What Is Batch Cooking?

No time to cook during the week? Prepare your week-end menu for the week by following the principles of batch cooking. We explain to you in detail what it consists of.

The batch cooking is an Anglo-Saxon concept became fashionable flooding social networks. It literally means “cooking in batches”. That is, cooking on Sunday to have a menu ready for every day of the week. You want to know more ?

Thanks to this method, you will be able to organize your weekly menu. Prepare healthy foods and reduce the time you will need each day to prepare the meals you are going to eat. It is a concept that saves time and improves your health. However, it must be put into practice in the right way.

How to design a batch cooking menu?

We are going to teach you the secrets of this method of preparing meals which has grown in popularity in recent years.

Planning

We recommend that you have a weekly model of your menus so that you can organize your meals. So you will know what you are going to cook, what you have in the fridge and if you need to buy anything. It will also help you stick to the shopping list and not buy unnecessary or ultra-processed products.

Healthy cooking in batch cooking

Beyond the very fact of saving you cooking time during the week, it is important that this menu is also healthy. It is very useful to create our menu using “the Harvard plate” as a reference. This is a dish created by nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health. The latter is based on the following points:

The majority of your meals should consist of vegetables and fruits. Indeed, these must represent half of the content of the plate. With these foods, you will be providing your body with enough quality vitamins and antioxidants. The latter thus appear to be fundamental in the prevention of serious pathologies.
Choose whole grains. And this, in order to occupy ¼ of your plate.
The remaining quarter of the plate should be high quality protein. These nutrients ensure the proper functioning of muscle function. According to a study published in Nutrition Research , protein intake and regular exercise reduce the risk of developing muscle tissue pathologies.
The main fats should come from healthy vegetable oils. For example extra virgin olive oil.

In short, keep in mind that your plate will need to include vegetables, protein, and whole grains. Also, don’t forget the distribution numbers.

A woman eating a salad.

Ready-made preparations

This is one of the basics of batch cooking , having everything prepared so that when you get home you just have to open the fridge and take out the dishes. Or, in case you need to eat at work, you can cook your tupper as well.

Since we already know that the basis of our menu should be vegetables and fruits, so they will already have to be cut. For example, you can chop and refrigerate fruits like melon and watermelon to enjoy them in the middle of the morning or as a summer snack.
In the case of vegetables, prepare purees, broths and stir-fries that can be frozen and reused. For example, prepare a gazpacho so that it is ready to eat when you get home.
You can also prepare pasta, rice, quinoa, couscous, eggs, potatoes, etc. in advance. It is not necessary to cook huge amounts since they are usually eaten as a side dish.

Get the most out of your kitchen utensils

To have everything ready in an afternoon, you need to know how to make the most of your time in the kitchen. And for that, you need to take advantage of all the utensils and appliances you have in the kitchen. Like for example, the baking sheet, the oven, the blender and, if you have one, a food processor.

While in one we chop, in another we roast while in yet another we prepare the sauce. In addition, after roasting the chicken on one baking sheet and the vegetables on another, you can take advantage of the fact that the oven is hot to gratinate or to bake bread or to prepare a homemade sponge cake.

Refrigeration and freezing

It is important to know how to store each dish so that it can last all week. There are certain types of foods that cannot be frozen due to their food structure. This is, for example, the case with salads, pasta, potatoes or eggs. Therefore, they should be stored in the refrigerator.

On the other hand, it is very useful to freeze stews, vegetables and broths, in order to keep them longer. To store food, it is advisable to use airtight glass containers . This is because foods stored in glass jars will last longer than when frozen in plastic containers.

A woman in front of her refrigerator.

An example of a batch cooking menu for the whole week

Finally, here’s a menu idea from Monday to Friday so you can start practicing batch cooking . Of course, this is just an example, you can vary it as long as you stick to the concept of healthy eating.

For lunches

Monday: Salmon en papillote with vegetables and baked potatoes.
Tuesday: Pasta salad with chicken fillet.
Wednesday: spinach with chickpeas with a hard-boiled egg.
Thursday: boiled potatoes with vegetables and fish.
Friday: sautéed vegetables with quinoa and turkey aiguillettes.

For dinners

Monday: Spinach salad with mozarrella and walnuts.
Tuesday: glass of gazpacho and potato omelet.
Wednesday: beef burger with vegetables.
Thursday: vegetable ratatouille with grilled egg and rye crackers.
Friday: carrot and cucumber raw vegetables with chickpea hummus.

Integrate batch cooking into your habits

Don’t have enough time to cook healthily? So try to cook according to the batch cooking model to have ready meals to help you take care of your body and your health.