Last week, I gave a few tips for increasing your speed in the kitchen with the promise to bring more kitchen time saving tips in the future. Today’s idea is not my own but was originally found in The Garden Of Eating: A Produce-dominated Diet & Cookbook
She coined the phrase”The Pemmican Principle” as a tribute to the wisdom of Native Americans who would prepare large amounts of food at one time for the days ahead, like pemmican (a combination of dried meat, fat and berries-the original protein bar!).
Rachel has this to say
” Cooking every meal from scratch, sun up to sun down is impractical. And why cook for a single meal when you can make enough for 2 or 3 meals at a time? What’s the biggest stumbling block that stops you from eating healthy meals after you’ve resolved to change your way? Not having healthy food on hand when hunger strikes. “
For those of you who do once a week freezer meals (or monthly), you are already using this principle. I myself used to enjoy making freezer meals. However, I found that as my diet started to center more on fresh vegetables and when we took dairy out of our diet, many of the dishes that work best for freezing were no longer in our diet. This transitioned me to making my meals daily with only occasional freezer meals.
So Rachel’s method, which we will get to more in a second, made a lot of sense to me. Rachel’s diet includes a very high amount of fresh produce, not something you can freeze easily, so if you don’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen everyday, you need a new way to cook. I recently decided to try this method myself because I needed to start being a little more “frugal” with my time in the kitchen. I actually love being in the kitchen creating new dishes, but I have a lot of other responsibilities. While I will be doing some freezer meals, I knew I needed a method that would help me with my “style” of cooking-fresh produce, lots of salads, etc. So I am excited to see how this will work for me.
Let’s get more to the method of it. Her method involves “cooking in blocks”.
“The best way to get a running start or the week is to set aside a 4 hour block of time on Saturday or Sunday. You’re not going to make a week’s worth of food in an afternoon. The food wouldn’t be fresh, flavorful or nutritious if you did that. What you are going to do is turn your refrigerator into a healthy salad bar and deli and set yourself up for the first half to three quarters of the week. The exceptions are salad dressings, marinades, toasted nuts, salsa, chutney, ketchup, and barbecue sauces, which can be made to last for a week or 2 at a time. If you get a head start it won’t take as much effort to keep the food flowing throughout the week.
If you can’t spend that much time all at once, set up a couple of 2 hour blocks of time to wash, chop, and cook foods and dishes with 2,3, or 4 meals or days in mind. You might cook 2 chickens or turkey breasts at once, bake 6-8 sweet potatoes and fix 2 batches or sauteed greens, then freeze half of the food in meal-size portions so you have fresh food for a few days and frozen food for future meals.”
Rachel gives an entire chapter in her cookbook unpacking this principle specifically for the type of diet her book suggests. I wanted to unpack it for all types of diets and give a few of my own ideas.
The biggest advantage of working in cooking blocks is that it efficiently uses your time and energy. While one dish is cooking, you can be prepping the next. It’s just as easy to cook two chickens as one, and then you will have plenty of leftover meat for many meals in the future.
Here is an example of how Rachel prepares food in a short amount of time (1 1/2 hours). Notice her diet consists or tubers, vegetables and fruits, and meats.
“If your kitchen is well stocked and organized, you have a good sharp vegetable knife (or chef’s knife), and you work methodically, you can turn out an amazing amount of food in 1 and 1/2 hours of hands-on time-enough for 6 or more meals {note: Rachel is cooking for two people}. Here’s an example of what I did late one afternoon in under 90 minutes; it might take you longer, but with practice, you’ll pick up speed.
*chopped two ponds of carrots; started Roasted Carrots (6-8 servings)
*peeled and chopped 2 pounds of potatoes; started Herb Roasted Potatoes (6-8 servings)
*chopped two pounds of onions; assembled Balsamic Roasted Onions (6-8 servings)
*blended a double batch of Sesame, Garlic, Chive Dressing (16 servings)
*chopped 1 onion and 2 pounds of collards;set aside to cook the next day (6 servings)
*assembled a Basic Green Salad (4-6 servings)
*cooked bison burgers on top of the range (4-6 servings)
*Seasoned Smokey Roasted Turkey Bread and started it when the carrots, onions and potatoes came out of the oven (12 servings)
*baked 6 small to medium sweet potatoes with turkey (6 servings)Prepared according to our recipes, we enjoyed burgers with green salad, roasted vegetables and tahini dressing for dinner, with fresh fruit for dessert. We had enough to repeat the meal the next day, with leftover roasted veggies for a third day and dressing for two weeks. While we ate dinner, the turkey and sweet potatoes baked and we had enough of that meals for 3 meals and turkey for the freezer. I cooked the greens and onions the next morning for breakfast and had enough to serve with dinner and a meal the day after. “
Now that’s what I call being productive and time efficient! Here’s a few ideas I have to utilize with this method. The point is not to take all of your time out of the kitchen everyday, but to “set yourself up” for much less work throughout the week.
