15 Mistakes Beginners Make Cooking Food For the Week

Being a graduation cook is not about being the best at

cooking

, it's about being the best at providing

food

for yourself, for your friends, for your family, and to do that, we really have to master the art of

food

preparation because we all We are busy and we can't just spend all day in the kitchen

cooking

food, so we need some strategy, we need some skills and that's what today will be about. I'll give you all my knowledge, everything I've learned about meal prep over the last few years. 10 years all my skills all my tricks all my tips come to you in this video and the first mistake I see all the time is simply a lack of variety this is not the food preparation you want I'm not sure how this bodybuilding works The calorie-increasing cooking style coined the term meal prepping, but to me this is not what meal prepping has to be, we want variety in our food, we want to keep it interesting throughout the

week

, so we are excited again to go to the kitchen and eat. home cooking all

week

the tupperware struggle a professional home cook's worst nightmare is bad tupperware, of which I've had plenty over the years, so I can tell you right now, buy yourself some good tupperware, it's A great investment, something that will keep your food safe under lock and key and will also last for many years.

You will also want to get Tupperware containers in different sizes. Having a variety of sizes will

make

your life much easier so when you cook a certain size of food it can go directly into that tupperware and there is no need to put it in multiple tupperwares and it is definitely nice to have a tupperware with a locking mechanism strong because the food will leak, especially if you travel with it. I've had many cases where I put one of these tupperware in my backpack and it leaks, so having that strong locking system is a big plus.

Get some of these to-go containers in different sizes, but

make

sure they are BPA-free. It will be wonderful just for food organization, having a bunch of these that I can reuse has completely changed my kitchen and refrigerator organization because you just want maximum storage, there is always something to put away and if you are not organized things can become quite careless. your refrigerator or your pantry, the number one excuse I hear from people for not cooking is being too busy and we're all busy people, but being busy is not a good excuse not to get into the kitchen because it's surprising how much you can get done. . in a very short period of time, whether it's just a few hours on a Sunday or for me, I have a baby, so when the baby goes to bed like I'm in the kitchen, I give him breakfast, prepared lunch, whatever it is.

That's my next tip, do it when you have time, you have to go to the kitchen and start working and I'm telling you, you will be very surprised how much you can do in a short period of time, why am I standing still? next to the spice rack, well, I'm tired of you eating boring, bland food all week and one of the easiest ways to combat that is to make an all-purpose spice mix that will be like your secret weapon all week long. It comes in handy with so many different dishes and couldn't be easier to prepare.

All you have to do is choose a bunch of spices and for me, I have fun trying different combinations each week. There's really nothing wrong when it comes to To make a homemade spice blend, I'm going to use a spice grinder which I recommend every professional home cook have, but you can use a mortar and pestle or you can just use pre-ground spices and blend them together. I'm adding some cardamom pods. some cumin seeds some mustard seeds a little bit of dried thyme dried oregano dried chilies a little bit of cinnamon and salt and pepper and grind until you get a nice consistency and you will see this spice mix appear throughout this video.

I'm always a little confused when people comment and tell me that cooking is too expensive, which is ridiculous. The amount of money I've saved by being quarantined for the past few months and forcing myself to cook all my meals is incredible, but it's one of the best ways. To put those savings into full effect is to really start building your pantry over time and one of the best ways to do that is today's video sponsor, which is Thrive Market, Thrive Market, is an online membership-based marketplace with the mission of making health healthy. living easily and affordably for everyone and I am a big fan of thrive market because it is simply a pleasant online shopping experience.

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This is what I'm talking about. the pantry these are options these are savings here all the potential meals even if we come here we have a lot of different grains that we can use in dishes we have different flours for baking we have popcorn all kinds of things There are so many options for pantry items and the Thriving Market offers different types of memberships to suit your personal needs, so you can choose a 12-month membership or you can simply do a one-month membership for me. I went with the 12 month one which came to five dollars a month and if you click the link below in the description and join thrive market you will receive a gift from thrive worth up to $24 so now that my pantry is stocked, I have my thrive products, well, it's time.

To go, it's time to start meal prepping and start saving over time. One of the biggest

mistakes

I see when it comes to food preparation is that people simply run out of food, which then leads to problems of ordering and spending a ton of money, which we are trying to avoid, and one of The best ways to avoid this is to have a base grain in the refrigerator cooked and ready to use and have a large amount, such as rice, lentils or quinoa. Think of it as really good food. good pair of jeans, once you have that pair of jeans you can throw on a shirt or some accessories and build off of them, but you need that foundation.

