What Is Batch Cooking?

Don’t have time to cook during the week? Prepare your weekly menu on the weekend following batch cooking techniques. Find out all the details below.

The batch cooking is an Anglo-Saxon concept that became fashionable and flooded the social networks. Literally it means “cooking in batches” which means cooking on Sunday to have your menu ready for the entire week . Want to know more about it?

How to create a menu adapted to batch cooking?

Planning

It is important to have a weekly menu template to organize meals. That way, we will know what we are going to cook , what we have in the fridge and if we need to buy something. It also helps us to stay focused on the shopping list and not over-buying or over-purchasing ultra-processed products.

healthy batch cooking

It is important that this menu, in addition to saving cooking time during the week, is also healthy. It is very useful to create the menu with the “Harvard Dish” as a reference , a dish created by nutrition experts at the Harvard Public Health School, which is based on:

Most meals should consist of vegetables and fruits, these being half of the plate.
Choose whole grains, taking up 1/4 of your plate.
High quality protein, which should be the other quarter of the dish.
The main fat comes from healthy vegetable oils such as extra virgin olive oil.

In summary, remember that your dish will need to have vegetables, proteins and whole grains. Also, don’t forget the distribution details.

In addition to saving time in the kitchen during the week, batch cooking proposes the preparation of healthy dishes.

ready meals

This is one of the basics of batch cooking: let’s get everything ready so that when we get home, the only job is to open the fridge and remove the food. Or, in case you have to eat at work, have your lunch box prepared

As we already know that the base of our menu should be vegetables and fruits, we can have them already cut. For example, we can cut and refrigerate fruits such as melon and watermelon to enjoy in the mid-morning or afternoon snack.
In the case of vegetables, make purees, broths and stir-fries that can be frozen and reused .
Have ready-made options of pasta, rice, quinoa , couscous, eggs, potatoes, etc… It is not necessary to cook huge quantities, because in general they will be consumed as a side dish.

Enjoy the kitchen tools

To get everything ready in one afternoon, you need to know how to make the most of your time in the kitchen. For that, we have to take advantage of all the utensils and appliances that we have in our kitchen, such as the stove, the oven, the mixer, the blender, etc.

While we chop in one place, in another we are roasting and in another we are making the stew. In addition, we can take advantage of the heat in the oven and, after roasting chicken on one tray and vegetables on another, browning and baking bread or making a homemade cake.

Refrigeration and freezing

It’s important to know where to store each food so it can last all week. There are certain types of foods that cannot be frozen due to their food structure, such as salads, pasta, potatoes and eggs. So let’s keep them refrigerated in the fridge.

It is very useful to freeze stews, legumes and broths to make them last longer. To preserve food, it is advisable to use airtight glass jars, as they last longer than in a plastic container.

Refrigerating and freezing food prolongs its shelf life. However, keep in mind that some foods should not be frozen.

Sample batch cooking menu

Finally, here we show you a menu idea from Monday to Friday so you can start practicing batch booking . Obviously, this is just one example: you can vary as long as you stick to the concept of healthy eating.

lunches

Monday: papillote salmon with vegetables and roasted potatoes.
Tuesday: Pasta salad with fillet chicken.
Wednesday: spinach with chickpeas and boiled egg.
Thursday: mashed potatoes with vegetables and octopus.
Friday: sautéed vegetables with quinoa and turkey strips.

dinners

Second: spinach salad with mozzarella cheese and oilseeds.
Tuesday: glass of gazpacho and potato omelet.
Wednesday: veal burger sandwich with vegetables.

Thursday: vegetable ratatouille with grilled egg and rye crackers.
Friday: carrot and cucumber crudités with chickpea humus.

Don’t have enough time to cook healthy? So, be encouraged to try the batch cooking method to always have dishes at hand that will help take care of both your body and your health.