15 Mistakes Beginners Make Cooking Food For the Week

Biggest tip for rice, speaking as a brazilian, who use to eat rice like every day: fry some onion and garlic with olive oil, add the rice, stir a little, put a pinch of salt and then the water. That’s is the perfect rice, give it a try

Cleaning up while prepping was a huge game changer for me. It is just a good feeling to have little to no dishes left when the last item is done cooking

When you add new pantry ingredients (like almonds as we see here) into your storage jar, it's super important to rotate stock. Pour the old contents of your nearly-empty jar into a handy bowl, empty your new bag of almonds into the bottom of your jar, then put the old contents on top. Make this a habit and you will use up the older contents first, preventing the layer at the bottom of the jar going stale.

I grew up never really being taught how to cook or meal plan. This helps me immensely as a young adult with my own house and family to feed

If you want a large amount of variety, then start a culinary group with friends. Every participant makes seven batches of the same meal and then swaps them with six other friends. Now you have a different meal every day of the week but only had to cook once. It's simple and easy!

Going to comment again: Please do more of this kind of videos Mike! This is the holy grail of cooking and the most helpful kind of content on the entire internet!

There's a lot of great tips and ideas here. My biggest pet peeve with meal prep is all the time it takes to cut, wash ingredients and then cleaning up cookware. The actual cooking itself is not laborious. Just the stuff you do before and after

I love how he gets right to the point instead of showing five minutes of chopping. Very creative and fun. Thanks!

Soo, guess what I just did? Picked up our daughter from her college campus and we prepped three weeks of vegetarian freezer meals 2gether. She was always saying the campus had very limited options (salad/fries/occasional non meat pizza.) and was always hungry. So I bought her a crock pot, and we made gallon sized freezer bag with everything for Vegetarian Taco Soup, Swedish Meatballs, and Plant based beef stew. She is a happy camper, and I don't have to worry. 💗 But this video, and subsequent comments have now inspired me to do even more and tweak the prepping. Batches of rice cooked with onions and garlic. Our daughter taught me to flavor the water with red pepper flakes. Gonna roast veggies instead of just steam, etc Thank you❣

Me: eating a bowl of cereal Mike: You should really put some flavour blast on that

Yup, homecooking is only expensive when you're building your pantry from scratch (unless you always go for expensive ingredients of course). I recently moved to my own place and had to restock my pantry regulars and it was quite painful on my wallet lol For beginners or casual homecooks like me, one way to save when building your pantry is to stick first to a cuisine or cuisines that share common ingredients.

Great tips. I would love to see suggestions for those of us without so much kitchen space. The sheet pan idea for example wouldn't work in a lot of smaller fridges unless you take everything else out of the freezer completely. Also your pantry space is a dream, but a lot of us are very limited on cabinet space for storing all those extra spices and flours.

When prepping lettuce or veggies that contain alot of moisture i always put a paper towel in with them to absorb some of the moisture and extend their shelf life ✌

I'm not a "prep for the whole week" cook. I'm a "just make more than you need right now" cook. I don't got into the kitchen to make one lunch when I'm hungry. I'll make three, leaving 2 prepped lunches for later in the week. I don't bake just enough potatoes for the meal that's going to include them. I'll bake a few extra, to be used in a different dish in a day or two. An extra prepped ingredient, snack, or full meal made when you have the time can make a big difference when you don't. Last night, I was making unstuffed peppers (stuffed peppers in casserole form, with the peppers chopped up) and realized early in I'd gotten some of my proportions wrong. Instead of setting aside the excess to be worked into another meal, I just went with it, scaling up all the other ingredients so I'd have an entire spare dinner ready to help us out on a busy night. We also fully embrace the joys of leftovers. Good, homecooked food that you've already put the work in to get? Yes, please. Reheat as is, or throw a bunch of leftover stuff into a pan and see what I can make of it. Either way is a win. There are few things better than looking at the contents of your fridge on Friday and realizing you can go all-in on having a Lazy Saturday by not even having to cook. Tell your housemates "Saturday's meal plan is to clean out the fridge," then sit back and relax.

It's crazy how organized his kitchen is. So many tools and foods to organize as well. I can really feel how intentional every space is.

Two additional tips: Collect a variety of old, well rinsed twist off jars. They are free, food safe (espc. if the lid is blue seal) and usually close well enough to transport even soup, salad dressing etc. without leaking. Also, store your pre peeled or pre sliced carrots, radish and the like in a jar filled with cold water to keep them extra fresh and crunchy all week long. This also works to perk up carrots and lots of other root veg that has already become a bit soft and bendy.

RV tip ... Works in home kitchen too. Use/buy SQUARE containers. It optimized space, stacks better, and if they taper stagger them right side up and upside down. Works great for cabinets and fridge as well

Update! this is a re-upload from 1 hour ago. For some reason youtube made my video unavailable so I has to upload it again. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ My apologies to anyone who commented in before!

When cooking rice, follow his great directions, but also: when you turn the fire off, DO NOT TAKE OFF THE LID! Let the rice steam covered for 10 minutes before serving. No peeking! This advise comes from my Louisiana Cajun grandmother Lottie Eugenia Dupuy Davis.

honestly, this was the BEST cooking for the week, prep video i have EVER seen. so many ideas that i am pulling from this that i never thought to do: the herb sauce, the spice mix made at home, the ideas for doing stuff with the leftover, making sure to make the HEALTHY snacks, i am taking soooooo many amazing ideas that will keep my family healthier and make life easier for me! thank you, thank you, thank you!!!💕💕💕💕