As a working mom, your day starts as early as 6 o’clock in the morning. Preparing your kids to school and rush to office just to see a pile of workload waiting on your table. By 6 o’clock, you are ready to go back, but the traffic jam slowing down everything. You are still exhausted from working and you realise that there are much more house chores waiting for you at home. Dishes to be clean, a basket of laundry, kids’ toys need to be kept and preparing dinner. But you never complain because seeing your whole family enjoys your cooking is priceless.

Home cooking is much healthier than buying food outside. Who doesn’t love mom’s cooking? I bet all moms try their best to cook meals for their family no matter how tight their schedules are. But we have to agree that cooking is such a tiring process and time consuming. So is there any solution to make it easier for the working moms?  There must be something that we can do to ease the burden.

Freeze your meals!

We’re surprised by how this working mom cooks dinner in less than five minutes every single day! We dig and we found her secrets to cut off time spent in the kitchen. Nothing to do with fast food or canned food. It is fully fresh food packed with nutrients and proteins.

This mom named Lynn, shares her secret on how she is able to cook dinner without missed a single day. The best part is, she just needs five minutes to do so. She freezes all the meals! It may sounds crazy but belive us, it’s really systematic, efficient and you should try too.

Normally, she will allocate a day during weekends to prepare complete meals for the whole week. To make everything easier, she said that you need to list down the menu day-by-day and cook accordingly. Store them in a food container and stash them in the freezer. Take them out when you want to eat and just preheat the meal. You can either use microwave to do so or cook for several minutes under a medium heat.

Her tips on freezing cooked food

1. List down the menu

To make the preparation process easier, you should plan ahead menu that you want for the whole week and list them out. Do you know that when it comes to cooking, we spend more time on preparation rather than cooking? To think of what to eat can take up so much time and it’s one of the never ending question among Malaysians, ‘What to eat?’

2. Buy ingredients according to the menu

This method not only cut down your time but your money too. You will only spend on ingredients that you need and it can help you from overspending. Imagine you stock up your pantry just to see them getting rotten and expired. It’s such a waste of time.

3. Prepare the basic ingredients

As Malays’ dishes are quite similar in term of the ingredients needed, you can prepare the essential ingredients first. For example, you can prepare blended onion, chili, ginger in a bulk and keep them for future need. Hence, you don’t have to repeat the same step in blending onions or chilies all over again.

4. Don’t freeze vegetables

As vegetables tend to get squishy and no longer fresh easily, it’s best not to freeze vegetables. If the meals contain vegetables, the best tips here is to put them at the very end of the cooking process to keep them crunchy and fresh. The vegetables will get tender by the time you preheat the meal.

5. Store in a suitable food container

Use airtight food containers in storing the food. As your fridge has raw fish, chicken and seafood the smell of them can affect the meals. Thus, airtight food container can prevent it from happening.

6. Label the food

How to differentiate the meals? To avoid confusion, label the food with the name of the dishes. You can use stickers to do so. Write down the name of the meal together with the date you prepare it.

The perks of using this method

Freezing cooked food can save up your time in preparing dinner every day. So you won’t need to defrost the raw chicken, cutting onions, preparing all the ingredients anymore. Skip these steps and just preheat the food. This will give you ample time to enjoy dinner with your family and to rest.

By freezing cooked food, it is easy for you to control or manage monthly budgets for grocery shopping expenditure. You just need to buy the ingredients on your list and this can avoid food wastage. It’s such a waste when you stock up your pantry just to see the food get rotten and expired.

What not to freeze

Most of the ingredients can be frozen. However, some foods simply aren’t freezer friendly and not recommended to freeze. Here are some of the food that you should not freeze:

• Raw eggs: Freezing raw eggs in the shells will expand and crack.
• Hard-boiled eggs: Hard-boiled eggs go rubbery if you freeze them.
• Vegetables with a high water content: Vegetables such as lettuce, cucumber, bean sprouts and radishes will go mushy and squishy.
• Soft herbs: Basil, parsley, chives are fine for incorporating in dishes but won’t be good for garnishes.
• Mayonnaise: Egg-based sauce like mayonnaise will separate and curdle once you freeze.
• Yogurt and cheese: They will go watery and you can’t consume them anymore.