Batch & Leftovers
Cook the components, not the meals
Batch cooking fails when it produces five identical dinners. Cooking parts instead produces five different ones.
Sana Iqbal
Contributing writer, Dinner Starts Here
Sana writes about batch cooking, leftovers and feeding people on a schedule.
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14 articles
Batch & Leftovers
Stock is the cheapest upgrade available to a home cook
It is made from what you would otherwise throw away, takes almost no attention, and improves everything it touches.
Batch & Leftovers
Roast a chicken once and you have bought three dinners
The bird is the first meal, the meat left on it is the second, and the carcass is the third. Most people stop after the first.
Batch & Leftovers
Cooling food quickly is the step almost everyone skips
The gap between hot and refrigerated is where most home food safety problems actually happen, and it is entirely under your control.
Pantry & Shopping
Buying fish well is mostly a question of asking what came in
Fish deteriorates faster than any other protein, so freshness matters more than species and far more than the recipe you had in…
Batch & Leftovers
Reheating is a second cooking, so cook for it the first time
Food you intend to eat twice should be cooked slightly differently the first time, because the second heating will finish the job.
Pantry & Shopping
Flour is sold by name and bought by protein
The words on the bag describe a tradition rather than a specification. What actually changes your baking is the protein content and…
Pantry & Shopping
Two different dates on the packet, and only one is about safety
One kind of date is a quality estimate set by the manufacturer. The other is a safety instruction. Treating them the same way…
Pantry & Shopping
Which herbs survive drying and which are a waste of the jar
Some herbs keep almost everything that made them worth using when they are dried. Others lose it entirely and are only ever worth…
Pantry & Shopping
Fats go rancid quietly, and cold slows it down
Oils, nuts and wholegrain flours all spoil in a way that produces no mould and no obvious warning. By the time it is noticeable it…
Batch & Leftovers
Freeze it flat and you own portions instead of a brick
How something enters the freezer determines whether it ever comes out. A flat sealed layer thaws fast and breaks into portions; a…
Batch & Leftovers
Some dishes are better on day two and some are ruined by it
Waiting improves certain dishes through real chemical change and destroys others. Knowing which is which decides what you should be…
Batch & Leftovers
Cook the grain on Sunday and it becomes three different plates
A large pot of one grain is the least glamorous thing you can batch cook and the most useful. It takes almost no attention and it…
Batch & Leftovers
Freezer burn is dehydration, and packaging is the whole answer
Those grey dry patches are not the food going off. They are moisture that has left the food and frozen somewhere else, and better…