A week’s dinners in 2 hours
Spend a little bit of Sunday preparing your Monday-to-Friday dinners - and get a whole week’s worth of evenings free.
Making your weekday dinners ahead of time means home-cooked food without the hassle. With everything pre-prepared, you can let the microwave take the strain while you relax with a well-earned glass of something lovely.
Short-cuts for savvy cooks
Get the basics right...
Start by making a large batch of a tomato sauce, which gives you a versatile base for a variety of dishes. Simply chop and fry some onions and celery then season and simmer with tinned tomatoes.
• Add lamb or beef mince to make a Bolognese sauce
o Serve with a bag of pre-prepared salad and an oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
o Or add chillies and kidney beans and serve with rice (see below), a dollop of soured cream and grated cheese
• Add mushrooms, courgettes and aubergines to make ratatouille
o Serve with a breadcrumb and grated cheese topping, browned under the grill
• Add vegetable or chicken stock and some noodles to make a minestrone
o Serve with home-made garlic bread (see below)
While your tomato base is simmering...
• Chop some onions, mix with minced minced beef, herbs and breadcrumbs and form into meatballs which you can oven bake and freeze
o Serve with quick-cook fresh pasta - and some of that tomato sauce...
• Cook up a batch of rice. Be aware, cooked rice can harbour bacteria if it’s chilled in the fridge but it’s safe to freeze it.
o Serve with that delicious chilli
• Stir-fry some of your cooked rice with spring onion, garlic, ginger and soy sauce before you freeze it
o Serve with chicken, fish or tofu stir fried with bean sprouts and greens.
You can even pre-prepare these ingredients and store them in the fridge ready to throw in the wok
• Mash the garlic into softened butter and stuff it into half-baked baguettes that can be finished-off in the oven later
o Serve with that minestrone or spaghetti Bolognese
• Mash cooked potato with a little milk and butter (or garlic butter) and freeze it in batches
o Serve with a slow-cooked casserole
Finally...
Spare a few minutes for pudding...
• Stewed fruit freezes really well
o Serve drizzled over ice cream or baked into a crumble