For many, cooking is a great way to relax and exercise creativity. While not all of us have an inner chef, for those who do, fun new gadgets such as air fryers and trending dishes such as all-in-one mac ’n cheese have added speed and interesting twists to the options for making meals.
Luckily, there are more and more great tricks to learn for making meal prep and cooking hassle-free and fast using gadgets from the online marketplace Temu, which saves you time and money.
1. Slow Cooker Magic
The biggest problem with cooking a hearty meal that will feed the whole family is that it tends to take quite a bit of time. Investing in a slow cooker is a helpful hack for having a long-cooking meal ready when you get home. To use this nifty hack, prep all your ingredients the night before, pop them into the slow cooker in the morning and set the timer to cook while you’re at work. You’ll have a delicious full meal ready for you at the end of the day.
Some great slow cooker recipes are good old beef stew, using braising beef, onions, carrots and celery. TikToker @liewe_cor prepped her ingredients with her husband and chopped up onions within seconds with an easy-to-use electric chopper, saving time and preventing the tears that usually come with chopping up onions.
Other slow-cooker meals you can try are roast chicken that incorporates butter and bay leaves into your recipe; and chilli con carne—a spicy winter warmer with smoked paprika, cumin, peppers and chilli paste.
2. Cook Once, Eat Twice
Instead of cooking one meal at a time, double or triple up on the ingredients, keep a portion for tonight’s dinner, then freeze the rest in portions to feed the family.
A suggestion could be to use extra-large silicone freezing trays, which allow you to separate your cooked ingredients into different compartments (meat, two different veggies, and your starch) and freeze them until you need them.
You can put in a little extra time over the weekend to prepare three or four different types of meals, and then switch them out over the course of the upcoming week so the family (or just you) don’t get bored. For a larger family, you can freeze bigger portions in freezer bags. Then you just heat and eat as needed!
3. Batch Your Ingredients
If you like eating all of your food fresh, you can prepare your ingredients ahead of time. Chop your onions, carrots, herbs, veggies, and even your meats if the recipe calls for it, and store the prepped ingredients in the fridge until you’re ready to cook. Temu provides a varied selection of containers, thanks to its direct-from-factory business model that connects consumers directly with manufacturers.
Storage containers with flip top lids containers can be compartmentalised, meaning you can keep all your ingredients separate to avoid cross-contaminating flavours and aromas. Or if you need to be smarter with space, use reusable silicone leak-proof food storage bags, to maximise your use of space in the fridge. And, because they’re reusable, you can wash them after each use and use them again, which is kinder to the environment.
4. Effortless Prep with Time-Saving Tools
Many recipes take you through a step-by-step process – preheat your pan/oven, then slice this portion of ingredients and set aside; next, you mix that portion of ingredients together and so on.
To save time, consider buying multifunctional appliances that can cook a few things at a time, or have changeable parts that you can switch out to cut down on cleaning time after the meal. A stainless steel steamer set comes with three removable compartments that you can fill with different ingredients for your meal. Or leave them out and create a one-pot meal with all your ingredients mixed together.
Or use a multifunctional vegetable chopper with interchangeable blades and slicers to quickly prep your ingredients, without having to do this time-consuming task by hand.
Cooking a meal needn’t be something that raises your blood pressure and sends you into a panic because you just don’t have the time – using these cooking hacks, you’ll be the star master chef at home, without breaking a sweat.
