🍳 Batch Cooking: Automate, Eat better and Save money
Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food - Hippocrate
Health is the most important asset : you have invest in it 💪
Eating well is expensive, there are is simple solution: home made food.
According to this study, we spend 5 hours per week in average to cook.
Some people enjoy cooking and they like to spend time I agree. However for me it's a painful and repetitive task.
If I was living in a country where street food is available everywhere like South East Asia I would not even bothered writing this.
But I am not.
The goal here :
- 🍔Less transformed food, more home made
- 🤔Less decisions about what to eat tonight, more productivity
- 💰Save money : we cut down out food expense by 50% : 500€ to 230€ / month
After research and testing, I am vegetarian / vegan for many reasons.
Since last year, I applied the 4 hour work week by Time Ferris to the way I cook & eat : my 4-Hour Cook Week.
What if I tell you :
You don't want to eat at a fancy restaurant every night. You want to have the time to do things you like and not worrying about what to eat tonight.
Having prepared home made food at home is one of the best feeling 🙏
In this article I will explain how I reduced my thinking time by having someone to cook my weekly meals so I only have to spend 10-15 minutes to prepare before eating.
For those who have their mom around lucky you ! 🍙
Batch cooking is the new way
It is also called "meal prep".
If you haven't heard about it : Prepare your weekly dinners in 2 hours on Sundays.
In this post I will only cover the vegetarian one. For the meat version we used to spend the double in groceries.
Batch cooking allows you to :
Think less
- Just follow blindly the shopping list organised by season: summer, autumn...
- Cook all in once so you don't have think about what to-eat-tonight
Save Money
- When you follow the shopping list you usually tend to spend less than buying random stuff
- We spend 50€ in average / week in groceries for 5 meals for 4 people ( 2 adults and 2 teenagers), so for 2 of us it is 10 meals.
Average cost : 2,5€ / meal from monday to friday, not bad ? ✌️
Save Time
In fact, it will take you more time. When they say 2 hours, it takes me 3 to 3.5h then I'm in PLS (Position latérale de sécurité). But I needed to try it myself before delegating it.
After 2h30 of cooking
With the quantity, each dish are for 2 meals : lunch and diner.
Buy your food
I usually start with this order from local producers to big chain :
- La Compagnie fermière or any local producer food
- Lidl or bio shops
- Carrefour
I start with the most local / cheap one then find all the missing ingredients in Carrefour.
Hack : take a pic of your batch cooking shopping list to use as a to-do list ✅
Automation
Here come's the hack. You've prepared 2-3 weeks of batch cooking now you are ready to delegate 👨🍳
Hire on jobbing platform
Go to jobbing platform and post something like this :
You will pay someone for 8 to 10€ / hour, if it's a pro he will be able to take on your instructions and do everything by himself, if not you can still give instructions to cut, cook and clean.
Make it fun and work as a team 🍳
You can find help on several platform : Stootie, Needhelp, Youpijob...
Make sure to look for someone 3 - 4 days before you plan to batch cook.
Get helps from friends or family
We almost forget that cooking is social activity. So invite your family or friend to cook with you so they can take some food back too !
Alternatives
We can find ready to cook box delivered to your door.
This is a good option if you don't want to do groceries
The only problem is : the portions are a bit light since I am a big eater 💪 and it's a bit more pricey : 7 to 8€ / meal / person
Rutabago
Quitoque
Conclusion
With batch cooking you will save time essentially then money but here's the recap :
- 🥕Groceries 50€ for one week
- 🚘Gas for the car 10€
- 👨🍳Hire someone 20€ for 2,5 hours
Total : 80€ for 2 people for 10 meals
It's 4€ / meal so 160€ / month / person for home made food
Some hacks Hacks to save up a few €
- 🌱 Grow your own herbs : basilic, tomato, mint and it's easy with pret a pousser
- 🚲🚲🚲🚲 Bike for your groceries you can save up 1€ / meal :)
Feel free to change those instructions to fit your lifestyle. It just serve as a base for us to make cooking and eating more affordable and less a pain.
PS : On week-ends we usually go to the restaurant or cook things that we like 🍣
PS.2 : My friend Patrick doing another way Thermomix. To be honest I can't give my opinion because I haven't tried. But you still need to chop carrots 🥕