When you are a mom who loves to cook her kids healthy, nutritious foods, you can come under a lot of pressure to make time to cook. There are times when you can take all the time in the world to prepare a meal, sipping a glass of wine and listening to music as you go. However, there are other times when cooking a meal for the family is a race against the clock to get the food on the table.

For us moms who love to cook, being efficient is crucial when it comes to speeding up how long meal preparation takes, helping to make those rushed dinners a little less stressful. To make cooking quicker and easier, below are four lifesaving tips for faster food preparation that every mama should take advantage of.

1. Always prepare appliances and the oven

If there’s one thing that slows down your cooking, it’s a cold oven and appliances that aren’t ready to use. For this reason, always make sure to turn the oven on first, followed by getting out any appliances that you will need for the recipe that you plan on making. That way, by the time you are ready to put the food in the oven, it should be at optimal temperature.

2. Ensure you have the right tools

They say that a poor workman blames his tools but in the case of cooking, when things go wrong often the tools are to blame. You see, if you are working with blunt knives, for instance, you won’t be able to cut your meat, fish, or vegetables as well as you would be able to with a sharper Kamikoto knife. The fact is that you need to have the right tools in place to cook, and what we mean by the right tools is tools that offer the best results. Blunt knives are a nightmare to work with, so if yours have reached the end of their prime buy a knife sharpener or a set of new knives pronto.

3. Figure out a prepping order

Believe it or not, having the right prepping order in place can significantly speed up the process of cooking. Say your recipe calls for onions, garlic, and mushrooms at the start of the recipe and courgette and carrot near the end, don’t just dice the veggies needed to start the dish with. Instead, dice them all, as that way you can then use the chopping board for the meat, without worrying about cross contamination, plus this speeds things up slightly.

4. Cut corners where you can

To speed things up even further, cut corners wherever you can. This could mean buying ready diced vegetables that can be grabbed out the freezer as and when you need them. It could mean freezing leftover sauces and stocks to use on days when time isn’t on your side. It could mean using little hacks like grating the butter instead of chopping it, for instance, to help boost the speed at which you can cook at.

There you have it, four lifesaving hacks for faster food preparation that every mom should know to help speed up cooking on those days where time is of the essence.

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