5 Culinary Resolutions For The New Year
New year, new kitchen. No, you do not need to renew the kitchen, but your culinary habits! Put these 5 habits into practice to eat better than ever.
The New Year is usually a good excuse to set goals and give yourself the will to achieve them. In the culinary you can also make resolutions that will help you eat better throughout the year, learn to cook and invest less time in richer food.
5 ideas to cook more and better this year
1. Cook more at home
If you cook more at home instead of throwing out precooked and prepared meals, you will have more control over what you eat, over its ingredients, its freshness and above all, over your tastes.
Cooking at home also makes you go to the greengrocer or greengrocer for ingredients, which you choose by looking at what is in season and what you want to do and eat, and allows you to plan purchases according to the meals you plan to make at throughout the week.
It is easy not to repeat a single dish all week if we buy the ingredients ourselves and cook them at home. It is also cheaper and generally healthier.
2. Learn at least one new recipe a month
Make it your goal to learn at least one brand new recipe every month. Even if it is only one, it will already make you use other ingredients or in other ways, and it will give you new ideas for your daily dishes, as well as experience and confidence in your culinary skills.
Choose dishes that you don’t usually cook normally, buy the ingredients a few days before and get to work. Sundays are a good day for it if you don’t work that day.
3. Consume more consciously
Since we are, whenever possible, when you go to make the purchase, look at the packaging, the origin of the products and their ingredients. Do you really need all that plastic and the Styrofoam tray for a few mushrooms? Are there legumes nearby, which have less ecological footprint? Do I really need this sauce that is 20% sugar?
Anything you can buy in bulk, so much the better. They are less packaging and in the case of fruits and vegetables, it is cheaper.
Seasonal and local products also have a smaller ecological footprint : they do not have to be brought from the other side of the world.
And the processed products can be removed from the shopping cart and made at home with the raw materials of our choice. Don’t worry, there are recipes for just about everything you’re looking for, from a sugar-free ketchup to a vegetable mayonnaise or a super tasty dressing.
4. Make the most of the leftovers
With what is left over from other dishes, we can make totally new preparations. You can store your leftovers in a tupper in the fridge (if it is for 2 or 3 days) or in the freezer. Practically everything works.
For example, if you have a few tablespoons of vegetable cream left over, don’t throw them away. When you make another vegetable cream you add it.
Rice, quinoa and other cereals can save your day, especially if you don’t know what to prepare to take to work. Simply mix cooked cereals with other things you have in the fridge, such as creams, pâtés, stir-fries or vegetables that can be made quickly.
If you take advantage of the leftovers as much as you can, you will avoid going shopping more frequently, you will come up with much more creative ideas for your meals, you will save money and generate less waste. All advantages, right?
5. Use the cookbooks you have
Sure you have at least one cookbook (or a lot) that you bought, you have looked at it sometime but finally you have not cooked anything of what it proposes. Make use of cookbooks, that’s what they are for.
Choose recipes that appeal to you and whose ingredients you can easily find and make them. Write down your recipe notes on a separate piece of paper and keep it with the recipe (for example sticky notes) to remember how you made your version and how it turned out, if there are any mistakes in the original recipe, etc.
Make it with all the cookbooks you have and don’t buy more until you’ve tried at least one recipe for each. If you need new ideas, browse through new books with the intention of making the recipes before buying them: see if the ingredients are common in your area, if you can make the recipes that he proposes at home, etc. don’t just look at the photos.
My resolution for this year is to prepare more and more varied recipes. It is complicated because I have already played all the suits, but there are always new things to try and investigate. So I wish you a 2018 full of delicious things and good experiences in the kitchen;)
