Can you picture a scenario where you cook once and eat three nights in row without a lot of extra work? Use this strategy to save time in the kitchen.
How can you be more efficient in the kitchen?
How can you stretch your grocery dollar?
How can you make the most of your minutes?
Believe it or not, there are easy ways for you to save time, avoid food waste, and generally be more efficient in the kitchen!
February’s theme in this year’s Grocery Savings Challenges is to save time in the kitchen, so let’s talk about this valuable Cook Once strategy.
Cook Once, Enjoy Three Dinners
Time is precious. Time to cook even more so.
It’s important to make the most of the food we cook. That’s why the whole Cook Once, Eat Three Times practice is a great one for you to learn. It will save you time and money.
The Cook Once, Eat Three Times strategy is this:
- Cook a large protein, such as a pot roast or roast chicken. Serve it one night as a main dish.
- Serve it twice more as part of other meals, such as a pot pie, soup, casserole, or salad.
Cook One Chicken, Eat Three Dinners
Consider this scenario: Whole chickens were on sale at ALDI last week for 79 cents/pound. Buy two 5-pounders (about $8) and roast them.
Enjoy Roast Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and steamed carrots one night.
The next night serve Chicken Pot Pie and the following evening enjoy Chicken Noodle Soup.
The beauty of this scenario is that you can do the bulk of the prep work the first night and kick back the next two nights. Here’s how:
Night 1 Prep:
- While the chickens are roasting, prepare the pie crust.
- Then as you peel and chop carrots, make extra for the pot pies and shred a couple for the chicken noodle soup.
- While you have the grater out, shred the onion and zucchini for the soup and place all the shredded veggies in a Tupperware and stow it in the fridge.
- Since the peeler is already out, peel lots of potatoes. Reserved enough boiled potatoes for the pot pies and mash the rest for the first night’s dinner.
- When you make the gravy, make enough for the roast chicken dinner and extra to go in the pot pies. Use the gravy recipe here; make double.
After dinner on Night 1
- After you enjoy your roast chicken, remove the meat from the bones and start the chicken stock to cook in the crockpot overnight.
- Chop the meat and divide it into portions: for pie and for soup.
- Assembled the potpie filling and stow it in the fridge.
- Refrigerate the soup portion for night three.
Day Two
- In the morning, strain the stock and refrigerate it, covered.
- That night, since you already have your pie crusts, chicken, carrots, potatoes, and gravy prepped, all you need to do is assemble the pot pie and bake.
- If you’re not planning on serving them this night, you can easily freeze the pie for a future dinner.
Day Three
- About an hour before dinner, assemble the soup. The veggies, chicken, and stock are already prepped. A quick saute, stir, boil, add noodles and it will be ready in about 20 minutes.
- Serve with grilled cheese sandwiches or simple saltines and butter.
How else can you cook once and eat three times?
You can do this same thing with lots of other meals.
- A beef pot roast can become tacos and Beef and Barley soup on later nights.
- Bean and Rice bowls can become sides to enchiladas and then on a subsequent night be added to soup.
- A pork roast transforms easily into BBQ sandwiches and chili.
- Roasted veggies can be an elegant side dish to grilled meats and then be added to quesadillas, pizza, or minestrone later on.
- Grilled Tri-tip makes for great sandwiches and taco filling on subsequent nights.
A Word About Leftovers
I’ve met people in my travels who had no qualms about eating week-old leftovers or take-out that had sat in the car overnight. What you do is your business, but if you’re feeding other people, particularly pregnant women, young children and elderly folk, you may want to reconsider the safety of some of your practices.
A general rule of thumb that I learned in catering was not to serve something past its third day. The USDA says that prepped food is good under proper refrigeration for FOUR DAYS.
No weeklong leftovers. No in-car storage.
Having a meal plan posted on your refrigerator will help you remember when you made a certain dish. Keep a sharpie in the kitchen to mark dishes with the date they’re made.
If in doubt, throw it out.
The USDA has a great chart that tells you practically everything you need to know about the Basics for Handling Food Safely.
How do you make Cook Once work for you?
Jen@Balancing Beauty and Bedlam says
Oh yes, you know you're a mom after my own heart. I love C.O.S.T. cooking and I don't think there is a meal that I make that doesn't include thoughts towards what that next meal will be. 🙂
Kimberly Dawn Rempel says
Great ideas! I can see that if I just follow even some of your advice our dollar would stretch further, and we would eat healthier. Thanks!
kouponkrazi says
Super great ideas! Thank you. I do similar by cooking a whole chicken on Sunday, making stock & using the left-over chicken for either soup or Chicken & Dumplings later in the week. I love stopping by & reading what new things you are doing!
