Posted on December 29 2022
Whether you love to cook or hate it, meal preparation is a vital part of your daily routine. If you have a spouse and kids, you need to prepare healthy food for your family, and meal prep is still important even if you live alone.
If you are spending more time preparing food than enjoying it, a lack of efficiency in the kitchen could be to blame. There are some relatively simple tweaks that will vastly improve the efficiency of your cooking space, so you can prepare great meals and actually spend time enjoying them. Here are nine easy ways to make your current kitchen more efficient.
1. Choose the right tools. Having a drawer full of cooking utensils can hinder efficiency more than help it, so choose the right tools and limit the number you have. Lots of cooking utensils can do more than one thing, so focus on a core set of tools that can be used again and again.
2. Use smart shopping lists and apps. As you use up your ingredients you will need an easy way to reorder them, and you can make your life easier with smart shopping lists and mobile apps. You can even ask your favorite smart speaker to create a list and download it to your phone in time for your next grocery run.
3. Make a single item do double duty. If you want to improve efficiency in the kitchen, look for single items that can do double, or triple, duty. A plastic measuring cup can double as a coffee scoop, while a mason jar can be both a drinking glass and a container to hold flour, sugar and other baking essentials.
4. Label absolutely everything. An extensively labeled kitchen is an efficient kitchen, so grab your label maker or your favorite FoodVacBags marking pen. Anything that enters the kitchen should be labeled, from containers of flour or sugar to the ingredients you use in your meals and especially all your vacuum sealed foods in the freezer.
5. Rotate ingredients according to date. Now that everything is labeled, you can easily rotate your ingredients according to the date they were purchased and the dates by which they should be used. This will not only make your kitchen more efficient - it can also sharply reduce costly food waste.
6. Raid your fridge for an easy meal. If you are pressed for time, you may be able to create a great meal from the stuff you find in your fridge or freezer. This is another handy trick that will make your life easier while reducing the amount of food that is ultimately wasted.
7. Organize your spice rack. Every meal you prepare will include at least a few spaces but finding the right bottles on a crowded rack can be tough. Organizing your spice rack will save you a ton of time every time you cook. Consider alphabetizing your spices.
8. Or grow your own spices. If you want to save money and try out your green thumb, you might want to grow your own spices. There are premade seed starter kits that contain everything you need - all you need to do is add some water.
9. Group like items together. Creating a zone system in the kitchen can make your meal preparation easier. That could mean grouping your flour, sugar and measuring cups in the same cabinet or keeping your coffee, creamer and sweetener together.
If you love to cook you may dream of an amazing kitchen remodel, but when you look at the price you quickly come back to reality. If that dream kitchen is not in the cards, you can work more efficiently with what you have - all for a price that is much more affordable. The nine tips listed above can make your current kitchen more efficient and your future meals all the more delicious. If you need even more ideas for better kitchen organization, check out this article: 10 Smart Kitchen Organization Tips for Easier Meal Preparation.
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