Tricks that can make your cooking life easy

Ever since I got married and moved to Chicago life has been running at a very fast pace. With my work commute being insanely crazy I always wanted to make it easy for me to enjoy cooking and try to find some me time.

This struggle went on for a couple of months, and sometimes even now I don’t feel I have it all under control. But as this is a learning curve I have adopted or developed some tricks that have made my cooking easy, faster and efficient.

1.     We all love the cut frozen veggie packets and agree they are convenient and healthy. But some of those veggies are not cut in shapes or sizes I would prefer. Some mixed veggies have a veggie I would not want for a particular recipe but we would ignore and use it. So I decided to have my own brand of frozen veggies at home. It’s called KD’s frozen veggies. Whenever I go grocery shopping there are always some deals on certain veggies. I usually pick extra of those veggies for freezing them. Make sure you wash and clean the veggies before chopping them and freezing.

Here is a list of veggies I usually freeze:

Bell peppers – I usually cut them in two styles – small square shaped mainly Indian cooking and other is long one’s which are used for Chinese, Thai etc

Green beans – this is mainly angled shaped mainly for Indian and any other Asian cuisine

Carrots- Same as bell pepper – square shaped and long ones

Cauliflower – decent medium size florets

Broccoli – decent medium size florets

Tomato’s – This can be done in many ways one is clean the tomato’s and put the entire tomato in a zip lock freezer bag. Other is cutting them into 4 or 6 big pieces. 

Ginger- Peel the skin and clean them. Cut them in small pieces and freeze. Other option is making a ginger paste in a blender and adding some salt and lemon juice. Store this paste in a glass bottle.

Inorder to store these, take a steel dish and place an aluminum foil on the plate. Add the chopped veggies in the plate making sure you don’t stack them in a big pile. Place these in a freezer for few hours. Take the frozen veggies and now store them in a freezer bag or freezer container (such as oxo).

Now every time you have guests or are tired of chopping you know where to find the instant veggies.

2.     Some fruits can be frozen in a similar way as the veggies. Most the fruits I try freezing are strawberry, blueberry, raspberry. Just note, once frozen they are not best for eating them, however best for making juices, milkshakes, cocktails and desserts.

3.     Chutney- We Indians need chutney in most of our food, making chutney’s can be a bit tedious task. Most of us prefer to get the readymade chtuney’s from the Indian store, but nothing like homemade chutney. Refer to my recipe for making chutney. Once the chutney is made, add this in a ice tray and freeze in overnight. Once it forms nice ice cubes of chutney place these in a freezer bag or a freezer container. So now every time you need chutney all you do is grab how many cubes you need and place it in the microwave for 30sec to 1 minute.

4.     Coriander & mint leaves- How many of us buy coriander and when needed find it is all dried out. This is not the best method or substitute to the freshly chopped coriander as presentation but it helps in the flavor.  Clean and chop the coriander and place them in the ice tray and add some water, they will form a cube. Add in the food for the flavor might not be that clearly visible compared to the fresh one’s.

5.     Spinach- Fresh spinach goes bad if not used in few days. I have tried two methods of freezing spinach. Clean and chop spinach to the required size. Keep them open on a cloth for couple hours making sure it has dried completely. Once dried place them in a freezer bag or container. Other method is making a puree of the spinach in a blender and adding a pinch of salt and lemon juice. Store this in a freezer container. Personally I prefer the second one since that is how I use spinach in most of my cooking.

I will be adding more things to my list as I learn and experiment new ways of freezing.