6 Tips To Speed Up Dinner Time

Cooking meals is a big part of life. Most of us do it in some capacity at least three times a day. These 6 tips to speed up dinner time have helped me get my life more organized, and they can help you too! 

Cooking is one of the most time-consuming things we do, so I don’t know about you, but for me, hacks that make me more efficient in the kitchen are high on my interest list. 

Sometimes when you watch those cute hack videos on Facebook, you’re just like, wow, that’s ridiculous, or some of the hacks take even more time than doing it the way you already do, but other times, they open your eyes to something you could be doing to speed up dinner time.

No, not the special equipment quirky hacks that you’re never actually going to use.

Just simple stuff that speeds up the process – that’s what helps us moms out.

6 Tips To Speed Up Dinner Time

First up, 3 hacks for the cooking process:

1. Buy frozen, chopped onions. Whenever you’re sautéing onions, you can avoid the time and tears of chopping them by buying them already chopped and frozen. Such an easy alternative! And in many cases, not any more expensive. Alternatively, if you’re using fresh onions, any time you need to chop more than one, get your food processor out! It takes about 5 seconds flat to chop an onion in the food processor, which means you can have a week’s worth done in about a minute and spend the time you would have spent crying and chopping rinsing your processor off.
   
   
2. Brown twice as much hamburger as you need. If you’re like me, you use a lot of ground beef or turkey. So when you’re browning a pound for Taco Tuesday, brown another pound with it and put it in the fridge for later in the week. It hardly takes any more time and sets you up for a super quick dinner on another day.
   
   
3. Preheat your cookie sheets or roasting pans when you’re roasting veggies. Especially if you use stoneware or cast iron, turn your oven on and pop the sheets in there to start pre-heating while you chop the veggies. This cuts down on cooking time in a big way because it takes for-ev-er to get the heat through those thick pans!

Next up, 3 hacks for planning and executing more efficiently:

1. Make A Dinner List. Start with 5, and shoot for 30. This is your quick-win dinner list- the thing that frees you up to think about the other things on your to-do list. Fill it with dinner recipes that your whole family will accept without struggle. Draw from this list to effortlessly create your weekly meal plans. This 30-day/meal list can be used over and over from month to month to lighten your workload.
2. Create A Favorite Recipes Binder. Simplify by Keeping recipes at your fingertips. Have the 30 recipes from Step 1 and any other recipes you frequently use right at your fingertips. This will cut down on time spent searching for your recipes. Cut them out of recipe books, print them out, laminate them, etc. Only keep recipes on hand that you actually use! Anything else is clutter that will get in your way, slow you down, and add stress.
3. Create A Grocery List. use your dinner list and recipe binder for lightning fast list making. Use that quick-win dinner list to create a master grocery list and continuously stock ingredients for your meals. Your goal is to have ingredients at your fingertips and avoid emergency amendments or grocery store trips. Knowing basically what you’ll be making over the next month means you can meal prep as you have time to cut down dinnertime stress even more.

They’re so simple, but they end up saving you an incredible amount of time when you use them together. It all adds up fast.

Are there more? For sure! And next time you’re in the kitchen, if you keep your eyes open, I bet you’ll come up with a few more ideas to speed things up – and when you do, be sure to come back here and leave a comment with your best tip.