Productive Cooking 👩🏻🍳
I’m lucky enough to be employed at a company that provides all 3 meals for me (with a wide range of options - coffee included!) Food and drinks was something I never had to previously worry about when I was physically at the office.
However, due to Covid-19, I am working from home till the end of the year - that means I’ll have to continue cooking meals to keep myself fueled. After spending a few months going at it, I think I’ve become quite a productive cook! I thought I’d share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learnt throughout these few months.
What is productive cooking?
To me - productive cooking should consist of these 3 elements:
a) Food should be healthy, nutritious, tastes good &
b) fits into your macros (dependant on your fat loss / health goals, if any)
Easy to cook
Takes no more than 15 minutes to prepare
On most days - I have back to back meetings and have to intentionally block 30 minutes (or 1 hour if I’m lucky) to cook and eat. So how do i do it, and what do i eat?
1a) Food should be healthy, nutritious & tastes good
Everyone more or less knows what ‘healthy food’ is defined as. Your salads, white meats, lean red meats, carbs that are low on the Glycemic Index (digests slowly, doesn’t give you and insulin spike eg. brown / black rice instead of white rice).
Whole foods are generally the way to go if you’re looking for something nutritious.
What makes food unhealthy is also dependant on the way you cook it. Take chicken as an example: the amount of oil (and fat) that gets added onto a piece of fried chicken is insane! Check out this article on the healthiest & unhealthiest ways of eating chicken. Also found more stats on the nutritional value of chicken here from the National Chicken Council 🐔(LOL!)
Home cooked chicken breast (grilled without skin), one breast contains only 165 calories, and 3.6 grams of fat!
Home cooked chicken thigh (grilled without skin), one thigh contains only 209 calories, and 10.9 grams of fat!
KFC Extra Crispy chicken is fried twice, and one thigh contains 490 calories and 29 grams of fat!
Even the parts of the chicken (breast v thigh) make a significant difference - it’s good for us to be aware of these things while grocery shopping.
1b) Get your portions right - make sure they align with your health goals!
Portions are super important to help gauge your food intake. Eating too much at every meal would not only cause you to feel sleepy and bloated, it will eventually lead to fat gain in the long run.
These are the portions I follow as a rule of thumb - each meal should not go over 4 portions:
My typical breakfast
Breakfast portions: 2 - 3 protein, 1 fruit
sometimes I intermittent fast and skip breakfast - especially if I’m try to get into a caloric deficit for fat loss. Over the years, I’ve learnt to listen to my body - if I’m hungry, I’ll eat breakfast. If not, most of the time I’m fine to have black coffee and that keeps me satisfied till lunch. I usually have a cup of black coffee after lunch as well.
Lunch Portions: 2- 3 protein, 1 vegetable / fruit
Dinner Portions: 1 carb, 1-2 protein, 1 vegetable / fruit
Generally, I make it a point to have more protein because they are the building blocks of muscle! Always try to prioritize protein in your meals - it will help you build / maintain your muscle. Muscles are metabolic engines to help burn fat - so the more muscle you have, the easier it will be to ‘burn’ fat.
2) Easy to Cook - have kitchen tools & mini hacks that help
Having these few kitchen tools definitely helped speed things up in the kitchen. It may seem like a minute detail - but once you have these in your cooking arsenal, I promise you’ll never look back!
Automated pepper grinder
Gone are the days I have to keep turning and grinding my pepper when my hands are full and ‘dirty’. Just a press of the button, and the peppers come out beautifully grinded!
This is the one I have - 15 SGD!
Air Fryer
This is a lifesaver right here. Think of this as an all in one baking / fryer / oven machine - best of all, it’s healthy because you don’t have to use any oil at all to ‘fry’ stuff! Most of the time, I just marinade my meats before hand and chuck them in here to bake / fry - and it’s done in 15 minutes!
It’s also cleaner. You don’t have to deal with cleaning the pan - all you have to do it throw the aluminium foil that it was cooking on!
This is the one I have - but there are definitely cheaper ones around! It reminds me of a hair salon permer…
Chopped garlic / onions
Getting these from the store have saved me so much time - I don’t have to peel and chop, and most importantly, I don’t end up with the garlic smell on my hands for days - and I don’t end up crying when I need chopped onions!
Dried herbs & powders
Instead of using salt, use these. They add SO much flavour to your food and meats! They should be sitting somewhere in your kitchen. I use garlic powder and oregano the most in my cooking.
Frozen veggies
Frozen veggies and fruit are actually just as healthy as their ‘fresh’ counterparts. See here for more scientific evidence. Most people I talk to worry about vegetables in the fridge going ‘bad’ in general - so try keeping some frozen veggies in your freezer if you are worried!
Marinating your meats in batches
If you’re someone that likes different flavours, use 3 different marinades to give you a variety of flavours you can choose to cook and eat from over the week! My personal favourite combination is the ‘Honey-Soy-Garlic’ flavour!
Marinating your meats gives it more flavour, and you don’t have to spend extra time marinating the meats right before you cook (this takes some time to execute and can get a little messy, so it’s not the best thing to do when you are pressed for time!)
3) Takes no more than 15 minutes to prepare
Vegetables: Take salad leaves (Mesclun / Spinach), wash them and prop them on a plate. Add a couple of cherry tomatoes in. [1 minute)
Protein: Take out seasoned meat, (or if not seasoned, just pour marinade and pepper on meat), throw it onto the aluminium foil into the air fryer. Grill at 170 Degrees for 7 minutes, flip meat, grill at 180 Degrees for 8 minutes. (15 minutes)
Extra Protein: While the protein is cooking on the side, fry an egg! (2 minutes) Sometimes I have tofu as well. Depending on my mood, I’ll either grill or fry it with chopped garlic and teriyaki sauce (2 minutes).
Add everything onto the plate of veggies, and EAT! :)
Lunch! I added some fried shallots and Sriracha as well ;)
There you go - how I get my healthy, yummy meals done in 15 minutes!
An alternate way to go about this is to actually do the complete meal prep in advance.
When I was in Perth studying, I’d take 1/2 a Sunday to meal prep! I’d head to the grocery store to buy a whole bunch of eggs, lean meats, vegetables - head home and start cooking up a storm! Meats were grilled and I’d cut out all fat, press out all the excess oil, and steam all the vegetables. I had brown rice every meal in controlled portions as well.
The food lasted me for 6 days, for 3 meals each! Every time I was hungry, all I would have to do is go to the fridge, take my food out and heat it up in the microwave for 2 minutes, and voila - I had my food ready to go - and mind you, the food was DELICIOUS. Even my friends loved it! People have the misconception that healthy food tastes bland and dry - I can vouch for that and say that it’s absolutely untrue. You just need to know how to best cook these foods, and trust me, after a workout - all foods generally taste pretty good.
Hope this helps anyone who is actively cooking at home - happy to share more hacks and recipes if anyone is interested!
