Cooking for One the Easy way

The problem with cooking just for yourself, is most of the time you just can’t be bothered.

I am a lover of good food and do very much so enjoy cooking, but not every night. I had to come up with a solution that would offer me a balanced diet, but with the great taste of home cooked food. Microwaved or ready meals were out of the question as all of them are full with total rubbish and that's putting it mildly.

The answer to my problem was solved after a little research surfing the web. What I needed was a vacuum packing machine. Let me explain how it works.

The idea is to cook a meal only twice a week. Each week I would cook something different to give me a little variety. This is how it works:

On Monday I cooked up a very large portion of beef stew, about 4kg worth. After cooking the stew I allowed it to cool down naturally in its pot and lid then placed it in the fridge over night. The next day I individually portioned the stew into 500 gram lots and vacuum packed each portion, then labelled and froze them. To accompany the stew, I part boiled, about 10 minutes six individual portions of new potatoes, allowed them to cool, then vacuum packed each portion in a vacuum bag with a knob of chilled butter. They too were then placed in the freezer.

On Wednesday I did the same, but this time I cooked a large portion of spaghetti bolognaise, again about 4kg worth, I then individually portion the bolognaise into 500gram lots, 8 portions and vacuum packed each portion and put them all into the freezer.

Over the next month I managed to cook and vacuum pack a variety of home cooked favourite dishes even soups and lamb shanks in gravy, I vacuum packed them all and froze the lot. There is really no limit to what type of foods you can vacuum pack.

Now here comes the clever bit. After a hard day work I return home and enjoy a home cooked meal ever night. All I do is place one of my portioned vacuum packed meal into a pot of boiling water and in twenty minutes the meal is ready. There is no need even to linger over the boiling pot, the meal will turn out perfect every time, just as if it were cooked from scratch.

The beauty of vacuum packing cooked meals in this way, is that the food will almost never degrade or evaporate will reheating and will last in the freezer for a very long time. When food is vacuum packed and frozen it will not suffer from freezer burn or ice crystallization as cling filmed or normally packed food will, because the air and its present moisture has been removed. If you are going to freeze liquids, it is advisable to vacuum pack them in a special acrylic container which also can be frozen, boiled, or even microwaved! They are even dishwasher proof!

If you want to make life easier, and really do enjoy you food, vacuum pack it, it’s the only way to go.