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

kippers

rachbc wrote: »

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

Thats exactly what i do with meals like spag bog, chilli, pasta sauce. However, i do have a day making lots of portions of cakes and bread

esmf73

Ok,
What I mean by diarise it, is section the whole day off in your diary, let your children and spouse know. Ideally try and farm the children out somewhere. Also write in your diary the soaking day (complete with timings) so example - Friday noon - red kidney beans soak for 24hrs and then boil for 1 hr; 3pm soup mix soak for 1 hour. Also write in the shopping day so that you know that you have enough time to shop before picking children up from school etc.

Step 6 - Physically get the containers you'll be using out of the cupboard and put them into the oven to see how many you can easily fit in. Remembering to allow space for oven gloves etc. I hope it goes without saying that these should all be dishes that would be cooked at the same temperature.

Also - if you're cooking a lot of different dishes in the oven at the same time, you need to be aware that you might have to leave them in for longer to ensure that they're cooked.

Another thing. Before you start cooking, fill your sink with very very hot soapy water so that you can put the dirty dishes in the water to soak and then wash them up quickly when you have a moment.

Also - fill the kettle so you can have a cup of tea when you're waiting for the dishes to cook in the oven and you've washed up the dirties. I always try and fill the dishwasher as much as possible!!!

Winged_one

I am loving all the tips. I keep planning a full day's batch cooking, but never manage it. Hopefully, when I have emptied the freezer (working on it at the mo) and the cupboards, and have spent the day before doing a LARGE supermarket shop (up north), I will do a decent batch cooking session including baking.

But one thing I DO do, is that every Sunday, I make use of the oven on anyway for the roast, and my time in the kitchen when I have to watch things anyway. I then make a double, or treble, batch of a dinner for Monday and freeze the spare portions. Which can be an easy way to get someone into the notion. So it's an easy dinner on Mondays (either totally in the oven hot when we get in, or just needs heating with freshly cooked pasta or rice).

Good dinners for this are:
Shepherd's pie (actually it's cottage, but Mum always called it shep)
Smoked fish and brocolli pie (both with mash tops)
Rogan josh (lamb curry)
Chilli
Spag Bol
Lasagne
Tomato sauce for pasta (to add different meats/veggies to when reheating)
Chicken and mushrooms in creamy sauce

When I was getting ready for a family death recently, I spent a few of my morning swims working out a plan for doing dinners for feeding my own household, and my grandmother's (as there would be loads there and no one would think of "proper dinners"). This involved a shepherd's pie to feed about 8 in a large dish, a chicken and mushroom pie (again mash top) to also feed about 8, both for my Gran's house, and a large pot of spag bol for my house.

The plan was to peel and boil a large pot of potatoes.
Whizz up about 5 onions, brown in other large pot. Add the garlic (about 4 cloves only here).
Add the mince and brown (about 1kg).
Split the mix in 2, in the smaller pot putting more garlic in with tinned toms, tinned tom puree, oregano and basil, spoonful of sugar, salt and pepper.
In the original pot, add 3 carrots which had been chopped in FP, a decent couple of handfulls of frozen peas, beef stock, worcestershire sauce, squeeze of tom puree (perhaps a spoonful from a second tin, remainder going into spag sauce).
Leave both to simmer.
Spuds should be ready, so drain, add butter and milk, mash.
Chop 6 chicken breasts and brown. (I had a plan which allowed me to get a whole, or a couple of trays of thighs or similar, and cook in slow cooker with stock veggies, as step 1 before spuds, if time and my energy allowed - or revert to convenience and just chop and fry boneless breasts). Put into the serving dish and fry off the mushrooms. Save any juices as the various batches are done - for the sauce.
Make a white wine and cream sauce using any juices and chicken stock (hopefully from SC process, or pre-frozen). Pour over. Top with mash, and breadcrumbs, some grated cheese (a mild one, perhaps gruyere).
If did manage the SC for chick, throw out bones, but having kept some chick aside from pie, make remainder of stock and veggies into soup.
Make up shep pie, using meat sauce, mash, and some grated cheese (a stronger one, like cheddar). No breadcrumbs means easy to tell which one is which.

Not quite the same, but an idea of how it works for me. And all those dishes can be frozen very successfully.

ellemm

Interesting thread :T enjoying the different comments.

I do some batch cooking as like to be organised when I come home from work and have HM meals out of the freezer ready to go on.

I do much the same as rachbc, Nargleblast and Applemella, have already said and find this works well for me.

Been getting a bit more ambitious lately though and sometimes do a bit of baking if the oven is on anyway.
My main problem is I only have a fridge freezer so not a lot of space.

brighthair

oh I should also add to this - check there is enough room in your freezer!!! I am awful for buying ingredients and getting ready to do a mss cook and then opening the freezer to find there is NO room :-)

Kitchenbunny

When I'm having a batch cooking day, I look at what I've got in and then scour the recipe books to find something to make around that. For example, at the moment I've got a big tub of apple chunks in the freezer which were stewed with a bit of cinnamon to save them going off. I've also got some spinach and other vegetables which I need to use up. So first things first I make a list of things I need to use:

Apple chunks
Spinach
Broccoli, etc.

