How To Eat Healthy With Little Time?
Not knowing how to cook and lack of time are the two great excuses that are usually used to justify not cooking or doing it little and in an unhealthy way. Although having more time is useful, it is undeniable that having more experience helps.
Nowadays, more than ever, time is a raw material of incalculable value. To obtain it, we propose to our agenda real tricks related to “down time”, that is, with our hours of sleep, with trips to and from wherever we are and, of course, with domestic tasks. I call them “dead times” but they could just as well be called “black holes of time.” Its characteristics are that, in most cases, these times involve not being able to do something else at the same time, and because, in themselves, these “black holes” are a means, not an end. Furthermore, it happens that, in general, these are times that cannot be avoided. If you want to work you have to go (and come back), if you want to live you have to sleep, and if you want to eat, you have to cook. Unless, in the last case, there is someone to do it for you.
The kitchen and everything that goes with it (buying, preparing, preserving, organizing, etc.) is an important “black hole of time”, which is why more and more people, assisted to a certain extent by the current offer of alternatives, they avoid. However, the quality of the final result—the adequacy of the dietary pattern—is usually not the same. In general terms, taking charge of the entire process is usually associated with better-planned and healthier diets. In this article, we will give you some of the keys so that you can control and organize what you eat instead of rushing around.
Ideas yes, miracles no
You will not find in this article a magic wand or a philosopher’s stone that, in this case instead of transforming everything it touches into gold, cooks for you. In the end, one way or another an investment will have to be made in the form of time (yes, invest time to save time), experience, skills, and knowledge. All of these qualities will help you, over the years, to acquire more skill and ease in everything that cooking entails. But I insist: it is not something free or miraculous. You have to want to do it and also know, I’m not going to deceive you, that ending up cooking is part of a process like, for example, learning to drive. It is not something immediate, but it has its method. Thus, and whether you like it or not—both cooking and driving—as you implement the method, you will feel more comfortable and safer, to the point that it will not cost you the effort that it originally required.
In addition, you will acquire something that can hardly be paid for with money. I mean having a wealth of knowledge and skills that you can pass on to the next generations. Keep in mind that if you cook, your children will be more likely to do it in the future.
Cooking is easy, you don’t have to have any studies
Don’t get confused: in the context of one or two generations ago, there was always a person who, among other things, dedicated a large part of their day to cooking. Yes, I am referring to the women, mothers, and wives of another time… not so distant. Currently, there are many people who look longingly at their mother’s recipes or their grandmother’s dishes. This image is so clear and objective that advertising for processed and ultra-processed foods frequently sells us their excellence using claims such as “homemade”, “grandma’s” or “traditional recipe”.
Well, back then, when every house had a kitchen capable of providing 24-hour service, the people in charge had no education (almost always in nothing, and almost never in anything related to cooking). Just practice and experience. Knowledge was transmitted generationally, at that time, from grandmothers to mothers and from mothers to their daughters. This argument is objective, things were like that. Another thing is that the context was fair, which it was not, it was just missing. But this does not diminish the weight of the argument. What should be clear to us is that, like the motto underlying the movie Ratatouille: anyone can cook.
Key concepts to eat in a short time
The process is not miraculous or magical, I have already told you, but if you want to take the step of cooking you have to take into account some prior questions.
When purchasing, choose cookable and healthy options
If your shopping cart is full of pre-cooked foods, refrigerated or frozen pizzas, broths, soups, rice or pasta that you can add hot water and that’s it, you will never end up cooking (in addition to not having a healthy diet). To cook, it seems like a truism, you have to buy cookable ingredients, usually fresh foods that, on the one hand, force you to cook them (if you have bought them you will have to cook them because they usually tend to go bad first) and, on the other, contribute to an infinitely healthier diet.
