A long day is over, but the evening is just beginning. There’s unsorted laundry, unwalked dogs, kids to be bathed and homework to be done… and you haven’t even thought about dinner!
Sound familiar? You’re not alone. In this edited excerpt from their book The Dinner Ladies: Fill Your Fridge and Freezer, Katherine Westwood and Sophie Gilliat share their top tips on cooking, freezing and finishing meals ahead of time, so you always have a home-cooked dish ready to go.
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If you can find half an hour a couple of times a week, you can prepare a few dishes and stick them in the fridge or freezer…
Dishes such as curries, pasta sauces and tagines are brilliant … and only require reheating while you quickly cook some rice, pasta or couscous. Other dishes, such as pies or lasagnes, are completely assembled and can usually go straight into the oven from the freezer.
Then there are the seemingly last-minute dishes such as stir fries or salads, where the hard work of prepping vegetables, marinating meat and mixing up sauces can actually be done in advance, so that you only have to do a little relaxed, final tossing or wokking and dinner is served.
Food safety.
Temperature control is very important when cooking ahead of time. Food is safest when it’s very hot (70Cº/158F and above) or very cold (below 5Cº/41F)…
When you’re cooking, make sure food is piping hot before taking it off heat. To rapidly cool [meals], spoon them out of the saucepan into a stainless steel bowl and sit that in a bigger bowl two-thirds full of ice slurry (half ice cubes and half water). If you’ve made a big batch, cool it in smaller batches rather than trying to cool the whole quantity at once.
Don’t put piping hot food in the fridge – it’s not designed to be a blast chiller and its temperature will rise and endanger the food already in there, as well as not chilling your food efficiently.
Cold storage.
If you’ve heated and cooled your food safely, most prepared dishes are fine in a good fridge for up to three days. We suggest three months as the upper end of freezer life, for the sake of quality rather than safety…
Defrosting and reheating.
If you need to thaw in a hurry, you can use a microwave or room-temperature running water in a sink. As long as you’re going to finish the reheating or cooking process immediately it will be fine…
When you’re reheating, make sure the food reaches 70Cº/158F, hot enough to kill most pathogens.
Finishing dishes.
Most pre-prepared dishes require a little love when it’s time to serve them…
Taste everything and make whatever adjustments you deem necessary … [a splash of lemon juice, seasoning, a flurry of herbs or julienned chillies, a final grating of parmesan] … to add a final layer of bright flavour and to make them look as inviting as they are delicious.
You can read more about how to pre-prepare meals and discover some amazing freezer-friendly recipes in Katherine Westwood and Sophie Gilliat’s cookbook The Dinner Ladies: Fill Your Fridge and Freezer.
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