A guide to batch cooking

While meal prepping focuses on getting individual components of meals ready, batch cooking involves making and storing a whole dish. Batch cooking has seen a rise in popularity in recent years, particularly for single people or two-person households – it’s both a time- and money-saving way of ensuring you get your daily meals. 

What is batch cooking?

No one wants to say they spend the week having leftovers for dinner. But that is essentially what you’ll be doing with batch cooking. You dedicate an evening to cooking one, two, or a fortnight’s worth of meals and then you spend the subsequent days eating that food. If you’ve got the storage and the time, you could even bulk cook enough to tide you over for a month. 

In short, you cook a lot of food in one go, then store it to eat later on. This is not to be confused with ingredient prepping, where you prepare individual food items, rather than whole meals.

Getting started

So you’ve decided to take up batch cooking. But what do you need to think about before whacking two trays of cottage pie in the oven?

1. Find a decent selection of recipes – there are plenty of dishes suitable for making en-masse and freezing. Making lasagne, stew, and shepherd’s pie on loop will get boring in no time, so flick through some recipe books or search online. Supermarkets, chefs, and brands all publish recipes so you’ll be able keep your dinners new and exciting We’ve got a few recipes you can try out, like meaty pasta, sausage goulash, creamy cajun chicken pasta bake, and chicken chassuer.
2. Make sure you’ve got enough storage – it’s all well and good cooking a big tray of lasagne, but unless you’re going to sit and eat it all in one sitting, you’re going to need somewhere to store it. Check you’ve got space in your fridge (for all your ingredients, and the meals you plan on using within a few days) and freezer (for the rest of your food)
3. Choose the right type of storage container – you don’t want to waste your hard work by using a container that isn’t up to the task. Glass, steel, pyrex, plastic, and aluminium foil containers all come with their pros and cons. You need to find the right one for the type of food you’re planning to cook (if you’re storing liquids, make sure your choice is leak proof), the method you’re planning to use to reheat (plastic will melt in the oven), or for the length of time you’re planning to store it for (in this case, airtight is your friend)
4. Remember your day doesn’t start and end at dinner, there are other meals you need to eat. If you want to extend your batch cooking to breakfast and lunch, there are plenty of recipe ideas to suit your tastes. 
5. Don’t forget about snacks – of course, you can buy crisps, nuts, fruit, and so on for cheap from the supermarket, but if you want to get creative, or have more control about the things you’re putting in your body, you can delve into the world of batch cooking your own snacks.

Once you’ve got your collection of recipes, your storage containers, and space in your freezer, you’re ready to begin. The world of batch cooking is your oyster – buy and cook in bulk, and save yourself time and money, while also making yourself good, healthy and nutritious meals.