Susie says
I like the idea of big dishes doing double or triple duty:-)
Ruby lane wives says
I saw a video on you tube that made a chicken last for 4 meals for a fam of 4! this is good too. stupid question what exactly do you do for roasted vegetables? what do you use how do you do it mine always seem to burn on the edges!!!
Kathleen Duffy says
One trick I learned when roasting vegetables is to preheat the pan in the oven before placing the veggies on it so they sizzle and start to pick up color right away.
Kimarie @ Cardamom's Pod says
I love doing this and am actually trying to PLAN for this. The past few weeks I've been working on being a better steward with our grocery money – checking coupons, working the sales, etc. Last Friday I purchased the biggest pork roast I could find – it was on sale for 98 cents a pound. Roasted it Sunday and had roast, mashed red potatoes (also on sale buy 1 get 1 free), peas, and homemade rolls. I put the rest of the roast in the crockpot Sunday afternoon to cook really soft for BBQ sandwiches Sun. evening. Today we had enough BBQ and rolls leftover for lunch, and enough potatoes for supper tonight. Just had to take the rest of the meat on sale and make a meatloaf for tonight and meatballs to freeze for another day, and chopped up a bunch of on sale collard greens.
Thanks for ALL your tips, and for this being a place where I can "jabber" about the nitty-gritty details and joys of feeding our family of 11 in a more efficient way! It's so fun to see a grocery store receipt of $109 and see underneath that I saved $87 dollars!!
CatWay says
I've recently started cooking for two nights at a time (eg. On Monday cook for Monday and Tuesday), then I only have to reheat on the second day. I'm loving this, it saves so much time. I got the idea by reading a book Table Tucker (it is a down under book (Australia/NZ)) – the book also has plans to help you do this all year round.
Coby says
You have inspired me to dig out the whole chicken in my freezer to cook today. We will have roasted chicken with roasted potatoes and carrots tonight. I think i will whip up some homemade bread to go with it this afternoon. I will also make the pizza dough for thursday. Then I plan on making stock with the bones overnight. Tomorrow we will have a family chicken and biscuit recipe with spinach salad. Then on thursday we will have BBQ chicken pizza. I should also have enough stock to make several bathces of homemade cream of chicken soup to freeze and use later in other recipes.
Thanks for the great tips. I am a new reader to your blog and I really love it. Keep up the good work!
FishMama says
Jen, here's my blonde moment, though I am not blonde, what does C.O.S.T stand for?
Kimberly, let us know how this works for you.
kouponkrazi, your plan sounds great. Glad you were inspired.
Ruby Lane Wives, here's how I do my veggies: http://www.lifeasmom.com/2009/05/ultimate-recipe-swap-grilled-foods.html
Kimarie, jabber away.
Catway, sounds like a great practice — and a great book.
Coby, enjoy your chicken!
Keowdie says
I love doing this. Our local supermarket often has meat specials, where I can get whole chickens for less than $5! And they often do a 5/$20 sale; the cuts of meat are usually pretty good, and if done correctly, I can usually end up basically getting 2 of those 5 meats for free.
I have always spent several hours hovering over the stockpot as the bones boiled. I never thought of making the stock in my crockpot over night! That's a great idea! Thanks!
Roberta says
I always make stock in the crockpot. It works great!
Dawn says
When I'm not sure I will get to use leftovers in a timely fashion I pop them in the freezer instead of letting them waste in the fridge. My meatloaf often becomes the 'meatballs (ok cubes) in sauce later in the week and we love using leftover pork for BBQ sandwiches.
Gina @ MoneywiseMoms says
I do this all the time, with pork, ground beef and chicken. Even when I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce, it's used 3-4 times before it's done.
Hailey's Beats and Bits says
i usually do one cooking for two meals but right now i am rethinking…. thanks
Shannon says
I don’t know what C.O.S.T. means either. Could it be Cook Once Serve Twice or Thrice? Haven’t started the whole meal planning thing yet. Running into resistence from hubby who is scared we will be stuck eating things we don’t like or want simply because it is on the menu. (He does lions share of cooking.) Have any of you run into this problem and do you have any advice.
Jessica Fisher says
I think it must be Cook Once, Serve Twice. She never responded to that, did she? 😉
Roberta says
I haven’t dealt with that problem, but perhaps if you start with meals you KNOW everyone likes and then show him the cost/time savings he’ll have more buy-in. We have lots of standbys, and then I try a new recipe once or twice a month. Most of the times they are “keepers”, but we don’t have especially picky eaters around here. 😉
Jessica Fisher says
Yes! Great advice.
