Time Saving Food Prep Ideas

Food Prep Day

I know you are thinking, “What in the world is all that mess?!?” Sometimes I do, too. This is a little mini kitchen prep session I did last weekend. Tasks included:

peel and cut in half ten pounds of browned bananas
break up and freeze several cheese packages
veggie compost bowl and bones to make stock with
chicken stock and chicken to make into soup
a ham bone to make split pea soup
pork chops to cook and freeze
bbq sauce to reduce and freeze

All of this was accomplished in about two hours while I was getting ready to hang out with a friend, shower and at the end, my friend helped finish the bananas. All in all a productive day. I just wanted to show you some typical cooking “to do’s” in my fridge as it relates to my compost cooking and other frugal foodie tasks. It really doesn’t take much planning or creativity to get to this point. Just be willing to try and think about what you have and how to get the most from it.

What do you do to save time and money in the kitchen?

Shared on Heath and Soul Blog Hop.

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Freezer Cooking: The Meat Version

Some of you know the number of people in my house grew by four recently. I have had to adjust shopping and cooking accordingly. I have put away four quarts of homemade barbeque, four quarts of shredded chicken meat, four servings of barbequed ribs, and two quarts of chicken stock.

I used five small pork butt roasts to make the barbeque. I cooked them all night in the crock pot on low, drained them-reserved the stock for later, shredded the meat, then made my homemade bbq sauce. I used a half a quart bag full of shredded pork and 1 1/2 cups of bbq sauce for each bag. I squished and squeezed on the bag until all the meat was covered in sauce then ‘burped’ the bag.

The chicken was easier than that. I used a bag of 11 leg quarters with half in my crock pot and the other half in a stock pot, both covered with water. I brought them to a boil and let them cook for about one hour until the meat and bones were falling apart. I drained all the bones and meat from the stock and reserved the stock. When the chicken cooled I separated all the meat from the bones and cartilage. I put equal amounts of the meat in freezer bags and burped the bags.

Homemade BBQ Sauce:

Disclaimer-I never measure any of these ingredients when making barbeque sauce. Nor do I use all of the same ingredients each time.

Ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, butter, jelly, root beer or other soda on hand, different kinds of hot sauce including red and green tobasco and Allegra Brand spicy marinade, crushed red pepper, garlic, pureed onions, chicken stock and tomato sauce.

The key to good barbeque sauce is the balance of sweet and heat and to be able to give depth of flavor while the sauce cooks down. In the picture is a batch that totaled four cups.

I baked the leg quarters with barbeque sauce on them after they took the crockpot sauna. I also threw in a rack of ribs. I figured while the oven was on, the best use my electricity dollars was to fill the oven up!

This batch of stock, two onions and a celery heart I chopped today are in the freezer waiting on the week of Thanksgiving to pre-make my dressing and refrigerate.

Next week I will be pre-making the majority of our Thanksgiving dinner so I can rest Thanksgiving Day and be thankful for thinking ahead