Just give it a rest

Whether it’s a need to shorten meal prep due to physical limitations, hectic work schedules, or just to avoid spending all day in the kitchen, people often look for ways to minimize the time spent in preparing foods. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my quest to reduce kitchen time due to a medical issue is that time itself is a valuable tool to achieve great cooking and baking results.

I now gravitate toward techniques and recipes that maximize passive preparation – that is, using resting time to allow things like yeast, enzymes, and marinades to provide flavor and textural improvements without the need for hands-on work. This allows me to break down projects into manageable sections. One example is resting cookie dough prior to baking, which will provide superior results, as Food & Wine explains. It doesn’t take a long time to make cookie dough, but shaping and baking at the same time makes the process much longer. Splitting it into two sessions allows me to have great homemade cookies without collapsing into an exhausted heap. You can refrigerate or freeze most types of cookie dough.

Other items you can make and freeze before baking include pâte à choux, scones, American biscuits, and pie crust. If your mixer has the capacity to make a double batch, all the better. Not everything can be frozen before baking, however – cake batter, brownies, and muffins must be baked immediately after mixing, but can be frozen afterward and served after a brief thaw.

Many meats can also be partially prepped a day or two in advance of cooking by using marinades or dry rubs, providing a win-win in that you can split the task into parts and you develop more flavor. You do have to be careful of acidic marinades, however, as meat can get mushy if left in those too long. Other items are more forgiving. If you dry brine a chicken, for example, it can rest for a couple of days if necessary, so if you aren’t up for roasting it one night you can leave it to the next.

Pre-cutting vegetables can also allow you to split meal prep into stages, but this is an area where one must tread carefully. Some items such as potatoes discolor after cutting, while others release compounds that can change their flavors. Onions are a great example of this, as cutting them ahead of time can cause them to be far more pungent. Milk Street explains why they recommend against chopping onions in advance, especially for items that won’t be cooked for a long time.