Mama Lena's Kitchen Tip of the Day- Prepping your Veggies on Grocery Day
You know when you drop the just-purchased groceries on the counter? Do you wearily put away the perishables, trudge to the pantry to put away the non-perishables, then walk away thinking you've done all you can?
Think again. You can save a great deal of time and money by NOT putting away the vegetables just yet. Instead, get out the freezer bags, a Sharpie, a chef's knife, a cutting surface, and maybe these from Amazon:
Optional but recommended: food processor with the chopping blade, a bowl for composting scraps and a trashcan nearby. If you have a deep freezer, you're set. If you don't, please keep in mind what space considerations you need to make. It might be time to clean out the freezer of the remains of the quart of freezer burned ice cream and the frozen store-bought lasagna from six months ago that no one will eat.
One of the many reasons we all procrastinate on cooking healthy meals is the prep time. When I worked, the idea of schlepping into the kitchen after work and spending time chopping onions, carrots, and other foods just wasn't worth it. This was especially true of crock pot meals. Who had time in the morning to chop veggies and then throw it all in the crock pot? Not this girl! Before coffee, giving me a sharp chef's knife was likely to result in someone needing stitches.
So, I often resorted to pre-packaged "dump and go" meals like Hamburger Helper or worse, fast-food delivery. I wasted a lot of money because I was too tired or pressed for time. Or I spent a lot of money getting pre-prepped veggies in itty bitty bags when I could have done the work myself for pennies.
The solution is to pre-prep your vegetables now, before you put them away. Yes, all of them even the whole bag onions. I'll try to remember to give you the secret to never having to peel potatoes again another day. Believe me, it's worth the extra time.
Start by labeling all the bags. I recommend quart size bags for onions, even if you will be chopping the whole 5-lb bag. Make at least three in that case. Trust me, you want onions in small bags, even if this means you have seven quart size bags when you're done chopping onions. It's a good rule of thumb to measure all your veggies into quart size bags, actually, with the exception of carrots and green peppers. Those you'll want in gallon bags. Most recipes call for about two cups or less of any vegetable, with the exception of potatoes. You'll have less waste with quart bags. Label them with the Sharpie before your hands get wet.
The most-used vegetable in most households is the onion, but due to the eye-watering pungency of onions, most cooks would rather suffer torture than peel and cut onions every day. So do it all at once and get it over with! Grab up your food processor, peel and chop those onions just enough to get them down the chute and set up the one-quart onion bags you pre-labeled. If you have the baggie racks from Amazon, line them up with a bag ready in each. Once your food processor bowl is full, measure about 2 cups and get them in the bags ASAP. Keep going until the mesh onion bag from the store is empty. You'll have a stack of onion bags on the counter, skins in the bowl for compost or trash, and an empty mesh bag for either the garden or the trash.
In some cases you may need to rough chop by hand, such as green peppers or carrots. How you chop your veggies will depend on how you plan to use them. I just rough chop my green peppers and remove the seeds and white pith. I cut my carrots into coins. General rule of thumb for me is that if it is too big to be a reasonable bite, then it gets cut until it is reasonable.
Keep going until all your veggies have been processed into a form you can use. You now have a stack of veggies ready for recipes, a full compost bowl to empty (if you compost) and a sense of accomplishment. Go clean up and put your veggies in the freezer and lay them flat. ou're done.
Why did I say lay the veggies flat? Because you may not need the entire bag for a recipe. If the recipe calls for 1/4 cup of onion, a flat bag of onion breaks much easier if you drop it on the floor. (Batting eyes innocently. Oopsie! Oh, look! This chunk looks like about a 1/4 cup. I'll just put the rest back in the freezer.) Get me? Good.
Now when you get out the ingredients for a recipe, it's all prepared. A bag of onions here, a few green peppers from this gallon bag, a couple of cans, and the meat. Meal prep done in half the time.
Go play with your food!
Mama Lena
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