Remake leftovers
If you cook two chickens, the first night you can eat roast chicken. Another night you can have chicken salad sandwiches, and a third night you can make chicken curry-all out of the leftover chicken (for just a few of many suggestions). Leftover pot roast can be made into beef stew, shredded beef tacos, or even tossed into a green salad cold. While all of these dishes will mean some work the night of, the long cooking times will be eliminated as you are working with cooked meat. And if on your cooking day, you start a pot of stock using the chicken bones, then you will have an easy soup just steps away from your dinner table.
Cook large pots of grains or beans and make them into different meals during the week. For example, you can cook a big pot of rice one day and have it hot (say with your roasted chicken and a gravy made out of the drippings), then use the leftover rice to make fried rice (using some of your leftover chicken) the next day. Perhaps for a quick lunch you can make make an Italian Rice Salad.
Or what about beans? Make a big pot of black beans. Turn some of them into a bean soup. On Mexican night, mash them and re-fry them in lard, or toss them with Mexican seasonings and some leftover chicken for chicken black bean taco filling. Then on another night toss the beans cold and drained into a green salad for some extra protein punch (we love beans in our green salads!).
Prep Your Vegetables
Besides the cost, sometimes my biggest hang up in eating enough produce is the time factor. Dinner time comes and I am busy preparing several different things, and then on top of it, I need to wash and dry lettuce and chop up numerous vegetables to steam. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen when I am in a rush. What I love is opening my fridge to washed, dried and bagged lettuce (done myself) and prepped vegetables. It makes dinner preparation so much easier (and we eat so much more vegetables this way) when I’ve done a little preparation ahead of time.
I find buying heads of lettuce from local farmers a good way to get really fresh greens (the nutrient profile of greens goes down every single day after they are picked, which is why I try to avoid bagged “old” lettuce when I can). I take it home, and with the help of my trusty lettuce spinner (This is the one
One of our favorite “GAPS” breakfasts is sauteed zucchini with fried eggs and/or sausage patties. It’s a lot easier to throw together in the morning if I have the zucchini already prepped and ready to go.
Or, like Rachel, you can even cook batch of certain vegetable dishes to be reheated or served cold.
Pre-make Sauces and Dressings
There is a reason people buy bottled marinades and salad dressings, they are convenient. However, they really don’t take much time at all to make. I think it’s more the “stress” if you will, of having yet one more thing to think about during dinner prep. If you pre-make all of those sauces, dressings, and marinades as Rachel suggests before hand, they will not only be much healthier, but just as convenient when the time comes to use them.
Make a Pot of Soup…or a Couple
We love soups in our family and they are generally quite easy to make too. Throw together a few soups on one day, and freeze some of them for later. Have soup for dinner and a few lunches that week. A yummy, cheap, healthy way that is fast too (and it’s easy to make a few pots at once). And soups are very easy to reheat too.
Utilize Your Oven Space
If you are going to cook for a few days in a couple hour time slot, you have the great opportunity to utilize your oven to be more energy efficient. Baking potatoes while meat roasts, or roasting vegetables (to be reheated later) while you cook a casserole can make double use of the energy and space of your oven. Even just cooking another dish right after your first is done is energy smart because the oven won’t have to reheat.
Disadvantages
There are a few disadvantages to this method. First, you will need to be organized with your meal planning. This can be hard for some people. Second, this method doesn’t work well for a lot of traditional American food, like casseroles which don’t reheat well nor can they be remade into another dish. This cooking style might not work well for everyone. You may at least need to adjust the way you cook to make this work. Third, it’s nutritionally best if you go and pick your own vegetables from the garden and prepare them for dinner right away. However, since many of us don’t have that option, this is a good compromise. Fourth, if you are slow in the kitchen, you could spend all day prepping in the kitchen at first instead of just a few hours. But as you practice you can definitely increase your speed. Fifth, for this method to be effective, being good at multi-tasking is a plus. Like a professional chef, keeping track of more than one dish at a time will make you more time efficient, but some people may find that frazzling.
