Have The Right Equipment
The essential types of pots for one-pot meals are skillets, roasting pans, casserole dishes, crock pots, and salad bowls. Other essential cooking equipment is one or two saucepans and three cutting boards, one for meats, one for fruit, and one for veggies. Also, invest in a good chef’s knife, paring knife, and a knife sharpener.
Read Recipes Beforehand
When you’re ready to cook, take a moment and read the recipe. Keep in mind the subtle conventions of recipe writing. The most important convention is that the commas in the ingredient list really do matter.
Example:
Calls for one pound of beef tenderloin and you trim the fat off.
Calls for one pound pre-trimmed beef tenderloin.
Grocery Shop Smart
Make a weekly plan of what you’re going to cook, read over the recipes, and write a detailed shopping list. For a quicker shopping trip, organize your shopping list by aisle. Try breaking it into sections like produce, meat and seafood, dry goods, freezer, dairy, refrigerated, and the bakery/deli.
Organize Your Cooking Space
Create a well-lit, clutter-free prep space in the kitchen that has space for a cutting board, ingredients, bowls, etc. Keep knives and a trash can closeby to get scraps out of the way.
Setup Before Cooking
Once you’ve read the recipe, pull out all the ingredients from the refrigerator, pantry, and cabinets and set up the work space. Leave meats in the refrigerator until closer to when you’re ready to chop and prep it. If you don’t have enough room on the cutting board to keep all the chopped ingredients organized, just throw them in some small bowls.