The purchasing process itself can set you back due to the time you have to invest. To do this, I recommend that you shop weekly. Whether your reference is the supermarket or the market itself, dedicate one day a week to shopping. Remember that if you buy a lot of fresh products (fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish) they will not last long at home unless you resort to freezing them when possible. The period of one week is ideal, neither too short nor too long. Nowadays there are countless solutions to save time in this process so that, both in supermarkets and in many markets, you can order the purchase, either online or by phone. Afterward, and depending on the case, you can go pick it up yourself or have it brought to your home.
You have to know how to organize
Both for the purchase itself and for the act of cooking when turning on the oven or hob, you must have a minimum of organization. First, when purchasing, so as not to fall short (and have to buy again) or have to throw anything away if something goes wrong.
To do this, it is usually very effective to have a couple of tools that help organize the menus in a general way, which is what dieticians and nutritionists call the template. With it in mind, we professionals make the calendar, in which the specific recipes and menus for the coming days are reflected. And with that in front of us, of course, we do our weekly shopping, so that we don’t miss anything on a day-to-day basis.
I have to admit that both the template and the calendar are very useful tools to get started, a bit like when someone plans a long car trip and constantly looks at the map to know where to go. However, as with the map, the template and the calendar will take a backseat as we become more comfortable so that we can now plan and buy on autopilot.
The kitchen neither burns nor cuts, unless you don’t know how to do things
As you well know, bullets do not kill, the speed they acquire when they are fired and encounter a living being in their path does. The same thing happens with the kitchen, only if you do things the way you should NOT do them, you will find a hostile environment in this environment. On the contrary, knowing what you are doing at all times, knowing the materials and knowing how to use the tools you have, will significantly avoid incidents in the kitchen. Again and again, we return to the need to acquire an experience born of knowledge.
Know the processes, at least in their most general details
Frying is not sautéing, nor is cooking in water the same as roasting in the oven, nor is braising the same as blanching. Each culinary technique has its reason and is applied to one food or another at a certain time to obtain a different result. Although at first it may be enough to reproduce the instructions of any recipe step by step, you will acquire true ease in the kitchen when you know the reason for the processes. This knowledge will help you to be able to skip steps, speed them up, change them for others, and obtain the result you are looking for in a short time.
Cooking reality shows are not usually a good influence, don’t get overwhelmed
Cooking day after day, for yourself or for several people, is one thing, and making spherifications with liquid nitrogen or deconstructions of peppers stuffed with cod is quite another. Despite the abundance of reality television shows that take cooking as their setting, their everyday life does not show popular interest in cooking, but rather our taste for morbidity. Don’t get overwhelmed, in the end, with a minimum of skill and experience you will be able to prepare food from one day to the next in less than an hour, while you prepare dinner that same day and attend, if necessary, to email, an inopportune work call or your favorite social media profiles.
Shopping list to save time and eat healthy
There is an essential food wardrobe for all those who decide to take the highly recommended and healthy step of managing what they eat in the kitchen:
Fresh vegetables and greens
They constitute the most important of the essentials. With them, at any time, a little hand and some grace, you can get out of trouble in less than 15 minutes. Good candidates for your greengrocer are tomatoes, onion, garlic, cucumber, green pepper, eggplant, zucchini, asparagus, lettuce of any variety, leeks, green beans (flat or Bobby), celery, avocado, etc. Regarding this group, it is necessary to do a minimum of programming or have perspective to know what you have and the time in which they can break down.
Honest preserves
I am referring to those preserves that are not precooked in themselves, but, for example, canned fish (sardines, tuna, anchovies, etc.), preserved legumes cooked naturally, fried tomato, etc. At the same time, canned pickles are very interesting with which you can enrich a salad or stew.
Eggs
Whether in an omelet (basic or with various ingredients) in the form of scrambled egg, hard-boiled egg, poached egg, fried egg or directly to make a batter, the versatility offered by this ingredient requires you to always have half a dozen in the refrigerator, by virtue of how many of us there are at home. The opportunities to use them in combination with the rest of the ingredients on this list or with some of the leftovers from other recipes, in an egg on the plate, are practically endless and in record time.
