You don’t always have time to cook when you have to get a meal on the table, but you know that home-cooked meals are generally better for you, cost less, and taste better than takeout. A little planning ahead and you can create a dish that will transform over a number of days—or stock your freezer and fridge with your own ready-made meals!

Scaling Up

You’d think that scaling up or down a recipe was just a matter of simple math, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You often need to increase your seasonings by less than the rest of the ingredients and you may need to consider the amount of liquid you’re using if you’ll be baking in a bigger pan. If you are cooking more than one dish in the oven, try raising the temperature by about 25 degrees to keep the cooking time steady.

Planning Your Attack

Cooking ahead generally means cooking in quantity and a little planning will cut down your time at the store and in the kitchen. Thinking about what you want to make for the week and what you want to feed the freezer will keep your shopping to the minimum—picking up fresh salad, herbs, or bread is much easier than having to run out for forgotten ingredients midway through a recipe!

Cooking ahead can also save you money since you can buy in bulk and take advantage of store specials. Just remember to include freezer- or fridge-friendly packaging on your shopping list if you don’t have glass or plastic containers at home. A double wrapping of heavy-duty aluminum foil and or plastic wrap can work in a pinch, depending on how long you want to store something.

If you know you’re going to reheat food, whether it’s going in the fridge or the freezer, leave it slightly underdone so that it doesn’t get overcooked later. Make sure to correct the seasonings after reheating and add a squirt of lemon juice or fresh herbs to wake up the flavors.

Leaving Leftovers

Planning ahead should also include thinking of ways to use your leftovers creatively. Grilled or poached chicken or salmon make great lunchtime salad toppers—or can be reheated and served with different sides and sauces for a totally new dinner. Leftover rice becomes rice pudding, quick biryani, or fried rice. Black bean dip can be formed into patties and served with salsa for bean cakes. Mix hashed brown potatoes can be mixed with eggs and slow-cooked in a saute pan for a Spanish omelet. The list goes on and on.

Avoiding Freezer Burn

Stocking the freezer with your own homemade meals is only a little more complicated than buying from the freezer aisle. You’ll need to make sure everything is cool and packaged carefully—air and moisture are your enemies when trying to keep fresh in the freezer! You can freeze whole meals for up to one month or things like stews, sauces, cakes, or pies for around six. Different recipes react differently to freezing, so you might not always experience the same results.

Recipes

Chicken Stew

As with any stew, you should avoid potatoes and slightly undercook the vegetables. If you know you’re going to use it for later, add less liquid so that it takes up less space in the fridge or freezer.

Meatloaf with Tomato Gravy

For smaller portions of meatloaf, you can swap a loaf pan for oiled or non-stick cupcake pans. They’ll stay fresh in the fridge for about five days and can freeze for up to one month.

Simple Tomato Sauce

It definitely makes sense to make tomato sauce in large quantities since it can be used for pizzas, pastas, soup bases, or casseroles. Eat some throughout the week in different guises and freeze the rest in small containers or plastic bags so you don’t have to thaw the entire batch at once.

Mom’s Harvest Apple Pie

Both pies and pie crusts can be frozen without a problem. You can freeze the filling separately or freeze the entire (slightly underbaked) pie directly in the pie pan with at least two coverings of plastic wrap. Since you can bake directly from frozen, you won’t even waste any time thawing.