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

danni121

Fantastic. Much appreciated x feel v much inspired!

annie123

weezl74 wrote: »

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

When my son was small and at the wanting to 'help' stage, the first thing made was play dough, which he 'helped' make, he felt he had 'helped' enough by then and would play with the play dough instead and leave me alone to cook

greenbee

weezl74 wrote: »

oooh oooh, how were you taught, that's fascinating!

By being shouted at mostly I'm still not very good at organising my time... but I think Mary has pretty much explained it....

maryb wrote: »

Once you know what you are doing you can plan forward but I found it easier to start with to plan backwards if you see what I mean. In other words work out when you want to be finished. Eg chicken casserole (and other things which can be fitted in the oven at the same time)needs to be cooked and ready at 5 pm and it needs 2 hours which means not only that the casserole has to be ready to go in the oven at 3 but also other stuff has to be out of the oven by 3 so THAT stuff needs to go in at x o'clock etc

Work out the things which need the longest cooking time like that then slot in the things that need to be finished at the same time but take less time. eg 15 minutes before the end do x so that means you have to do x at 4.45 or say 4.40 to give yourself a bit of leeway/let the water come to the boil

You need to go through and gradually work out how to fit it all together. Delia has a christmas day time plan in the back of her christmas book, which is a pretty good example.

But if I was told i had to use gant charts to plan my cooking I'd give up... I can't even use the s*dding things to plan my work as there is ALWAYS something they refuse to do that I want them to but they claim doesn't make sense!

I think Penny's example is a good way of explaining it.

rachbc

Now see I batch cook but don't have a batch cooking day - the thought of spending a day chopping and cooking everything in one go makes me come out in a cold sweat and I am a keen cook!! So for me batch cooking means making lots of 1 dish when I am cooking it to eat anyway - I find it as easy to make 6 spag bol as 1 in an evening then a few days later make 4 curries and so on, maybe bread at a weekend. I also think if you do it this way you need less in the way of utensils and pans etc as you are only using 1/2 at a time

livalot

All the suggestions have been great so far.

Personally if I am going to do any sort of batch cooking, I have to start a few days before, not just the night before, because my freezer is quite small.

So the first thing I do is pull out everything that is already in the freezer.
I then make a list of the contents and put it in on the fridge.
I then try and use as much of it up as soon as possible. I have learnt to my cost that there is no point trying to cook another batch of say pasta sauce if I already have some that is taking up space and needs using up.

At the other end I have also learnt to label everything clearly. I got so fed up of guessing what the contents of some freezer items were. :rotfl: No point spending all that time and effort making some lovely food only to have it lingering in the freezer because I wasn't sure what it was!

Julimk

I was very lucky, as my Mum was a SAHM who cooked from scratch, meal planned & was an expert at rubber meat. And she was only young when she married & had me (17!) I also did ‘O’ level Food & Nutrition, which covered the practical of cooking from scratch & time planning, plus the theory of different dietary needs for different people, how food is digested, how different heat sources work etc. But that was over 25 years ago now!! :eek:

IRO of batch cooking I started before finding MSE/OS, as I found it useful to cook when I had time & freeze individual portions, so when I am working I get in from work & just heat something up, rather than having to start cooking at 7pm.

A lot of helpful points have been made already. A couple of things for once the cooking is done – how/where is it going to be cooled & how/where stored? I quite often end up with lines of individual pots across the kitchen floor, as it is the only place where there is enough space for them to sit until cool enough for freezer. I mostly use MrT value tubs; but old take away cartons, marg tubs, ice-cream tubs etc.

Also in terms of teaching how to fish, I thought it maybe useful to take this back a stage to pointers on meal planning? The initial monthly plans are great & hopefully having used this the user will have gained some confidence, and I know you are planning on adding notes about variations. But ultimately I think it may be helpful for the user to know how to put together his/her own plan?

whatatwit

I'm back from work.

Had a few thoughts about this and no doubt you have already come up with a few pointers, but here are mine

Prior to B-day,
Print off or write down the recipes, having a hard copy is great as you can make notes or adjust amounts to suit.
Have a good read through each recipe and check up on any new techniques.
Have a trial run of a new recipe, it's no good making a gallon of hot and spicy chilli if your family don't like it.
Scale up the recipe and write the new amounts down.
A trial run will also give chance for you to make sure a recipe works, there are lots that don't and often the cooking times are out.
Write out a shopping list of everything, don't think oh yes that's in the cupboard as there may not be enough.
Then check what you already have and what you need to get.
Do the same for containers for the freezer and work out a labelling system.
Bear in mind it may be easier and less wasteful to freeze in portions of 1 or 2 rather than all in 4s.

