Step by step guide to planning a batch cooking day, can anyone help, please?

weezl74

Hi there old-stylers

As some of you might know a little team of old stylers have been working on a project to help people save money on their grocery shopping.

We are providing recipes, a month's meal planner, shopping lists etc as well as a batch cooking guide, a step-by-step day plan of how to make 6 of the recipes.

What I could really do with your help in, is making a guide for someone who needs to plan a batch cooking day (say a saturday) but without us knowing which exact recipes s/he will be choosing to cook.

So for example, one tip might be:

1) read all the recipes you plan on making, and put a little star next to anything which requires action the day before, like soaking pulses or lentils, or buying in a particular ingredient you've run out of...

etc etc... Hope this makes sense, and I really look forward to any tips you have

So just to summarise: this is tips on how someone makes a plan of a batch cooking day for him/herself, I'm not asking you guys to put the plan together, but to explain to someone how to put it together themselves.

(Zippy, Pink and Penny, sorry if this overlaps any existing threads, but they all seemed to be about specific recipes, or people asking what you can batch cook, and how to go about freezing them, I found 13 like that, please do merge or move me if I'm wrong tho!)

maman

Not 100% sure I understand but I'd suggest buiding up a storecupboard/freezer list from basics when on offer/whoopsied as a tip. That way when you're ready to do batch cooking you don't need to go out and pay full price for the ingredients.

Also, I'd recommend trying to get a day clear of children (or other distractions) and closing yourself in the kitchen with radio/music. Batch cooking can be a fun time!

esmf73

Hi,
Just seems to be like common sense really.
Step 1 - decide recipes to be cooked
Step 2 - ensure that you have sufficient bowls etc to store them in in the freezer
Step 3 - go through and write a shopping list
Step 4 - go through and cross off what you already have in your cupboards
Step 5 - diarise it - shopping day, presoak (prepared) day, cooking day
Step 6 - look at what can be cooked along side each other - saving time, energy etc and check that the containers you'll be using will fit along side each other.

Finally - night before, go to bed early and order in a takeaway for the night when you've cooked everything, but don't want to eat it!

weezl74

maman wrote: »

Not 100% sure I understand but I'd suggest buiding up a storecupboard/freezer list from basics when on offer/whoopsied as a tip. That way when you're ready to do batch cooking you don't need to go out and pay full price for the ingredients.

Also, I'd recommend trying to get a day clear of children (or other distractions) and closing yourself in the kitchen with radio/music. Batch cooking can be a fun time!

Thank you maman Your second tip is useful, but number 1 makes me realise I've not explained properly! Sorry Imagine we've got a woman, Kitty, who's chosen 7 recipes and one saturday in which to cook them for her family of 4.

How exactly, step by step would she go about planning what to do and in what order?

I know for some of us this is a natural, intuitive thing and you just know what to do in what order, but we need a hand-holding guide for someone who's never done it before

weezl74

esmf73 wrote: »

Hi,
Just seems to be like common sense really.
Step 1 - decide recipes to be cooked
Step 2 - ensure that you have sufficient bowls etc to store them in in the freezer
Step 3 - go through and write a shopping list
Step 4 - go through and cross off what you already have in your cupboards
Step 5 - diarise it - shopping day, presoak (prepared) day, cooking day
Step 6 - look at what can be cooked along side each other - saving time, energy etc and check that the containers you'll be using will fit along side each other.

Finally - night before, go to bed early and order in a takeaway for the night when you've cooked everything, but don't want to eat it!

yep I realise I'm asking us to spell out something pretty common sense, sorry But bear with me! Your steps above are fab, and just what I wanted, but I need quite a bit more detail in number 5 and number 6, any chance you could expand on those?

mardatha

esmf, will you come and live in my hall cupboard please ? I think I need your organisational skills !

greenbee

weezl74 wrote: »

yep I realise I'm asking us to spell out something pretty common sense, sorry But bear with me! Your steps above are fab, and just what I wanted, but I need quite a bit more detail in number 5 and number 6, any chance you could expand on those?

My thoughts on this include:

• divide your list up into dishes of similar types so that you don't, for example, contaminate your baking with onions!
• plan to do the more delicate flavoured stuff (so baking really ) first
• work out the temperatures that each recipe needs to be cooked at, and start off with the lowest, so you gradually heat the oven up
• think about the order in which you make things in terms of minimising washing up. When baking I do vanilla sponge first, and work my way up to chocolate and then dried fruit. With a good silicone spatula I can get away with very little washing between batches!
• Clear up properly after baking and before doing main dishes. It makes it all much more manageable, and again, avoids the possibility of contamination.
• Prepare any vegetables e.g. onions in batches (you can do a whole lot in the food processor if you have them - again, starting with the least pungent). Store the batches of prepared ingredients in large bowls and then weigh out what you need as you go along. Its easier to assemble each dish then rather than cook each from scratch, and you can get your FP/chopping stuff out of the way to leave space for everything else you need
• If you can't afford a takeaway, and need to feed everyone after all that cooking, make sure you prepare enough veg while you are there, and earmark one of the dishes for that evening's meal
• Make up a detailed time plan to include all of this stuff. It may end up not quite going to plan, but will help you to understand just how long it's all going to take.

weezl74

superb thanks.

Please keep going this is excellent

Penelope_Penguin

Hi weezl :beer:

• prepare bread dough first and get that rising
• next make pastry and put into the fridge to chill
• peel and chop all the veg in one go, to save time and washing up
• if you're making batches of casserole/pasta sauce, it'll be more economic to have the oven on for 2 or 3 lots at once, than use a SC twice or thrice
• prepare cakes and scones last, as the raising agent slowly loses its voom once the wet ingredients are added. Get them into the oven as soon after they're prepared as possible

Lastly - don't try to make a fruit meringue pie and a sponge cake while DH is doing a roast, as his roast will take precedence at the expense of your baking They all got eaten though, and the roast was delicious

maman

weezl74 wrote: »

Thank you maman Your second tip is useful, but number 1 makes me realise I've not explained properly! Sorry Imagine we've got a woman, Kitty, who's chosen 7 recipes and one saturday in which to cook them for her family of 4.

How exactly, step by step would she go about planning what to do and in what order?

I know for some of us this is a natural, intuitive thing and you just know what to do in what order, but we need a hand-holding guide for someone who's never done it before

Thanks for that weezl but would definitely recommend a storecuboard approach to spread costs.

weezl74

fab, fab, fab

OK how does she plan the order to do all the recipes in, apart from oven becoming gradually hotter and those tips already suggested?

Any tips on how to rope in the family/amuse the kids?

Thoughts on what to do if something unexpected happens? (ie print all the recipes in case your internet goes down...)