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I didn’t grow up cooking. My parents worked, and we found the usual American solutions to having no time to prepare food. We ate at restaurants, picked up fast food, and microwaved frozen dinners. At the time, it wasn’t clear to Americans how negatively those habits affected our health. When I got married and had a kid, I wanted to prepare real food for my family. But I felt totally overwhelmed by the responsibility of cooking. And frankly, I resented it. Even though I knew it was something I could enjoy. But then I developed these simple cooking ideas that saved my sanity and my family’s health. And I want to share them with others who feel they just do not have time to handle dinner every night.
I first heard about the idea of “simple eating” from Simply Fiercely. I was reading a lot of content about minimalism and simple living. But it hadn’t occurred to me that cooking and eating could also be made simpler and easier.
The Problem with How Americans Cook
You can jump below to see the simple cooking ideas that will transform your relationship to preparing home-cooked meals. But I want to quickly explain the rationale for why these work. Once you see this mindset shift, you can’t unsee it.
In the U.S., where I live, moms often handle cooking for the family. And we tend to look for variety. We constantly scan Pinterest for “easy weeknight recipe ideas.” We assume our family will get bored if we don’t keep changing things up.
The problem with following new recipes arrives when we have to make a list, buy groceries, and follow instructions carefully. And many times, it doesn’t even turn out well because it’s our first or second time making it.
The kitchen also becomes cluttered with a bunch of ingredients used for a specific recipe and never repeated. And the fridge itself becomes cluttered with expired leftovers as we jump from one recipe to the next.
The Perspective Shift That Will Simplify Your Kitchen
For years, I cooked this way. While I worked, parented, and kept up the house, I resented the weekly chore of finding recipes, grocery shopping, and meal planning. Plus the almost daily chore of actually cooking.
I came up with the simple cooking ideas below when I started paying attention to women I knew from more “traditional” cultures – my mother-in-law and my grandmother.
Traditional cooking includes around 10-15 dishes made on repeat. Sure, they mix and match. But there are core staples in rotation daily. Of course their cooking is amazing. They’ve had decades of experience perfecting these recipes! Plus, they can cook on autopilot without having to think much or follow instructions.
For so long, I thought I was missing a core womanly skill. One that involves just naturally knowing what to do with fresh ingredients to make them delicious. But the truth is these women know what they’re doing because they’re cooking the same things they’ve always made.
A coworker recently put this idea succinctly: She often tells her husband things like, “Well, I can’t make Indian food tonight. We had that last night.” And he responds, “I’m pretty sure people in India eat Indian food multiple days in a row.”
The obsession with variety is an unnecessary burden.
Personally, I was finally ready to change when my family went on vacation. Before the trip, I dumped things from the fridge that would expire while we were away. When we returned, I couldn’t get groceries until the next day. I took the opportunity to wipe down the fridge. And I realized I loved it being so clean and minimal.
To keep it that way, I started implementing some simple cooking ideas and focusing on using up ingredients rather than on constant variety.
Benefits of Simple Cooking
When I implemented these simple cooking ideas, I noticed way more benefits than I even expected:
- You massively reduce the time spent searching for new recipes.
- You make the same recipes multiple times and build skill, so it’s effortless. You’re not following steps or needing to concentrate.
- Building skill at these recipes also allows you to make them delicious every single time. In fact, each time is better than the last as you learn from experience and tweak your methods.
- You memorize the recipe, so there’s no need for complicated grocery lists. You walk into the grocery store and know exactly what to buy.
- Less mess. When you know what you’re doing, you’re more efficient with dishes and cooking implements. Which makes clean-up a million times easier.
- When you make batch recipes, you can cook less often. Which saves plenty of time. But in addition, you’re also spending less time cleaning up after a cooking session.
- You can make wholesome homemade meals for your family without turning the task into a full-time job.
How to Implement Simple Cooking Ideas – Some Guidelines
Subheading 2: How to Implement Simple Cooking Ideas – Some Guidelines
Before we get into the step-by-step process of implementing simple cooking ideas, let’s talk about the approach. Here are the guidelines:
- Rotate a handful of recipes each season.
- Meal prep twice per week.
- Pair recipes in a single week that use the same ingredients so you can use them up before they go bad.
- In general, focus on finishing things – not variety. Finish your leftovers even if you ate that recipe the previous night. Make a similar recipe using the same produce so you finish it before it expires.
- Aim to use things up by the end of the week. It’s good for the fridge and pantry to be a little bare by then!
- Don’t take leftovers home unless you plan to eat them the very next day. If you don’t have a plan, just let it go. It may seem wasteful to leave it on your plate. But it’s just as wasteful keep it in the fridge for a week before you throw it away. (Remember this minimalist rule: Don’t buy it because it’s cheap. Don’t take it because it’s free.)
- Buy just a few items from each category per week. For example, my 2-year-old loves fruit. One week he can have grapes and oranges. Another it will be kiwi and blueberries. Sometimes he complains he wants something we don’t have that week. But it’s normal to not have access to everything you want all the time. Ultimately, I realized I don’t want to raise a kid who gets exactly what he wants at the very moment he wants it.
- If your family wants variety, they’re welcome to find a recipe, make a grocery list, and cook it with you the first time.
How to Implement Simple Cooking Ideas – Step-by-Step
So, how do you actually implement these guidelines? Here’s simple your step-by-step guide to getting started:
1. Clean out your pantry and fridge. Remove: expired food, things you haven’t touched in a month, ingredients bought for one unique recipe.
2. Choose 5 recipes per season (3 months). Aim for these criteria: nutritious, everyone in the family will eat it, easy to cook. Save those recipes online or on paper.
3. Choose 2 recipes from the list you just made for this week. If possible, pair recipes that use some of the same ingredients.
4. Buy groceries for this week, including ingredients for those 2 recipes. And be selective when you shop. You don’t need to buy every single thing your kids like (or that you like) this week.
5. Choose your cooking days. These are days when there aren’t other responsibilities in the way. (For me, surprisingly this is not weekends, for example.)
6. At the end of the week, your fridge and pantry should look pretty bare again. Now, you’ll decide on your 2 recipes for the week (from the 5 options), get groceries, and start the cycle again.
What Do You Think?
Are you a good cook? Have you mastered simple cooking for yourself or for your family? I’d love to hear any other simple cooking ideas you have in the comments!
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