I'm going to make standard long grain rice, there are many uses. for this and all I need is a pot for perfect fluffy rice, so the first step is to grab some kind of cup to measure the rice again. I'm going to double this and pour that rice into the pan and make sure to wash the rice. There is a lot of starch in the rice and if you want sticky rice, skip this step, but if you want perfectly fluffy rice, make sure to wash it until it runs clear. Once the rice is washed and drained, you can put it back in the pot and I'm going to take the same measuring instrument and double the amount of water minus a little bit because there's still a lot of water left from washing the rice, so if it's a cup of rice you are using just under two cups of water. bring it to a boil, stir it just a few times so it doesn't stick to the bottom and then when it comes to a boil you can cover it and turn the heat down to low and let it cook for 15 minutes and then turn off the heat and you can let the Steam the rice in there and continue cooking off the heat for another five minutes and voila, I think the perfect fluffy white rice is ready to be turned into so many different dishes throughout the week. like when people start cooking for themselves, at first they are almost surprised at how much food they actually need and they end up burning through all the food very quickly in a day or two, so you need to cook a lot of food and one of The The best way to do it is to take advantage of baking trays like this one because look at all that surface on which we put a lot of vegetables, we have a lot of food in the oven and that is exactly what I am going to do.

What I do to prep my food is roast some vegetables and the best part is you can do everything in this pan so I have some chopped broccoli including the stems they are delicious roasted cut up some cauliflower and a little onion my pot I hit it with a little bit of oil and a great spot for that explosion of flavor, the spice mix to really enhance these vegetables mixed everything right on the baking sheet until it was well coated and I popped it into a 450 degree oven for about 15 minutes until I had perfectly roasted vegetables, then you can throw them in a tupperware and use them in different dishes throughout the week, like I said, with that spice mix, it's all about finding simple ways and tricks to make your food taste best and one of the best ways.

To make that it is an all-purpose sauce, you make a sauce that you can put on anything throughout the week, so I am going to show you this recipe that I love, it is practically a healthy ranch, you replace the yogurt with avocado. so to make it it's very simple, I'm going to get out a food processor, add a clove of garlic and a bunch of dill and parsley. Herbs are key to giving it that flavor. I squeezed the juice from a whole lemon and started. processing it until it broke down a bit, then I added an avocado which is a great way to replace mayonnaise and make it a little healthier but you still get the fat and creaminess and finally a few tablespoons of yogurt, salt and pepper and I blended it until it came together and I checked the consistency and at this point I can adjust the consistency with more citrus or more water, which I use in this case until I get the perfect consistency I'm looking for.

I'm ordering. this funnel because this sauce is a little thick and if you want to make it into a salad dressing just add a little more citrus or just add more water but I love this kind of all purpose sauce because it could sauce up some braised chicken . on top of some vegetables and that's what I look for when I make one of these all-purpose sauces, thinking about something that can have multiple uses throughout the week and talking about cooking a lot of food, something that I really like to take advantage of. In the kitchen for meal prep there are machines like this, pressure cookers, slow cookers, anything that makes your life easier, something you can set and forget so you can work on other meal prep, so what I'm going to do is cook over low heat. some meat because if we have a bunch of slow cooked meat, it's a great meal, great protein to have throughout the week, so I've got some roast beef right here, any kind of slow cooker cut will work very good for this and I covered it.

I made it again with the explosive flavor spice mix which was already useful with several things, then seared it inside my pressure cooker to give it a little more flavor, which I would highly recommend, and then through a bunch of ingredients, I have some onions. and some carrots, a little garlic and just a little bit of cooking wine and a little bit of soy sauce. I'll keep it pretty simple here. I'm not making a stew, I just want incredibly tender meat, so I set it to pressure cook for about two hours. and of course you can slow cook it for hours and still forget about it, but I'm a little short on time so I'm going to pressure cook it and after two hours I have beautiful tender meat that will give me something really good. good sustainable meals during the week, so the following tips try to achieve the same goal, which is to give you some ideas on how to eat healthier during the week, which is vital and I know many people struggle with this, but we must do it. eat well because we are all busy, we are working at work or school or whatever and a good healthy meal will give us the energy to perform those tasks much better, so the first thing I do all the time is freeze my own fruit , which is great because once you have that frozen fruit you can just eat it and snack on it, you can make it into smoothies or you can make healthy snacks with the fruit, which you'll see in a second, but instead of just getting fresh fruit and throw it in a bag, you'll want to follow this tip which is to wash the fruit, make sure it's dry before you put it in the freezer and then lay it flat on a tray and what happens.

