Batch Cooking
While walking to the market today my friend Cyril proposed we take turns cooking food in large batches. It would only take a few like minded people for us to benefit from cooking on a large scale, making meals that most bachelors and couples would find too large or expensive to prepare, such as lasagna or chili.
We quickly came up with a list of batch cooking recipe candidates:
- Chili
- Bread
- Pate
- Picklings
- Jams
- Pies
- Cookie doughs
- Duck (If you want to make confit you’ll need at least 3 ducks)
- Lasagna
- Pierogies
- Pate Chinois
- Soups
With luck, we’ll get a few more people together (4 to 6 people, 8 tops).
I hope to avoid the “too many cooks” issue by delegating a meal to each household and having the household coordinate the shopping and preparation, while splitting the grocery bill between each participant. Once a month should be a good starting pace, and if it picks up we could add homework assignments such as cookie dough exchanges.
I think there is a lot of potential here, and with the practice there are a few recipes that I would like to use as Christmas gifts (the pate, picklings, jams and cookie dough all come to mind).
The next step will be to find a few more people to join us, and find out who’s cooking first.
I just throught of Potato Salad, and Cyril also suggested Pizza.
For recipes I’m sending him my chili recipe and he’s gonna execute it however he wants to. I’m also debating finding all the biggest recipes in my favourite cookbook and running through them.
Scary what happens when great minds come together…
Sounds like a good idea. How big are you envisioning the batches will be?
The size of the batch depends on the number of people and the complexity of the batch. Our goal was that we could have something to eat right away and at least one meal to put in the freezer each.
Since I first posted Cyril and I did a test run making Chili. We actually made a different meal while we were waiting for the chili. One piece of advice is to bring your own tupperware, and also your own cutting knife if you’re picky about that sort of thing.