stove.
There are many advantages of a pressure cooker cooking.
Use vegetable choppers to quickly chop onions and tomatoes without wasting time on chopper boards and knives. This is a highly efficient and safe way to minimize your chopping activities. Such tools are very cheap and freely available in online stores.
Most Indian foods make use of ginger garlic paste or tomato pulp to add a special flavor to Indian curries, so these can be pre-prepared in advance and store in hygienic plastic containers for further use. The effort is only once for a few uses. Similarly, grated vegetables can also be kept prepared for curry toppings.
This practice is good for busy moms to use leftovers the next day, thus saving enormous time. Whenever you prepare any special dishes on Sundays, it is better to prepare in extra quantity and store them in the refrigerator so that the following day, which is the first day of the week that is normally slow, you will be in a position to cope up with the delay easily. Ensure that you do not exceed storing of leftovers for not more than one day.
Mainly potatoes, carrots, beetroots, and other vegetables can be pre-cooked to save preparation time. Simply add this on the top of the main vessel that you use.
Children do not need any heavy or complex meals. A simple meal but nutritious enough to keep them active throughout the day is what you need to plan. Feed then with meals full of veggies, nuts, cereals, legumes, and fruits. This can become a habit even after growing older.
Do not stuff them with fatty foods and too many sweets. Avoid feeding them with highly processed fast foods as they are fatty and plenty of preservatives in them which might not be healthy for your child.
By setting time for all your cooking activities will help you to prevent inconvenience to others who are depending on you. Try to meet the set times for cooking as far as possible. You can achieve this only by retiring to bed early and get complete sleep so that to wake up fresh the next day. Provide adequate time for you also by performing yoga, meditation, or mild exercises to keep yourself fit for the day. Depending on vitamins and mineral supplements for preventing your body from malnutrition is a must.
Allow your children to finish their meals on their own and wash their plates before leaving the dining room. They will inculcate a sense of responsibility and independence and not have to be fed every single meal thereby allowing some time to spend in other activities.
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Conclusion.
Over to you now.
- How have you felt after cooking a good meal yourself for your family, where do you think you can suggest cooking tips so that other working moms can benefit?
- Any other observations and experiences you have had after you have done your own cooking. I’ll be glad to learn from you and add them as an update to this blog.
Cooking is an interesting hobby to develop. You can learn so many things for life from cooking like planning, cutting down cooking process times, keep improvising the cooking recipes to make it nutritive, tasty, and fast. There are other benefits of cooking you can derive. Read here: 7 benefits of cooking as a hobby [simple facts].
Right now, I wanted you to do one thing:
Specifically, I want you to leave a comment describing your opinion regarding the cooking tips for working moms.
For example:
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