Saving Time by being more organised
With such a busy role (workwise) on hand, I was thinking of getting much more organised than I currently am and was wondering where I really waste time that I can cut on and relax a bit. Cooking takes so much time as I am not an expert and with cooking and cleaning, I sometimes feel I am forever in the kitchen. So I looked up "How to save time while cooking Indian food" and found a few tips that I've already incorporated.
Some ideas I found are:
1. Browing Onions in advance - Cut a good number of onions that you think you may need for the next 3 days and fry it. To brown them quickly, add a good pinch of salt and store them in an air tight container in the fridge. Has anyone ever tried this?
2. Making ginger garlic pastes in advance and freezing. You do get these pastes in the stores but I like doing my own. I've been doing this for a while now.
3. Chapati's - I've always been doing more than sufficient chapati's so it lasts for 2 days atleast but sometimes I do more so it last for 3-4 days at a time. I fry them and keep em away. But what I read was to just roll the dough ahead of time and stored them with cling wrap in between and freeze them. I've never tried it - have you?
4. Masala's. When I make peas pulao or vegie pulao or channa masala, we have to grind the masala's for these. While I do it the first time, I grind enough masala's to make 3 or 4 batches. Use one batch immediately and freeze the rest. That way, I can throw in a few vegies, the frozen masala (which I keep in the fridge before I go to work so it thaws), some rice and its ready in no time. On reading the tips and giving it a serious thought, I think I must just make individual pastes of fresh coconut, onions and tomatoes in itself with very less water, may be have separate pastes of ginger, garlic, coriander, mint and green chillies and store them. These are the basics which can be added in to a dish with chilli poweder, turmeric, jeera or relevant spices with salt. Hmmm must give this a go.
5. Then there are tips on how to make full use of left overs like making lemon rice, tomato rice, fried idlis and the like.
Is there anything else that any of you do to save time in the kitchen?