Overall all, I think that this method can be helpful for many people and help them make better food choices without some of the stress of cooking in the kitchen for hours everyday. I would love to hear if any of you have done any part of this method and your own tips!
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Kim-
This is an awesome idea and very encouraging! Thanks for sharing this post! Now that I’m working part time and still homeschooling my kids I’ve been looking for ways to stream line my cooking in a way that allows us to still eat in a nourishing way!
I would just add that it also cuts down on the clean up work and dishes. Instead of getting it all out every day and having a huge mess to clean up and piles of dishes to do, you can make most of the mess just once or twice on the weekend and then have minimal mess on week nights.
=0)
True!
I think this method would be awesome if I didn’t have kids who demanded so much attention every five minutes whenever I’m in the kitchen! I have been trying to do my basic prep during their leisurely breakfast, that really helps when we get to the pre-dinner whines.
Even though I only have one child, I think that having a child was one reason I didn’t choose to try this method until now. Elena is three and at a much easier age to get things done (especially if I have planned activities for her), but I still plan on doing this on the weekend in prep for half the week when my husband is home to help with her. 🙂
I am a mother of five and have been using variations of this method for most of my adult life. I found that the kids often like to be part of the prep process and it is a good way to reinforce what they are learning in school. Doubling a batch?Addition or Multiplication. Dividing for storage? Subtraction or Division. The younger ones love to nibble on the produce and you can discuss colors, textures and shapes. Plus, it helps with the picky eathers. They “helped” prep everything and there are no “surprizes” in their food.
Overall, it is a win-win method for cooking nutritious meals in a time-efficient manner and make for rewarding family time as well.
I was wondering how you freeze your soups? I try to avoid plastic containers and have been using glass jars. They are difficult to move around in my chest freezer and they constantly break when thawing. These are the things I’ve tried:
Making sure the food isn’t hot before freezing it
Leaving the lid off while it freezes then putting it on after it’s frozen
I only fill the jar 3/4 full to leave room for freezing
Taking the lid off while it’s thawing
The jars seem to break more in thawing than anything else.
Ideas anyone?
Thanks!
Heidi,
I still have been freezing my soups in plastic (*gasp*) because I have had the same issue as you with glass jars. Do you thaw them at room temperature or in the refrigerator? It seems like room temperature would be the most shocking to the glass.
However, I think the main problem is that mason jars aren’t really made for freezing. There are some glass containers that are meant to be able to go into the freezer (I am sure Pyrex has some, for example), and you can also buy stainless steel containers that work in the freezer (but you may not want to put acidic soups in them). I plan on trying to build up my own collection as I can. 🙂
What size/type jars have you been using? I’ve had no trouble at all using wide-mouth pint and half-pint mason jars. At first I made a point of shaking the jars when they were not-quite-frozen to try to keep the soup from expanding and cracking the jar, but then I kept forgetting and not having any problems, so I dropped that. The jars I’ve been using have straight sides (unlike quart jars or regular mouth mason) so I only need to thaw partly then the block of soup slides right out into the pan. I usually do this at the last minute by running it under warm water or putting it in a bowl of water. A pint’s not much if you’re trying to store soup for the whole family, but I find these smaller sizes work well for things like chicken stock that are often just an ingredient in something else. And they’re a good size for lunches at our house when my husband isn’t home.
I used to have a similar problem with jars breaking, so I switched to this:
I wait until the soup has cooled completely (on the bench then in the fridge), then I put it in a rectangular plastic container to freeze, then as soon as it’s frozen, I take it out, wrap it in kitchen paper, label it and put it back into the freezer. To defrost I unwrap it and let it defrost in the saucepan I’m going to reheat it in.
It’s not a perfect method, I admit, but I got sick of broken jars and never found a way to avoid them more than half the time.
The risk of contamination is reduced by:
I only use plastics which are on the ‘safe’ list (I wrote an article about the different kinds of plastics for my website if you want more info on this: http://mypcos.info/1/q-a/why-should-people-avoid-plastic-food-containers
I limit the time the food is exposed to the plastic
I make sure that the temperature of the food is always cool when in contact with the plastic.
Anne
Thanks for all these ideas! I think I especially like the idea of freezing, then wrapping it in kitchen paper. I’m going to keep on the lookout for some stainless steel containers also.
Christy,
I mostly use quart jars but I use pint jars as well. You are right, they don’t break nearly as much as the quart jars. Thanks!
Thanks for all of these great ideas everyone!
Heidi
Heidi,
I also avoid plastic, so I bought some stainless steel containers with lids from a small Indian store near my house. I highly recommend it.
