Best Kitchen Time Savings Technique

I have found one very powerful time savings technique that has really paid off for us more than any other in terms of saving us time in the kitchen and still being about to eat really well with our busy schedules.

We now will typically buy 5-10 pounds of a grill meat (typically chicken breasts or pork loin) when its on sale and then marinade/grill it all for a weekend meal and then continue to use the leftovers in quick and/or one skillet meals over the next several weeks. Its little extra work and really gives us more flexibility and time savings for dinners during the busy weekdays.

For instance this past weekend I marinated about 7 pounds of chicken breasts for a couple hours and then grilled all the chicken right before dinner. The 3 of use had grilled chicken as our main entree for dinner and had most of the chicken left over.

An example of some chicken dinners to use with bulk grilled chicken:

Grilled Chicken itself as an entree. We usually have this the night we grill out and then slice up the leftovers into grilled chicken breast strips for future use. We'll freeze about half of the chicken strips for future meals and keep about 3-5 meals worth in the fridge for meals during the next several days.
Grilled Chicken Salad
Stir Frys - Stir frys are very easy (ready in 10+ minutes) and you can vary them up so much that you can eat a several meals in a row and not get bored with them.
Chicken Quesadillas
Chicken Nachos
Chicken Tacos
Any One Skillet Meal that calls for chicken - our favorite is a chicken jambalaya
BBQ Chicken Pizza
Plus a ton of other chicken recipes

This idea more than any other has really helped us begin to save major time in the kitchen and still get good meals. Any other major time savings ideas in the kitchen you would recommend we try?

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Comments (1)

2million, I don't want to insult anyone without knowing all the details, but you seem to do a lot in your marriage in terms of earning money, investing, running your website, buying stuff on sale, cooking, planning trips, etc. I'm wondering, since your wife stays at home and takes care of the baby, isn't there more she can do to help you around the house with cooking or finance? This could give you more time. Just seems to me like you're doing 80% of the work and her maybe 20%. Correct me if I'm wrong???

Posted by Steve | May 1, 2012 6:39 PM