Thanksgiving is one of those grandiose meals where you spend most of the day cooking it, devour it in 20 minutes tops, and then find the hurricane wreckage left in the kitchen. Regular weeknight meals should not look the same or give you a defeated feeling. Let me help by offering 10 “shortcuts” so you don’t trash the kitchen!
On a recent poll of biggest kitchen challenges, a friend brought this one up. “I just hate that making one meal trashes the whole kitchen!” she responded. And boy, have I felt that pain…still do some days. But let’s look at some quick ways we can keep that from happening.
The 10 “shortcuts”
1) Use a 1 tsp measure for not just 1 tsp, but also ½ tsp, ¼ tsp, ½ Tbsp and 1 Tbsp (if you don’t understand the equivalence between teaspoons and Tablespoons, see the explanation here)
Start with light colored spices, then darker, then red ones, and then liquids. For example, when I make breakfast sausage, or Italian sausage, I use a one teaspoon measuring spoon for ALL the spices…even the smaller amounts. You can eyeball those smaller things and save washing a bunch of spoons. Just one more reason I like cooking over baking…you don’t have to be exact!
2) Use a ½ cup measure for not only ½ cup but also ¼ cup and 1 cup measurements. I think this one is pretty obvious, but again, you’ll need to use your eyes to judge the smaller measurements.
3) Use the same pan for everything in a recipe if you can. If the recipe says to cook part of the ingredients in one pan and part in another, I simply cook those first ingredients, then move ’em onto a plate and cover in my microwave to keep warm (it’s off, it’s just an enclosed space).
4) If you do #3, when you put those ingredients back in your pan, wipe off the plate and use it as your supper dish. The exception here would be if it held meat that wasn’t fully cooked. Otherwise, you’re gonna be putting those same ingredients right back on there in the finished meal.
5) Did you use a fork to poke hard squash or potatoes or test these for doneness? Rinse it off, and it’s your supper fork (again, I don’t do this with forks that have been in undercooked meat).
6) Plan for efficiency. If you’ll use something with lots of parts like a spiralizer, try not to use any other tools for that meal that have lots of parts…in other words, plan to consolidate or conserve the total # of tools or parts you’re using.
7) The InstantPot has 3 parts to clean, and I always need to scrub the insert extra to get it fully clean. Don’t use the InstantPot for cooking times of less than 15 minutes unless you are “batch” boiling eggs! (see those details here)
8) Use the InstantPot back to back when “batch” cooking eggs or potatoes without washing the parts. Pour out the old water, put in new water, reseat the gasket on the cover, and go again. (see the link for eggs in #7; see details on baked potatoes in the InstantPot here)
9) Can you mix your ingredients right IN the baking dish or ON the half baker’s sheet (a baking sheet with a lip on all sides)? If you can, then you might save yourself a dirty mixing bowl. A variation on this: I make my chorizo, then put my eggs right in the skillet with it and scramble all together!
10) Focus on one pot meals. Try to keep meals with an entrée and sides to once a week. This is also a great time and storage saver!
I dare ya not to trash the kitchen!
That’s right I double dog dare ya! I made chorizo and eggs tonight (11 ingredients) and only dirtied 1 teaspoon, 1 spatula, and one skillet…certainly something I can recover from before bedtime. Can you beat this? What’s your best record for least tools used? I wanna hear about it in the comments below!
Want other “shortcut” ideas? Try this…
