I often feel rushed while preparing dinner. On most nights, I’ve already had a long, busy day. This means dinner preparation generally feels like yet another hurdle in a long race.
Over the past few years I’ve discovered a number of ways to save time while preparing dinner. These strategies help me get dinner on the table in a timely manner.
How to save time with dinner prep
Have a plan
The single most important thing I do to avoid being rushed while preparing dinner is having a plan in the form of a menu. Without a menu, I’d be searching the pantry, fridge, and freezer to figure out what I can make with the ingredients I have on hand. With a menu, I simply pull out the things I need and get cooking.
There’s no right or wrong way to plan a menu (click here to see an overview of various approaches). There was a time I planned seasonal menus, then I tried weekly menus, and these days I’m using monthly menus (you can see a number of my menus here). Use whatever approach works for you!
Set notifications for tasks that need completed long before dinner
One thing that having a menu allows me to do is to set notifications for myself if I need to do something before it’s time to cook dinner. For example, I may need to pull meat from the freezer to thaw or begin soaking beans. If I forget tasks like these, then I find myself in a pinch when it’s time to cook. However, by setting a notification from the digital calendar on my phone, I’m able to make sure I have these tasks completed in time to begin making dinner.
Keep the fridge and pantry organized
Do you ever find yourself sifting through the contents of your fridge or pantry trying to find the corn starch or that tomato you know you have left? I’ve found myself doing this before and it’s a definite time waster. Thankfully, by keeping things organized, I’ve been able to nearly eliminate the time I waste searching for food in the fridge and pantry. By making sure fruits and veggies are in their respective drawers of the fridge, canned goods are neatly stacked on the pantry shelves, etc., I’m able to find ingredients easily and get right back to cooking.
Cook meats ahead of time
Cooking meat is often one of the most time-consuming portions of dinner preparation. An easy way to cut down on the time spent preparing meat each night is to prepare it in bulk batches ahead of time. I’ll often cook 3 pounds of ground turkey at a time. I’ll freeze the cooked turkey in half pound or pound increments. It’s super easy to thaw these portions and use them as needed in things like casseroles and one-pot dinners. I do something similar with chicken breasts and thighs, but I typically cook these in the slow cooker and then shred or chop them before freezing them in portions of various sizes. I choose to do this with ground turkey and chicken because these are the meats we use most often. You can do it with whatever meats you use the most.
Chop veggies ahead of time
Peeling and chopping vegetables is another time-consuming aspect of dinner preparation. As with cooking meat, this is a task you can do ahead of time. Depending on what I need for the week, I’ll take some time one evening to chop carrots, slice bell pepper, shred lettuce, etc. so I have these veggies ready to utilize in their respective meals.
Use convenience foods
Convenience foods often get a bad rap because we think of them as being less healthy. However, there are a number of perfectly healthy and super useful convenience foods out there. Canned goods are one example. It is easy, economical, and healthy to use canned goods such as corn, fish, beans, and chopped tomatoes to cut down on how much time it takes to prepare a meal.
Likewise, using frozen varieties of foods can save time. Recently, I’ve benefited from using frozen chopped bell pepper and frozen chopped onion. Fully-cooked, frozen meats are also time-saving options, but these aren’t necessarily economical.
Fresh chopped produce is another option. Buying bags of salad and tubs of chopped veggies such as bell peppers or onions can save lots of time. These tend to be pricey compared to their intact counterparts, so you have to decide what is most important to you—saving time or saving money.
Double recipes and freeze half for later
Many casseroles freeze well. Likewise, many slow cooker meals can be assembled and frozen before they are cooked (these are sometimes referred to as “dump and go” slow cooker recipes). I can generally double a recipe and prepare a second batch of whatever I’m making for dinner without adding much time to my dinner prep. This allows me to make two meals in the time it would take me to make one. When I need the second meal, the only time it takes to prepare it is to pull it from the freezer and heat it. Here are a few casseroles we enjoy that freeze really well.
Utilize a slow cooker or pressure cooker
Slow cookers are a convenient way to prepare dinner because they do the cooking while I do other things. I don’t have to stand at the stove stirring a pot or be constantly pulling things from the oven. Additionally, I can assemble the meal in the slow cooker earlier in the day when I am less busy. I’ve been using a basic Crock-Pot for years and it has been an invaluable tool. Thankfully, if you are in the market for a slow cooker, you can get a basic one that is reliable for a reasonable price or you can get a fancier one with lots of bells and whistles for a little more.
Pressure cookers are another popular way to save time when preparing dinner. These are kind of the opposite of slow cookers because they cook things speedily. I do not have a pressure cooker, but I know many individuals who do. They speak very highly of them and love being able to cook yummy meals so quickly. If you have experience using a pressure cooker, then please add your thoughts in the comments below.
Prepare one-dish meals
Some meals take a long time to prepare because they contain so many components that are prepared individually (for example, cooking meat in one pan, cooking pasta in one pot, making sauce in another pot, and then baking it all in yet another dish). Using so many dishes means that cleanup also takes a long time. An easy way to speed up dinner preparation is to limit how often you make these types of dishes. One-dish meals are a great alternative. These can be prepared in a single dish (such as a pot or skillet), so preparation and cleanup go pretty quickly. Here are some of my favorite one-dish meals.
Final thoughts
Of course, the quickest and easiest solution to getting dinner on the table is often to order pizza or grab takeout. For the sake of our budget, we try to minimize how often we choose these options, but there certainly are days when we take advantage of them! On all the days we don’t, these strategies don’t magically get dinner on the table in an instant, but they do help expedite things when I have a hungry husband and hungry kiddos.
What is it like getting dinner on the table in your home? What time-saving strategies can you share with us?
I definitely need to do better about taking food out of the freezer to thaw as that can be my biggest hurdle for dinner prep. I use my crock pot a lot when I know we’ll be out of the house until nearly dinnertime and I want a “quick” meal I can put together.
It definitely helps me to have that reminder to pull food from the freezer!
The slow cooker is super helpful on those days when we have other things going on.
Thank you for these ideas! Planning and prepping meals always takes so much out of me. I think you make a great point about convenience foods-I long prided myself on not using convenience foods, but it does make things easier when making food. I’ve started buying cans of salt-free beans to have on hand for the days when I forget to soak beans ahead of time and/or won’t be in the house long enough to cook them. I have been working on meal planning lately, trying to figure out what is a good fit for our family at this point in time-your overview is really helpful!
Now that we have good weather (and that I’ve finally been learning how to use my husband’s gas grill) I’ve been leaning towards grilling as an easy way to meal plan. We’ve had many meals lately that are grilled chicken + salad greens (or other veggie) and we haven’t gotten tired of it yet! Though the unpredictable weather in Oklahoma does make it hard to plan on grilling meals sometimes.
If we had a grill, I would definitely take advantage of it. Grilled veggies are so delicious! Meats are too, of course, but I’ve always loved things like peppers and zucchini prepared on a grill.
Meal planning is tough! Flexibility (something I’m not very good at) is important when it comes to meal planning because sometimes what works today won’t work next year. I think being willing to try new approaches in new seasons is important.