If you’ve got a new baby at home, I’ve got some batch cooking basics for new mums that could make your life a lot easier.

As a new mum, you may quickly find yourself becoming overwhelmed with all of the things you have to do and learn. And while batch cooking is something that you may have heard can be a huge timesaver, the truth is that you probably don’t have enough free time to truly master it at the moment – and that’s okay.

Your health comes first and foremost right now, so you shouldn’t feel like you need to go all out with batch cooking and meal planning. However, you can incorporate some key elements of this approach into the cooking you’re already doing to help stretch it further and give yourself some much-needed extra time. Here are some batch cooking basics for new mums

1. Chop more of what you’re already chopping

Chopping is one of the least fun aspects of cooking, and when you’re doing it, you’re usually just counting down the minutes until you’re finished. But if you think about it, it actually makes more sense to chop more of what you’re already chopping if you’re going to need it soon.

Take the example of carrots. We sometimes eat raw carrot sticks, but I chop them a lot to use in stews, soups and other dishes. So, if I’m already chopping one carrot and I know I’m going to be using three more throughout the week, I go ahead and chop them all at once and bag them up.

Preparing those other meals later in the week will go faster, and I only have to get out the peeler, knife and cutting board once instead of several times.  

2. Cook more of what you’re already cooking

When you’ve got a newborn, getting through each day on very little sleep is challenging enough without getting bogged down in full-blown meal planning systems and calendars.

Thankfully, doubling the ingredients in whatever you’re making doesn’t require a whole lot of brain power, and it can save you an entire evening of cooking if you double the recipe and save half of it.

You can even do this with part of a meal. For example, if you’re making pasta sauce, make double and freeze half for later in the month. Then you only need to boil some pasta and you’ll have a meal together in no time. But if you’re making something like lentils, you can freeze the whole meal and thaw it out on one of those days when you just can’t handle dinnertime.

3. Tools are your friend

As a new mum, it can be hard to ask for help. And while you might have your reasons for not wanting to ask your mother-in-law to watch the baby, there is no shame in enlisting the help of your kitchen tools to get things done faster.

A food processor is a huge time-saver, especially for tasks like chopping up vegetables and making dough. And my personal favourite, the slow cooker, lets you cook meals in a mostly hands-off way, which is ideal when you’ve got a baby who bursts into tears the minute you try to set them down – been there, done that!

4. Use overlapping ingredients

Now is probably not the best time to get fancy with trying new meals with exotic ingredients. Part of being a new mum is finding new ways to be efficient, and using overlapping ingredients is a simple way to make life easier on yourself.

Let’s say you want to make a mushroom pasta sauce that only uses half the package of mushrooms. That means you can plan to make a mushroom and egg frittata for dinner another night this week. Similarly, if you’re planning to make a big batch of chicken broth to freeze, why not plan to have chicken enchiladas the next day using the leftover chicken?

5. Allow yourself some conveniences

Cutting your time in the kitchen doesn’t always have to mean having your husband pick up fast food or microwave meals on the way home from work. In fact, there are plenty of shortcuts that are actually quite healthy.

For example, I like to buy frozen vegetables because they’re already chopped and ready to go, and I can keep them in the freezer until I need them. Plus, you never feel obligated to use the whole bag because you can continue storing the remainder ‘til you’re ready.

Plus, vegetables are typically frozen as soon as they are picked, which may actually make them fresher than the ones on the produce aisle that were transported to the store and have been sitting on the shelf for a few days.

In those early days with a new baby, you don’t need to put more pressure on yourself or “prove” anything – after all, every mum is a superhero! By sticking to these batch cooking basics for new mums, you can save a lot of time, effort and energy, and don’t worry – there will be plenty of time to go all-in on batch cooking when your baby gets a little older!

You’ve got this mama!

Love,

Nakita xxx