Five Dinner Shortcuts to Save Time and Money

Five dinner shortcuts to save time and money. These tips will help you save on your grocery bill and spend less time cooking.

I’m all for making things from scratch, but I’m often short on time, and I need ways to help trim my dinner prep time. Here are five ways tips and tricks that I use to make dinner faster and easier.

Convenience products

I stock up convenience products to help make meal prep faster. My favorite smart shortcut products are ones that keep well in the fridge or freezer that I can grab when I’m short on time - things like tubes of fresh ginger paste, jarred minced garlic, shredded cheese, and frozen diced onions. 

Think about dinner recipes that you regularly make. Which parts of the prep take the most time? What shortcut products you could use to help speed up the prep?

Batch prep

Batch prepping can be a huge timesaver! When I’m planning my meals for the week, I make sure that I have recipes that share ingredients that I can prep ahead of time. 

For example, one night I’ll make pasta e fagioli soup, and the next night I’ll make lentil bolognese. Both recipes call for chopped celery, onion, and carrot.

I can chop the veggies for both recipes at once. I use what I need for the first recipe and put the chopped veggies for the next day’s recipe in a resealable container in the fridge. 

This not only saves time, but it also saves money and cuts down on waste because, by planning like this, I use up the veggies I buy. 

Batch cook

The idea behind batch cooking is the same as batch prepping - doubling up on one part of prep now to save time later. 

When I plan my recipes, not only do I try to plan recipes that share veggies, but I also look for recipes that share the same protein. 

For example, if I’m making skillet lasagna one night and crockpot chili the next night, I cook enough ground beef for both recipes.

I use the ground beef that I need for the first recipe, and I put the rest of the cooked ground beef in a resealable container in the fridge to use the next night. 

This also helps to cut down on waste and allows me to buy in larger quantities, which means I get a better price per pound on the meat. 

Double up

This is one of my favorite ways to make dinners easier - by doubling up! There are two ways to double up on your meals. 

First, cook once and eat twice. When you do this, you eat the meal one way the first night and then repurpose part of the dinner into a new meal for the second night. This works well with larger main dishes - things like grilled chicken, roast vegetables, or pot roast - that reheat well and can be used in different ways.

For example, when I make Instant Pot Korean Beef, we eat the beef with rice and steamed broccoli the first night. Then on the second night, the leftover beef becomes the base for Korean tacos. 

The second way to double up is to make twice the food and save half for later. The idea behind this kind of doubling up is that it’s much faster to make twice the food than to have to make the same meal two separate times. 

Any time I’m making a recipe like lasagna roll-ups that freezes well, I double up and make a second pan for later. 

When making your meal plan, consider which recipes you could repurpose into a new meal on the second day and which recipes freeze well and could be doubled to make two meals.

Freeze it

Your freezer can be your bff when it comes to making faster dinners. We talked about doubling up and freezing complete meals.

But the freezer isn’t just for complete meals! Freezing parts of a meal is also a great way to get a jump on dinner prep. 

For example, when I cook things like rice or quinoa, I’ll make more than I need for that recipe and freeze the extra to use later.  This also works well with lots of veggies, like onions and corn, that freeze well. 

Another great way to use the freezer to save time is to freeze meat in marinade or sauce. For example, when I make crock pot balsamic beef, I make a double batch, and I freeze the second (uncooked) roast in the sauce to cook later.