Day before.

Check through recipes and put to soak any pulses that need soaking.
Take the minced beef mountain out of the freezer and check there is enough space for the new goodies heading that way.

On the day.

Start with a clean kitchen, plenty of hot water and washing up liquid.
Consult the timeplan and select the first recipe.
Weigh out ingredients ! la delia, hopefully stops any rushed mix up where 3 teaspoons of salt becomes 3 tablespoons.
One first recipe is underway, have a quick wash up and then from the timeplan start second recipe.


To create a timeplan.

If planning for a meal to be served at a set time, then it is easier to work backwards.
But for batch cooking where it's heading for the freezer, start at the beginning.

If you are having a savoury day, where lots of chopped onions for example are required, then it is much easier to do these in one go. Check each recipe and gather what's needed, chop required amount for each and then put into a bowl and put with the recipe, it can be hard to tell how many onions there are once chopped.
If space allows then cluster together ingredients for each recipe.
Usually start with what will need cooking for the longest time or....what needs time to cool or rise.

Batch day starts at 10am.
Planned recipes.
Bread.
Pastry.
Chilli.
Bolognaise.
Muffins.


10am...recipe 1 bread, gather and weigh out ingredients.
10.05 mix dough and knead, put to rise.
10.20...recipe 2 pastry, gather and weigh ingredients.
10.25...make pastry, divide into required amounts and put to chill.
10.40...wash up.
10.45...check bread dough.
10.50...chop onions for recipes 3 & 4.
10.55...make chilli and leave to simmer.
11.10...check dough and knock back if ready, shape as desired, leave to rise, put oven on to heat.
11.25....make bolognaise and leave to simmer.
11.40....wash up.
11.50...check dough and bake if ready.
11.55...remove pastry from fridge and roll out to desired shape/size.

Timeplan will then depend upon what the pastry is being used for.
Muffins to follow pastry.
Chilli & bolognaise once cooked should be portioned and allowed to cool as quickly as possible then lids sealed and labelled and into freezer.


Weezl, sorry if this is rather a long post, I hope it's what you were after it's hard to do a timeplan without actual timings from recipes and I will confess it's ages since I made bread by hand and my proving times could be way out.

Nargleblast

I would suggest that anyone planning to start batch cooking who has not done it before may find planning a whole list of items to cook in one day a bit scary. In that case they should approach it slowly. Start by planning to batch cook just 2 items on a batch cooking day. After a couple of weeks or so, once they have got the timings and organising down to a fine art, then start batch cooking 3 items on that day. After a few weeks they can add in a fourth then a fifth item until they can do it all backwards with one hand tied behind their backs! As others have said, it is all down to practice and experience, with a fair bit of trial and error thrown in!

brighthair

weezl74 wrote: »

thorough and fantastic penny as ever

Do you think you learnt about the right order by trial and error, or did someone show you, or from tips on here?

I'm keen that this isn't 'give 'em a fish and feed em for a day' but rather teaching (perhaps) to eat for life. So I'm wanting it to be as much as possible about encouraging the cook to plan it for herself with our tips, if that makes sense?

So I'm intrigued by how everyone on here learnt to batch cook

I didn't really learn! Only by trial and error, and that I live on my own so my batch cooking is a bit different and not quite as advanced. Basically I went to the supermarket, bought a whole load of plastic single portion containers and ingredients for 3 different meals. I made sausage casserole, pea and ham soup and corned beef hash. Divided it all up and froze it. Now I keep an eye on the freezer, and when my individual portions are getting low, I make maybe one or two things depending on whats left. I use loads of veg in whatever I make so it's a meal in one that I can eat at home or take to work and not have to bother about serving veg with it

applemella

When I first started batch cooking I would take similar ingredients eg 5lb mince-brown it all with onions and then separate into bolgnaise, chilli, mince in gravy and mince and bean pie filling. Make pastry for pies as mince cooking and leave in fridge until filling ready to make pies.
Once whole lot had cooled bag or put into tubs.