What you need to do is freeze each piece individually so that when you put it in a container or bag it doesn't clump together, which makes it much easier to use straight from the freezer. Now, of course, you can make a fresh smoothie for breakfast or just a nice little boost of energy, but it also extends the shelf life and frozen fruit as is is a really good snack if you're a little hungry and, speaking of snacks, that's my next tip: you should have healthy snacks on hand.hand. A big mistake I see from so many people is that if they don't eat healthy snacks between meals, that's when you get a little naughty, you get into cookies, chips, whatever and you can go downhill and fail in the middle of the day. when you're trying to work so here are some of my favorites that I make all the time number one is just popcorn I make my own popcorn and boom what are we going to use that all purpose flavor?

The explosive spice blend is a great way to take this popcorn from something that's okay, just salty popcorn, to an amazing snack. The second snack is so simple it's almost ridiculous, but I would be so jealous when my brother made a batch of homemade popcorn. Trail mix has always traveled with homemade trail mix and it's great to have on hand when you need that salty or sweet kick, but you can control all the ingredients in it and you can customize it however you want now. The third healthy snack might be my all-time favorite. The best guilt-free ice cream and we're going to use those bananas that we just frozen, throw them in a food processor along with some coconut milk and some maple syrup and then I add a little salt because I like my ice cream salty and blend until it's silky smooth.

Now I prefer texture in my ice cream and a great way to give it some texture is to simply add some nuts. I'm going to add nuts because they go so well with the bananas and then chocolate, I can't resist chocolate and these chocolate chips are sweetened with stevia which is also a great little trick and then I just blend it until those ingredients are chopped into pieces large and transfer it to some kind of tupperware and put it in the Freeze until it hardens and then it's ready to serve all week for amazing, guilt-free ice cream, so the goal of meal prep is to achieve a balance of foods and find out if I'm missing any raw food.

In my diet I just don't feel that good, I just need some raw vegetables, so what I like to do is at the beginning of the week I buy one or two good heads of lettuce, whatever looks fresh at the market and then I prepare it , so I run it through the salad spinner, wash it, dry it, put it in a bag so it's ready for salads, rolled lettuce to dip in a sauce, whatever you want and then I also like to chop up some other raw vegetables , be it cucumber, radish or carrots, and when I have them on hand pre-cut, I am more tempted to eat them, it is the reason why baby carrots are so popular, just cut a large carrot into strips. in a lot of baby carrots, but for some reason they seem more tempting to eat, so every time you eat baby carrots in the refrigerator, you know I'm sick and tired of people saying that to bake well you need to follow the recipes perfectly, there are definitely some truth, if you want it, you know you will always get perfect results, but for me I bake every week, I make some kind of baked good, like a brownie, a banana bread, a muffin, and I don't follow any recipes because I like it .

Use what I have in the pantry and I also like to incorporate more healthy things whenever possible because it's amazing to have a baked good for breakfast or a snack in between courses so I bake almost every week so here they are. my sweet potato tahini swirl brownies, one of my biggest pet peeves is people who don't use leftovers, I don't know why, but if you want to do it like a professional home cook, you need to start. Get creative with leftovers, look at what you have in the fridge and use it up, throw out the recipe and start getting weird with it, so after a few days of going through the main dishes you made, go through your inventory. and put your brain to work so for me I ate some extra meat I ate some extra rice I ate some extra vegetables so what am I going to do right?

The first thing that came to mind was fried rice because I also had some eggs. Well, right there I let you know one or two lunches or dinners or whatever you want to use to get creative with those leftovers. The last mistake I see when it comes to food preparation is thinking that it is a task we have to do. get out of that mindset because if you're stuck in that mindset you're not going to be very motivated to get in the kitchen so just five quick tips to get out of the chore mindset number one is to make cooking a little bit more fun listen a podcast with some music, there is nothing better than listening to a good podcast, get information and prepare food for the entire week number two, get a helper, someone in the family who can help you, maybe wash the dishes or take care of For something like a baked good, anything that can help you will be a huge plus for cooking during the week.

Number three is to make it a challenge with one of your friends and see if you can sustain yourself on your own food for the entire week. Send pictures. one of your packed lunch challenges can always add extra motivation to hit the kitchen. Number four is to consider meal prepping as a way to experiment and try new things in the kitchen because there is nothing less motivating than cooking the same thing over and over again and number five is to keep in mind who you are making it for, that It is the greatest motivating force, since a cook cooks for other people when I prepare food.

The goal is to provide homemade food for my family and that for me is the only motivating factor I need to come in every day and present myself as a professional home cook. Home cooking will change your life even if you do it just for yourself, so I hope you enjoyed this video and got at least something out of it, I really tried to put a lot in there, I hope you know that at least you have one tip that you can incorporate into your home cooking and remember to check out the link below to sign up for Thrive Market if you join today.

You get that gift worth up to 24 and you can watch these videos here if you want more home cooking skills and I'll see you in the next video.