I forgot to say that this method also works well for people without much freezer space, unlike the freezer meals. Many of us would like to have premade meals, but don’t have the freezer space to freezer a lot of extra.
Love this!!! Always wanting to save time in the kitchen…
These are some really great tips. I know when we come back from the farmers market, we spend about an hour, washing all of our greens – for salads or sautees, that way we can cut out one of the major steps when it comes to salad making or sauteeing greens for breakfast in the morning. I also like to prepare extra roasted carrots and potatoes to either put on salads for the next few days, or throw into our breakfasts. I also love using one chicken to make 2 meals, and then a batch of stock.
I also soak and then cook big batches of beans, and put some in freezer bags for the freezer – ends up being the same convenience as canned beans. I do the same with fresh corn in the summer, or English peas in the spring.
This is a great method. It does take planning, but I believe that it is well worth it. My next thing to tackle is making condiments like you suggested. I do my own salad dressings already, but I am ready to take on ketchup, mayo and BBQ now!! 🙂
Great post!
This is a great way to combine ‘once a month cooking’ and real food. I’ve been doing some of it- I usually do a chicken on Mondays and we eat chicken-something for three nights in a row, and the same for beans for another two or three.
I like the idea of chopping a lot of veggies at once. I love salads with lots of toppings, but I usually don’t get my act together for ‘fancy salads’ very often, this would help speed that along!
Thanks for doing these posts Kimi. Many of your readers seem to have their act together in this area…but ‘m one who is a slowpoke in the kitchen and further slowed by 2 little ones so I appreciate the ideas!! One thing I’ve just started is using my vacuum sealer (Food Saver brand) to help keep things fresh….it has an attachment that works on Mason Jars, so I have gotten out my food processor to wash and prep my fresh veggies, then put them in jars and sealed them…keeps tham fresh and ready!! I also use it to freeze baby food in the small size of wide-mouthed jars and have no problems with them breaking.
We pressure cook two chickens at once then shred them and freeze them in wee bags to be used later on homemade wholewheat pizzas, in stir-fries, curries, etc. The bones we save in the freezer until we have a big pot full to boil for stock. The stock we then refreeze so when it comes to making soup we only have to defrost it and add ingredients to it.
My brother makes a delicious mince and veggie pie with partly wholemeal homemade pastry. He makes two lots of the mince and veggie mix at once then freezes one lot. When it comes to making dinner with the defrosted lot, he only has to make the pastry for the pie (and cook some more veggies).
My Mum makes a big pot of steak and kidney stew (delicious!) and freezes it in ice cream containers. It makes about 4-5 dinners (for my family of 7) when made into a pie, over roast potato slices, or boiled and buttered potatoes. Yum!
When food items that are usually expensive become very cheap ie capsicums
we buy quite a few of them at about 20c each, dice them and freeze them. At their price out of season (about $2 each) we simply don’t buy them.
We often get given large amounts of veggies and fruit (sometimes organic) so will process and freeze or bottle what we can’t use fresh.
We purchased the biggest freezer we could buy (without it being a walk-in freezer) and usually have it filled to the gunnels! It is so useful.
Always looking for ways to save time in the kitchen and I do eat healthier when I have veggies prepped in the refrigerator.
Thanks for sharing this info and book!
Thanks for this great post – going to link to it from our FB account. We do this in our One Easy System and it really makes the week go by so much smoother and meals are much more enjoyable. It’s also great to get kids involved in prepping veggies. Wonderful conversation, real life skills and they learn that people have to make time to feed themselves well. Thanks for all the wonderful info you provide! ~Angelle, NourishMD.com
do you have recipes for those yummy sounding meals you prepped? thanks for these ideas. i feel i spend all mmy day in the kitchen
a really coincidental title to me because i just got done making a batch of pemmican.
Thank you for sharing this great idea! I’m newly married and am still trying to figure out my routines for preparing meals, cleaning the house, and caring for our dog. I had been thinking for a while about ways that I could cut down on my cooking time. During the first month of our marriage, I felt like I was spending all day every weekday in the kitchen and was getting very worn out from it (not to mention feeling distracted by all the other projects that I needed to do but wasn’t doing). I read about a plan similar to this in the Williams-Sonoma Food Made Fast Weeknights Cookbook. They suggest a similar series of recipes for re-making leftover roasted chicken and another series for re-making leftover beef brisket. Receiving this advice again from your blog has helped me to hear it with a new perspective, think more about ways that I can implement it in my own schedule, and encouraged me in knowing that other people do this, too! I’m also encouraged to know that when I prepare green salads, fruit salads, and dressings, I can make large batches of them because they will last for a few days. I had been making them meal-by-meal, which takes a long time, as I’m sure you already know. I was so excited about the info in your post that I had my husband sit down and read it yesterday evening when he got home from work. I just inserted it between his usual daily blog readings! He was excited, too!