Janet says
I get three meals from one large batch of bolognese. I serve it over pasta on day 1, over meatballs on day 2 and as a dipping sauce for quesadillas on day 3.
Jessica Fisher says
Sounds delicious!
Alice E says
I want to chime in and agree about freezing leftovers for later. Since my hubby doesn’t object to eating a couple days of leftovers, and it’s just us, I still make big batches when I cook. Then if there is too much pasta or whatever to eat up in a couple more days I freeze the rest in individual servings to eat for lunches later. I also do the same thing with cut up leftover roast or chicken/turkey freezing it in meal size packages to use later.
Jessica Fisher says
Isn’t it nice to have easy meals then? Love it!
Pat says
I love this post! Now that it’s just the 2 of us I have found that cooking all the meats, and sometimes the sides too, on one day works for us. Then we decide what we want to eat the night before usually at dinner and I know what needs to be thawed and or warmed up. It’s working really well because I worrk 2 evenings a week during the dinner hour and I know he’s got dinner.
This week the l/o pot roast from Sunday will make 3 meals. Sundays dinner with sides, The gravy will go in Shepherd’s pie with ground beef on Tuesday and the l/o meat will become soup for Saturday. Monday was taco salad. Wednesday will be broccoli cheese soup from the freezer with tuna slad and crackers l/o from Christmas. Thursday will be l/o Chicken fried chicken from Saturday with gravy and the extra mashed potatoes I’ll make when I do the Shepherd’s pie. Friday is clean out day!.
Jessica Fisher says
So glad it’s helpful! Great job with the meal planning!
Keri says
Thank you so much for this post! I know I found it years later, but I made all 3 recipes this week and they were a big hit with my family of ALL boys! I live in south Florida so I took note on your responses when some other people said they had extra liquid in their pies. I made my gravy pretty thick when I baked the chickens, and used just that gravy for the liquid in the pot pie. I let it rest for about 10 minutes after I pulled it out of the oven and it was perfection! These recipes were amazing and super friendly to our budget. Can’t wait to stock up the freezer and try some more of your ideas!
P.S. The seasoned butter under the skin of the chicken……… BEST IDEA EVER!!!!!! Not sure if that is common knowledge or not, but it was new to me, so you’re my hero lol! Seriously the best chicken I have EVER made! Thanks again!!
Jessica Fisher says
Yay, Keri! I’m so glad it was a success for you! Thanks for sharing!
Lara says
I have started meal planning in reverse, if that’s a thing. I like to try new recipes, but I don’t do a good job of tracking them after the fact. I have a calendar in OneNote where I jot down what we ate each night, including links to my Pinterest or other recipes if needed. Then, when I’m stumped for something to make, I can look back through the calendar to get ideas of meals I know we enjoyed. I got some pork chops on sale last week and was trying to decide what to do with them and after looking at my calendar, remembered an old, easy fave for chops: Season chops w/salt, pepper and garlic powder. Add to crock pot. For every two chops (if thick) or four chops (if thin), add one, undiluted can of chicken rice soup (the kind where you are supposed to add a can of water – but don’t add the water). Cook on high 4 hours or low 6 (forgiving recipe; if it goes long while you are at work, no biggie). Chops will fall apart and the rice-y gravy the soup and seasonings makes is DELICIOUS.
Jessica Fisher says
I love that practice! So helpful to know what everyone liked!
Cate says
So excited! Slow cooked my chicken today while I was out.
Deboned it and cut it up. Put bones etc back in to make broth… that’s still going.
Made chicken salad.
Prepped for the pot pie. Just have to do gravy and pie crust day I’m going to make it. Which I wanted to ask but may have missed in your other post. Wondering if can prep pie crust days ahead and leave dough as a disc in the fridge and roll out when ready?
The broth I Normally freeze For future soups but also put aside chicken to make soup this week so will use some broth for that.
Our dinner was pasta with sauce that was frozen from past batches. We had a salad along with it that I prepped day before made double so tonight’s salad was easy.
So I feel I did a lot by 4pm!
Hoping to plan more cook once serve 2-3x meals with a pork loin I bought.
Thanks for all you info and help!
Jessica Fisher says
Great job! Yes, you can make pie crust a few days in advance. At least four days in the fridge. You can even freeze it.
Serenity says
I make rotisserie chicken in my instant pot. It makes a wonderful broth that I then either freeze fo when I need chicken broth or use to make soup.
Jessica Fisher says
Nice!