Then I make another list of the recipes I want to make:

Spiced Apple Muffins
Vegetable bhajis
Chicken and vegetable pie filling
Roasted Vegetable puff pastry tarts (main meal for the evening - something quick and filling the oven)

And then yet another list of the extra shopping items I'll need:

Block of puff pastry
2 x chicken drumsticks
Additional storage tubs/bags for the freezer, etc

I do all of these in advance of the batch cooking day. Then I look at it logistically; I want to make the best use of the oven so I look for recipes that cook for the same amount of time at similar temperatures. I know that if I turn my muffin tin so it is put in with the short edge to the back of the oven I can get a thin baking tray alongside with some of the bhajis on, leaving me another shelf free. On that shelf I'd look to see what other things I could make that would cook quickly at a slightly lower temperature and make everything ready to go in at the same time.

The evening before I'd take everything out of the freezer I need to defrost ready for the morning.

On the day, I'd roll out the puff pastry, cut it to size and leave it on a greased baking tray in the fridge. Then, I'd bulk prepare all the vegetables I'd need and put them to one side. Then prepare the other ingredients and start off the pie filling using the slow cooker and heating the oven - that can be cooking all day while you do other things. Make the muffins and put into individual cases in the muffin tray and set aside. Make the bhajis and put them on a narrow tray and then preheat the oven. Get the puff pastry trays from the fridge and when the oven is up to temperature, put everything in and let them cook. Remove when done and allow to cool, and the oven is free for the next batch of stuff.

So that you can have a break and allow a bit of time to clear sides, I'd make the next stint things that need a little longer in the oven. The vegetables could be roasted on one shelf, and a chicken perhaps on the other for cold meats, pies, etc. Whenever I roast a chicken I always make some bacon stuffing and put that on the shelf alongside - except I always make double quantity and make it loaf shaped to make it easier to carve for sandwiches. For hob-top batch cooking I find the biggest saucepan I can find and make a big batch of one base sauce, and then transfer smaller amounts to other saucepans to turn into other dishes.

1. Big batch of tomato sauce with mince (say 12 portions)
2. Divide in half. Half gets chilli powder and beans added to it (6 portions chilli con carne)
3. Keep the rest as Bolognese sauce, ready for use in dishes like lasagne or moussaka.

Sorry for the ramble Hope that helps.

KB xx

mummyslittleboy

I tend to batch cook as I am cooking other meals like others have already said so when I am cooking a meal ie cottage pie I will cook enough for 4 and freeze 3 and we have one for tea otherwise I think I would never do it, I dont have people to farm the kids out to so we do have baking afternoons regularly and what I do is melt some chocolate for them and get them to make rice crispie cakes while it leaves me to do cakes, brownies and plenty of cookie dough I always prepare enough cookie dough to last a 2-3 weeks at a time.

If I am going to do a baking day this is what i do.

1 you decide what you are going to cook and if you need other ingrediants list what you need to buy in.

2 Go to shop and buy your ingrediants checking whoopsies first!

3 Make sure I have organised somethig for kids to do rice crispie cake or biscuits or just make them some dough to experiment with they can make all sorts out of it and you can cook it at the end if you want but this is great at keeping kids quiet leaving you to get on.Or make them some play dough this will keep them quiet for some time just make sure they have their own rolling pin!!

4 once I have prepared everything and have nothing to do other than wait for things to cook I make up enough cookie dough to keep us going and stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours and then transfer to the freezer.

5 always make sure the kitchen is clean before you start and once you finish.

6 If you have never batch cooked before take it easy dont panic make sure you have enough time to do it even if you only do one or two different meals to start with to break yourself in dont think you can't do it because everyone can it just takes time and plenty of trial and error (well in my case anyway:o)

queen_of_string

I did cookery o level 24yrs ago . I know then for the final exam you ahd to prepare and serve a 3 course meal, to a budget and part of the final exam was the timeplan!! Who knew something from school would be useful! I only took cookery because everything else I was doing was maths and science and a bit dry, and the only other option was art, and I cant draw .

I think I mostly learnt about big batch cooking due to the frequent gluts of things from my Dad's garden. On various weekends, there would be so much stuff in the kitchen, I or occassionaly, a parent, would feel compelled to do something with it before it went off. I never did work out much to do with runner beans though .

The biggest time saver I have now is buying mince in bulk, frying it all off and then portioning it and freezing it. It saves more time than you would believe, to just pull a bag from the freezer and rustle up something, compared to starting from raw.

The only useful tip I can add for the mythical family, which might seem counter intuitive given you're about to make a mess, is : start with a clean kitchen. These are meals that aren't going to be eaten immediately so food hygiene is extra important and, it's a lot easier when you're just wiping up newly made mess off a clean surface than a slightly grubbier one.