These are great suggestions! I think I will start prepping all my veggies at the beginning of the week. It is rather time consuming for me to chop vegetables before each meal. It never occurred to me to do all of this at one time beforehand. Thanks!
I have been baking two chickens with potatoes in the oven for a while, but now that we are getting a CSA basket of greens each week, I need to incorporate this idea to produce. I like your ideas. One other thing I do is steam a bunch of beets right after I buy them. Then they are available already cooked for salad or snacking. My daughter loves beets!
I was wondering how you store greens. When you say you bag them up is it in a plastic bag? Our CSA veggies don’t come in plastic. It’s a big bushel basket full. I love it, but I’m having a hard time keeping it fresh for the whole week. Some of the greens seem to wilt. It’s ok to add to soup but not much else.
I just now had the chance to read this, and I’m really encouraged by it. In January we started making the transition to cooking more nourishing foods and eating more real foods, and my husband’s biggest complaint is that our pantry and fridge may be full of food, but there isn’t anything in there that he can just heat & eat at a moment’s notice. His schedule can vary from week to week and he may not be home at our normal meal times.
I’ve started doubling my recipes so we have plenty of leftovers for him to either take with him or be able to heat & eat when he gets home. However, I still feel like I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen. We have two little ones as well, so when my husband isn’t home it’s hard to be quick in the kitchen. They like to stand on chairs at our kitchen island and watch me or nibble on veggies as I prepare them, so I try to take advantage of that time as much as possible.
I’ve gotten faster and more confident in my food prep now that we’ve been at this for several months, but I still need to work on planning my meals and planning for the prep work. You & the book you mentioned have both given some great ideas, and I’m looking forward to putting them into practice. Thanks for all the tips and encouragement on time management and efficiency in the kitchen! 😀
Kimi I had to come back to this post and reread it because I have been thinking about it so much. Really–it’s true, with four children, when I cook from scratch it is discouraging how much time I spend in the kitchen! I really needed your tips, and I sincerely want to THANK YOU for telling me about the Pemmican Principle! Beyond just this post, you are a great writer, and I appreciate your recipes. Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! 🙂 Now, tell me about those planned activities you have for Elena and I will be set! 😉
Lindsay
I really appreciated this post as it gave me some new ideas. I have been using a variation of this principle since we began cooking from scratch and eating only whole, nourishing foods, but you have helped me see new ways to streamline my process. I wanted to add that I also make fermented veggies while prepping veggies for the week. While I have everything out, washing and slicing produce, I find it very easy to throw together a fermented veggie mixture from the produce I am prepping. We eat a lot of fermented veggies (we eat them more like salad than condiments) so it is important for us to have new and interesting combos available.
I have tried many methods of freezing soups and have finally given in to the ziploc freezer bag. I do have some rectangular glass pyrex dishes but they take up so much room in the freezer that they aren’t practical and the freezer-safe mason jars are too small for our family. I find it much more space efficient to put my cooled soups into gallon freezer bags and lay them flat on the freezer shelf. Once they are frozen, you can stand them up against the side of the freezer like hanging file folders. Very space efficient and it allows us to have several different soup varieties in the freezer at once. I use the same method for beef or chicken broth.
I love using this technique! This is something I just began doing – cooking extra and then re-modeling “leftovers” into a new dish. I never knew it had a name! Was thrilled to find out ways to improve my technique, though. Thanks for sharing!
With a family of 8 the 1 1/2 hours of prep time (based on her #s) comes out to 1 1/2 meals. *sigh*
With a family of 8 the 1 1/2 hours of prep time (based on her #s) comes out to 1 1/2 meals. *sigh* I did however cook 17 lbs. of beans this weekend to freeze and put up. ; )
I’ve started doubling my recipes so we have plenty of leftovers for him to either take with him or be able to heat & eat when he gets home. However, I still feel like I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen. We have two little ones as well, so when my husband isn’t home it’s hard to be quick in the kitchen. They like to stand on chairs at our kitchen island and watch me or nibble on veggies as I prepare them, so I try to take advantage of that time as much as possibleclean water clean earth