How You Can Make Cooking Easier: 6 Helpful Tips

For some people, cooking is an enjoyable activity. For others, it’s more of a chore – something that they don’t necessarily enjoy, but that they need to do. No matter where you fall, there’s no denying that it’s always helpful to be able to quickly make a meal without much hassle. Cooking easy food is especially nice if you are cooking for your whole family on a weeknight. That’s why this post will be walking you through some things that you can do to make cooking easier, and hopefully, less stressful.

Tips For Easy Cooking That Is More Enjoyable

To me, one of the best ways to make cooking more enjoyable is to make it easier. When you successfully create a meal you and your family enjoy the taste of, it will make you feel proud and satisfied. The dread of cooking goes away if you are receiving positive feedback. So here is how to make dinner easier!

Use the right equipment

If you don’t have the necessary equipment or appliances needed for your food, it’s bound to be a struggle. Of course, this can refer to bigger items, as these can certainly make cooking easier. For example, an electric mixer will make things much easier than mixing items by hand. Additionally, an air fryer can often cook things at a quicker speed than a normal oven. The slow cooker and instant pot are also helpful in preparing the best easy dinner ideas.

But if you don’t have money for these things, you can still make your equipment work more effectively, which will, in turn, make cooking easier for you. One way that you can achieve this is to get a sharpening stone so that you can keep your knives sharp. It’s much easier and quicker to chop things with a sharp knife than to struggle with a dull one.  This makes a huge difference in the ease of cooking.

Also using the correct kitchen utensils makes for a better meal. A slotted spoon for instance ,can help you serve without getting to much of the cooking liquid in the dish. This little things help improve your dish and make the payoff on cooking better.

Plan your meals ahead of time

Plan your meals ahead of time so that you know what you will be making throughout the week. Meal planning is huge. No one wants to come home after a long day at work and think, “What I am going to cook? Do I have the ingredients I need?” On your days off, plan your meals. Ideally this would be 7 days at a time but even 2-3 days ahead will help tremendously. And create your shopping list accordingly. If you run out of pantry staples like olive oil during the week, always add them to a running list so you will have the essentials you need for cooking.

Do Meal Prep On Days Off

Meal prep has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, and it’s easy to see why. If you spend a few hours each week preparing large batches of food that will last you up to a week, you will save time and money, and it will be easier for you to stick to healthy eating. Even getting the veggie prep time out of the way ahead of time can result in a much easier home-cooked meal. If you are interested in giving meal prep a try, click here for some beginner-friendly tips. 

Follow a recipe

Some people like to cook intuitively and experiment with different things as they go, but if you are new to cooking, this could make you feel overwhelmed and stressed out. Instead, it’s a good idea to follow recipes for your meals, until you grow more comfortable.

Print out your favorite recipes that you have enjoyed and that you can make easily. This will also give you some easy meals to fall back on whenever you need to whip something up quickly. If you are cooking for your family, you should look into some family dinner ideas. 

Cooking Easy Food

Let’s face it. A recipe for Julia Child’s French Bouillabaisse is going to be way more complicated and difficult to make than a simple recipe for a pasta dish. If you are not an experienced cook, choose easy dinner recipes that will allow you to have easy wins.

If you want to cook easy food, think of quick, satisfying categories of food that require minimal effort.

For example, eggs. They are so fast to cook and they can used countless ways from scrabbled or fried to boiled. Breakfast for easy weeknight dinners can be fun and delicious. You can also try a fun fritatta or easy egg muffins.

Beans are another easy food to cook. Canned beans are basically ready to eat- you just have to add some spices and warm them up! Try black beans with garlic and cumin. Or red kidney beans with diced bell pepper, onions, and celery. Or try a lentil soup. Refried beans can be used on nachos or in burritos. There are so many fast, delicious dinner ideas with beans.

One of personal favorite dishes for cooking easy food is pasta. Let’s face, all you have to do is add some tomato sauce and parmesan cheese and you have a winner. It is perfect for busy weeknights. But you can also try out lots of easy new variations with pesto sauce, cream sauces, fresh vegetables and herbs. There are endless combinations of delicious pasta.

Chicken breasts and ground beef are my favorite meats for cooking easy food. They both cook up pretty quickly and easily. They can be used in a ton of different simple recipes the entire family will love.

As you cook more often, create a list of quick dinner ideas that worked out well for you. Being able to refer back to this will also save you a ton of time brainstorming healthy weeknight dinner ideas.

Ask for help

There’s no need to do everything by yourself, so if you feel that keeping up with cooking and everything else is too much to handle, there’s no shame in asking for help.

You can ask your partner for help, or your children, if they are old enough. It’s always good for children to learn how to cook. You can also use meal services now and then. If you sometimes don’t have time or energy to cook an entire meal, you can get help from your grocery store. A store-bought rotisserie chicken served with a simple salad is always an easy healthy meal. And if you end up popping a frozen pizza in the oven one night, that’s okay too – it happens to everyone every once in a while!

Conclusion

So if you want to make cooking easier, my main tips are to have the right equipment and plan your meals ahead of time. You might try doing some meal prep ahead of time and definitely choose easy recipes like sheet pan chicken fajitas. You don’t need fancy cooking techniques. Cooking easy food is often more rewarding and enjoyable. What’s for dinner tonight?

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