I love cooking with produce from our garden; it saves us so much money on groceries. However prepping all the vegetables for dinner can be time-consuming, so I have come up with a few ways to reduce the time it takes me to chop, dice, and slice our veggies.
I use scissors to quickly dice bell peppers. You can see how I quickly cut the peppers here. I freeze the extra diced peppers to grab and use on busy nights. I also use scissors to quickly mince fresh herbs, and cut up spinach and kale.
I don’t have a fancy knife set, so I use a serrated bread knife to slice tomatoes. It works remarkably well!
I use a julienne peeler to create match stick sized carrots. I also use the julienne peeler to quickly slice yellow squash, zucchini, and broccoli stalks. When sauteeing vegetables for one dish, you can double the amount and freeze the remaining veggies to jump start dinner on a busy night. Frozen sauteed vegetables make a great addition to soups and casseroles.
I use a Food Chopper to finely chop onions. First I cut them into several large pieces, then put one chunk in at a time to chop into fine pieces. Freeze any unused onions.
Combining quick vegetable prep techniques with batch cooking makes it possible for me to quickly assemble healthy homemade dinners, even on busy nights.
How do you save time on dinner prep?
I’m sharing these tips with Time Saving Tuseday at Simplified Savings.
'Becca says
How have I never thought of using scissors on kale?! I will try it ASAP!
I have a food processor, so when I’m slicing or grating a large amount of something, I use that. It doesn’t dice, though. Sliced onions freeze well, but the pieces can be kind of large in one or two dimensions, which is awkward in some dishes.
Lea Ann @ Mommy's Wish List says
How did I get thru 47 years without a Julienne Peeler? Gah. Totally buying one of those.
mjskit says
Great hints! I’ve never used scissors to chop bell peppers. I’ll have to try it!