Did you know that eating at home can be 5x cheaper than eating out?
Not only are home-cooked meals more cost-effective, but they can also be a lot healthier and are a bonding activity as a family. Whether you’re watching your waistline or your wallet, making food at home is the way to go.
But, figuring out what types of food to make at home can be a challenge, especially if you don’t consider yourself the best home cook. Fortunately, creating delicious meals at home isn’t that hard once you get started.
Read on to find out how you can start regularly making home-cooked meals for your family.
Create a Meal Plan
The first step to making delicious meals at home is creating a meal plan for the week. Pick out which days you want to have home-cooked meals, and decide what you want to make on those days.
If you already have a few recipes up your sleeve you can use these, or you can take some time to browse around online or flip through your cookbooks for a few ideas.
Once you have decided which types of food and dishes you want to make, create a shopping list so that you can have everything on hand that you need.
If you choose simple meals, creating a meal plan shouldn’t take you all that long and it will set you up for success.
Take Out Time to Food Prep
If you want to make your residential kitchen just as efficient as one in a restaurant, consider taking out some time to meal prep.
If you have a busy schedule, it can be very stressful to come home after a long day and then still have to whip up a home-cooked meal entirely from scratch.
Meal prepping allows you to get some of the time-consuming prep work out of the way on the weekends, or whenever you have some free time. Once you have meal-prepped dishes, this will take a lot of the heavy lifting out of putting them together.
For instance, you can pre-chop vegetables for soups, stew, casseroles, and stirfries. You can also make your own salad dressings and sauces ahead of time, and even pre-assemble things like lasagna.
Invest in a Cooking Course
If you feel like you aren’t the best home cook and lack confidence or basic knowledge in the kitchen, you can also invest in a cooking course.
Nowadays there is a wealth of free information online that you can use to learn how to cook. However, sometimes it is easier to sign up for a comprehensive course that you know will walk you through all of the basics—rather than trying to cobble together information from YouTube videos, recipes, blog posts, etc.
Switch It Up
Another top tip for getting into the habit of eating delicious meals at home is to switch it up. No matter how committed you are to the goal of creating delicious meals from scratch, life can get busy. When it does, the best thing to do is give yourself a break.
What’s more, you don’t have to eat out when your schedule doesn’t allow you to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen. If you want to treat yourself without having to eat restaurant food or takeout, you can still enjoy delicious meals in the comfort of your home by using a service like Cuisine Crafters.
Creating Home-Cooked Meals Is Not as Hard as It Seems
Once you have a system in place for planning out dishes, creating home-cooked meals is not as hard as it seems. Start by mapping out what recipes you want to make, focus on simpler options in the beginning, make a shopping list, do some food prep for busy days, and you’ll be eating delicious meals at home in no time at all.
Looking for more delicious reads? Recipes? Or cooking inspiration? Browse the blog for more.
