good cooks and other food snobs - share your shortcuts?

[Anonymous]

Bake ribs for an hour at 325 the night before or during the weekend. When you're ready for ribs during the week, put the ribs & veggies (could be corn or cut up peppers/squash/zucchini) on the grill. Put some BBQ sauce on the ribs when the veggies are almost done and dinner is ready.

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of great suggestions here. We're vegetarians so one shortcut I use fairly often is to buy chopped onions and celery at Whole Foods or the mirepoix at Trader Joe's. I also buy Whole Foods grill trays and saute the veggies, throw them on the Griddler, or roast them for pasta and veg tacos.

I make a lot of soups and chilis and freeze portions of them. I also make whole grain pancakes with walnuts and blueberries or chocolate chips and freeze the extras for my DC's breakfast during the week.

I cook dried beans and chickpeas in the slow cooker, either soaking them overnight or using the fast-soak method. Then I incorporate them into tacos, burrito bowls, hummus, etc. I'm trying to get entirely away from cans due to BPA.

[Anonymous]

OP, when I was in a rut, I found some inspiration from the Eating Well website.

I had no idea you could freeze meat in its marinade. Keep these ideas coming...

[Anonymous]

I was never a good cook (thought I should confess), but I now do cook (versus microwave a frozen meal).

One of the things that has really changed my life is planning a week's meals in advance. The beauty of this is so that you can do things the night before to help dinner go more quickly.

Another huge timesaver for me is a rice cooker with a timer. I find stir-fry to be an easy, quick meal, but the rice takes forever (I don't like instant rice). I also buy chicken on sale, and pre-cut it into stir-fry size and freeze (either plain or in marinade). Then you put it in the fridge the night before and then you can just dump it into the wok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:bags of frozen chopped onions and prechopped celery.

I hate cutting onions, this sounds like a great shortcut, but... Do frozen chopped onions preserve well? I thought they'd go mushy when defrosted, or do you not let them thaw completely?

[Anonymous]

Another thing that freezes (apparently) is beans -- you can either soak them overnight + then freeze or soak overnight, cook + then freeze. I also am trying to avoid BPA.

Other quick dinners: ground turkey tacos (with black beans + a bunch of cilantro); grilled meats (we've been getting away with grilling extra sausages + steak and eating cold in salads the next night); quiche (I love to make an extra and stick it in the freezer already cooked to have on hand); felafel (the frozen felafel from Costco is actually decent) with salad stuff + hummus to make pita sandwiches -- there's a whole wheat Naan at Whole Foods that is *great* if you toast it and then put a little garlic salt/butter on it -- or nothing if you're going to make a sandwich out of it. I keep extra packs of those in the freezer too.

Agreed about making triple amounts of anything we like that freezes well, so worth the effort. I actually got a chest freezer and went on a rampage making extra dinners since I am also a food snob but wanted to be able to throw something together. So far we've frozen: chicken enchiladas, lasagna, chicken parm, veggie/beef/chicken stock; extra loaves of bread; homemade pumpkin ravioli (I made them with wonton wrappers to save time); polenta triangles; pesto; asstd soups; and a citrus chicken tagine that we totally love that we serve with whole wheat couscous (whole dinner takes 5 mins to reheat and I swear tastes great reheated).


http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=226704

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:bags of frozen chopped onions and prechopped celery.

I hate cutting onions, this sounds like a great shortcut, but... Do frozen chopped onions preserve well? I thought they'd go mushy when defrosted, or do you not let them thaw completely?

Yes, the work great! I never would have considered this until one New York Times article (I think) came out talking about how all these famous French chefs have a little secret and use frozen onions.

They do lose their crispness when you freeze them, so you can only use them for soups and stews, dishes where they would get soft and mushy anyhow -- not for a stir fry where you want the onion to still have a bit of crisp to it.

[Anonymous]

Frenched rack of lamb.

Whisk equal parts olive oil and dijon mustard. Coat lamb. Roll lamb in breadcrumbs, spray on pam or drizzle with more olive oil. Cook at 400 for 35 minutes. Could probably use indirect heat on grill as well. Serve with green beans sauteed in garlic and oil.

[Anonymous]

Such great ideas but I cannot eat fish that was not swimming in the ocean in the morning and chicken or beef that has been frozen should just go in the trash I think. The grill pan has become my friend and as long as the veggies are fresh I can steam them in a glad steam bag. That probably isn't healthy. Same goes for shrimp and lobster. So during the week I just keep it simple. Grill some chicken or fish and steam up fresh veggies. I do have to stop at the fish market on the way home although the fresh chicken keeps ok in the fridge for a day or two.

[Anonymous]

PP again and at least two nights in the summer it is salads with some fish or chicken on top.