Seasonings and spices
There is no such thing as a large spice drawer or cabinet. None is large enough to house a resource as attractive as any of the spices and seasonings from around the world: thyme, rosemary, peppers of any type and origin, paprika (smoked, sweet or hot), cayenne chili, dried chili, Ras el Hanout, curry, ginger powder, Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, wasabi powder, various mustards (quality), chimichurri, chives, parsley, nutmeg, cumin, saffron, bay leaf, sesame and so on eternal and infinite spicy etcetera.
frozen food
As with preserves, this section does not refer to frozen pre-cooked dishes, but to true raw materials whose only peculiarity is that they are sold under frozen conditions. A good “freezer stock” based on various vegetable products, meats, and fish can help us overcome certain last-minute problems and, with the usual programming, save us some trips to do the shopping. However, it is important to note that when it comes to saving time, many of these options, especially those of plant origin, can be used directly in the kitchen without having to wait for them to defrost.
Have a healthy and nutritionally rich breakfast
Starting at the beginning of the day, breakfast, many people who do eat breakfast (there are also those who don’t, and that’s okay) end up not doing it for the amount of time it would initially take them. Stealing a few minutes from bed is what it has. In any case, and beyond the hackneyed “solutions” that the industry usually proposes to us at this time, you should know that making a scrambled egg, preparing a mini cherry tomato salad or using some leftovers from the refrigerator, which Whether it was leftover from any previous main meal, it takes the same time (or less) than making coffee and spreading butter on toast. But to make these choices, apart from the more classic and less recommended ones, we return to one of the previous points, the organization, since it is necessary to have made a proper purchase.
Some of the most nutritionally appropriate quick picks for breakfast would be:
- Nuts
- Fresh fruit
- Leftovers from the previous day, whatever, as long as they are not ultra-processed
- Queso
- Yogurt
- small salads
- Canned fish or smoked fish
- Or any ad hoc combination of the above as long as they are to the taste of whoever eats them, of course.
Cook simple dishes and quick-to-prepare foods
There is a great maxim for the approach of the main meals, whether it is lunch as such or dinner, and that is that each and every one of these meals includes, at least, one serving of fresh plant foods (whether consumed raw or cooked). . If a combined dish is chosen as a solution and if it is more of a first and second course, those first ones can incorporate the aforementioned serving of vegetables and the second ones can be accompanied by the usual garnish, whether again raw or in any other way. preparation (oven, grill, sauté, etc.).
In this area, in addition to preparations based on vegetables or salads, a relatively quick solution consists of preparing a basic rice or pasta (cooked and drained in just 10 minutes) to which you can add a sauté or stir-fry of vegetables that It can be cooked in the same time as pasta or rice.
Using canned legumes is also a very good option when time is of the essence. Whether cold (for salads) or hot, with a minimum of vegetable dressing and sautéing, a wonderful result is obtained.
Regarding the seconds, if applicable, any salad can serve as an accompaniment as well as some wild vegetables, grilled eggplant or zucchini or some red or green peppers.
Batch cooking or cooking for the whole week
For some time now, a term has become popular in English, batch cooking, whose literal translation is “cooking in batches.” However, it is used to refer to the fact of cooking for the entire week in one sitting. Without undermining this proposal with a high load of trending topics – and everything that this entails – it is true that in certain circumstances, people and families it can be an option to take into account. In any case, it must be considered that this strategy does not prevent us from the usual programming of purchases and menus, nor from the acquisition of the necessary cooking skills. Furthermore, the type of recipes that allow you to follow this strategy is relatively small: stews, casseroles, some roasts, stews, some rice and vegetable recipes, legume salads… and little else. The fact is that preparations such as batters, grilled recipes, fried foods, and salads do not turn out too well after storing them in the refrigerator or freezer.
As an alternative, I recognize that batch cooking is not for me, I prefer to cook in “large quantities” every time I decide to make all those recipes that are susceptible to the famous batch cooking. So when I make stewed lentils, I don’t make them for just one day, but for five or six and I freeze the rest. In the end, the time needed is practically the same. And the same with meatballs, cheeks or cannelloni.