20 Aha! Cooking Tips from Chefs and Veteran Cooks

Saving Money in the Kitchen

1. Meal planning goes a long way

Pro chef here, I see lots of culinary tips and lot of good information. So I’ll go another route and think more of the lines of a home cook with an average budget.

Plan your food out to save money and time. Even if it’s for two or three days.

For example, say you’re making chili dogs on Monday, You’ll have left over onion but that’s okay because tomorrow you know you’re going to make chicken soup and can use the onion for that. On Tuesday, Go ahead and throw your chicken for chicken soft tacos that you’re having on Wednesday into the water. You’ll flavor your soup even more and then you can pull your “Wednesday” chicken out of the water, pull it off the bone and then marinate it overnight in your favorite seasonings. Now take your chicken soup chicken and throw that into the water and finish up your soup.

On Wednesday, you have your chicken already to go, so you have an easy meal to make. Now you have left over chicken and rice. Make a cheesy chicken casserole Thursday.

Little things like that will save you hours each week and possibly thousands of dollars over the course of a year. Also by planning your food out there’s little waste so you’ll be helping the world as well. – DrStephenFalken

2. Organise a no-waste kitchen

There is no fucking waste in the kitchen. Coffee grounds and egg shells go into the compost for the vegetable garden. Bones get roasted and thrown in the big ass stock pot on the low flame at the back of the stove, as do vegetable scraps. When the stock is strained at the end of the day all of those scraps get put in the slop bucket and brought to the little rancher kid we bought a pig from at the local fair.

We bought the pig to support local and promote ourselves at the same time. When it gets big enough we’re going to shut down the restaurant for a day and have a family bbq. What do we do with the nasty bits from little piggy? Back into the fucking stock pot! – Doc_tito

3. Deglaze, deglaze, and deglaze!

No flavour left behind. All those little bits in the bottom of your pan after you finish cooking something in there? Don’t just clean the pan out and dispose of those bits, they’re fucking delicious. Deglaze the pan (crank the heat up and then pour liquid into the pan — just enough that it sizzles) and scrape up all the little bits with a soft spatula, mix them into the liquid.

Try to use flavourful liquid — my favorite is beer but wine or even broth is better than water. Take your new pan sauce and pour it back over what you just finished cooking, or use that pan with the pan sauce to cook the next thing and impart all those good flavors onto the second item.- lol_admins_are_dumb