4 culinary life hacks for those who are tired of cooking

1. Use leftovers

Often, a half-eaten dinner is simply thrown away or put in a container to clear the conscience, which is still worth weeks before the next revision of the refrigerator. And in vain.

Yesterday's meal can eliminate the need to prepare another lunch or dinner from scratch. Just reheating it in the microwave and eating it is boring and not so tasty anymore. Try other options instead:

• Add leftover cereal to soup or salad for extra flavor and texture.
• Fry yesterday's side dish, say rice, with butter, egg and vegetables: a few minutes - and dinner is ready.
• Lightly brown the meat and vegetables in a pan, add cheese, lettuce and wrap everything in pita bread - you get a pleasant improvisation on the topic of shawarma or burrito.
• Combine several types of cereals and legumes, such as rice and lentils, buckwheat and beans, couscous and bulgur, add fresh herbs, oil, seasonings - and you don't have to cook a new side dish.
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• Place leftover lettuce and herbs in a blender to make a vegetable smoothie.
• Buy a pizza dough, put meat and vegetables on it, sprinkle with grated cheese and place in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Yes, this is not a masterpiece from Italian restaurant, but it turns out interesting, tasty and satisfying.

With this approach, you can not only save food leftovers to use later, but also specially cook a little more.

2. Take inventory of your kitchen

Even those who love this occupation get tired of cooking all the time. And if there are no comfortable ones at hand instruments, cooking will bring you to the handle much faster. And vice versa.

If you have a good, easy-to-clean baking dish, you won't have to scrub each time a whole baking sheet and you will be able to prepare quick, tasty and healthy dishes like stews and casseroles. With a toaster and blender, breakfast and snacks are no longer a problem. The multicooker will simplify the preparation of cereals, side dishes, stews, a mixer - pastries and pancakes. On a grill pan, you can deliciously fry vegetables for a side dish in 10 minutes.

Think about what you miss the most in the kitchen, and slowly buy the missing one. Good cookware and appliances cost money, but they help make cooking more enjoyable.

3. Don't forget the freezer

Usually they store raw meat, poultry or fish, sometimes semi-finished products like dumplings and sausages.

But the freezer is also great for ready meals. It helps to save not only cooking time, but also money. You can, for example, freeze some of the dishes if you have cooked too much; buy some products at a small wholesale price and not be afraid that they will deteriorate; chop and save seasonal fruits, vegetables, berries and herbs.

Some even specially harvestHow we prepared 38 kg of food / Mom knows everything / VKontakte a lot of food, they freeze it in portions, and then defrost it and eat it if there is no strength to cook new one.

In order not to get lost among the boxes, containers and bags, it is better to get stickers on which the composition of the dish and the date of freezing will be written. Well, you can also hang a small marker board on the refrigerator and write down all your supplies on it. So it will be immediately clear what you have in stock, and some grated carrot will not have to lie idle on the far shelf for years.

4. Make a menu for the week

And buy food for him in advance. Usually it takes a lot of time not so much to prepare food as to figure out what to cook ten times inspect the cabinets and the refrigerator, understand that there is not enough milk, eggs or buckwheat, and with a heavy sigh go to the nearest store for missing.

All these torments will end if you make a menu for the week ahead. Focusing on it, you can order groceries home, wash and cut some of them in advance, and then calmly cook. Do not forget to buy quick snacks in addition to basic products just in case - yoghurts, breads, muesli, bars and more.

The menu doesn't have to be complicated: make a list of 10-15 simple dishesthat you like and combine them in different ways, replacing the annoying ones from time to time.

Moreover, a menu drawn up in advance does not mean that every day you have to cook a new dish from scratch. For example, Monday for lunch pearl barley with a cutlet. Then on Tuesday, the remaining grits can be put into chicken soup, and on Wednesday, you can fry the chicken breast a little and eat it with buckwheat and vegetables.

In a word, spending an hour to correctly compose a menu and plan purchases, you will save yourself time, effort, nerves and, possibly, even money.