Batch Cooking To Save Money

Are you looking for a way to trim your grocery budget but still feed your family hearty and nutritious meals? Batch cooking is a great way to accomplish these goals! By cooking larger quantities of food at once and strategically storing portions for the future, batch cooking not only saves you time and effort in the kitchen but also helps you to make budget-friendly choices.

This can work for everyone, not just those with families! Anyone who values efficiency in meal preparation and a little extra money in the bank should look into what batch cooking strategies might fit into their lifestyle.

Jump to:

• What Is Batch Cooking?
• How Batch Cooking Saves Money
• Ideas For Batch Cooking
• Recipes Great For Batching
• How To Batch Cook Chicken
• More Ways To Save...
• 💬 Reviews and Comments

What Is Batch Cooking?

Batch cooking is exactly what you think it would be: it's a meal preparation technique where you work in batches, cooking larger quantities of food at once, typically with the intention of storing portions for future meals. Instead of cooking a single meal at a time, batch cooking allows you to prepare multiple servings of a dish, which can then be portioned out and stored for later use.

Batch cooking helps you save time because you are creating an efficiency in your process. For example, consider a dish that you make for your family on a regular basis. Let's say that you need to chop an onion as part of the preparation for this dish.

Each time you make it, you have to go through the process of gathering the appropriate tools (knife and cutting board), chopping your onion, and then cleaning up. So, if you make this meal twice in any particular month, you will be performing all of those steps twice.

However, if you are chopping one onion, it's not much harder to just chop another one at the same time. So then you have an onion chopped for each of the two meals, and you only had to gather your tools and perform the cleanup once.

That might not seem like a huge savings, but if you start to do this on a regular basis, you will find that the time savings and the money savings really start to add up!

How Batch Cooking Saves Money

This method not only saves time during busy weekdays but also offers budgeting benefits by leveraging bulk ingredients and minimizing food waste.

Purchasing ingredients in larger quantities is a primary way that batch cooking can reduce your grocery expenses. Many stores offer discounts or bulk pricing for items purchased in larger quantities, allowing you to save money per unit.

Whether it's buying staple ingredients like grains, beans, or meats in bulk or taking advantage of sales on seasonal produce, purchasing larger quantities ensures that you get more value for your money.

Also, buying in bulk regularly ends up reducing the frequency of shopping trips, saving you time and transportation costs. With a well-stocked pantry and freezer filled with bulk-purchased ingredients, you'll not only save money but also have ingredients on hand to create a wide variety of meals without constantly running to the store.

Batch cooking can also help in reducing food waste, which over time contributes to cost savings. When you plan and cook meals in larger quantities, you're less likely to end up with unused ingredients that may spoil before you can use them. Batch cooking makes it easier for you to be sure that you use up ingredients before they expire!

In addition, by portioning out meals ahead of time, you're less likely to over-serve or have leftovers that end up being discarded.

Batch cooking just naturally leads to a more mindful approach to meal preparation, which not only saves money by maximizing the use of ingredients, but also reduces the amount of food that ends up in landfills.

Cooking larger quantities of food at once allows you to streamline the cooking process, reducing the overall time and energy per serving. For example, preparing a large pot of soup or stew requires just about the same amount of preparation and cooking time as a smaller batch but yields multiple servings.

By dedicating a block of time to cook larger quantities of food at once, you can reduce the time you spend daily in the kitchen preparing meals. This time efficiency not only frees up valuable time for other activities but also reduces the temptation to resort to expensive convenience foods or frequent dining out.

With a stash of pre-cooked meals or meal components in your fridge or freezer, you have convenient and budget-friendly options readily available, making it easier to stop resorting to getting take out. Batch cooking makes it so much easier to enjoy homemade, nutritious meals without the daily hassle of starting a cooking project from scratch.

Ideas For Batch Cooking

You can batch entire dishes, or you can batch specific ingredients to be stored and used later to streamline meal preparation.

For example, here are some recipes where you can simply double or triple the recipe, divide it into separate containers, and store in the refrigerator or freezer to serve in the future:

Or, you can batch prepare certain ingredients and store them in anticipation of using them later. For example, I often need chopped onion, so I will buy an entire bag of onions and then chop them all up. I put some in airtight containers in the refrigerator for use in the near future, and store the rest in freezer bags and freeze them to keep them fresh for longer.

I will also do the same for items like rice and quinoa. It's really not much harder to double or triple the amount that I need to make, and then save the extra for another time.

Chicken is great ingredient to batch cook and then store. Start by purchasing a bulk quantity of chicken breasts or thighs, depending on your preference. Trim any excess fat and season the chicken with your choice of spices, herbs, or marinades.

Then, throughout the coming weeks, incorporate the pre-cooked chicken into various meals. For example:

• Add shredded chicken to salads, wraps, or sandwiches for a protein boost.
• Use sliced chicken in stir-fries, pasta dishes, or grain bowls for a quick and satisfying meal.
• Incorporate shredded chicken into soups, stews, or casseroles for added flavor and nutrition.

Still not sure exactly how to make batch cooking work for you? In the next post, I will go through some great tips that will help make batch cooking easier!