Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Class: Hello, my name is Ali, I'm a doctor, YouTuber, and podcaster. Basically, since graduating from university, I've been living off takeaways and ready meals. I know that nutrition is a really important part of life, obviously, but I've always struggled to find the time to actually shop and cook for myself amongst everything else that's going on. Hi, I'm Kym. I'm a mom and CEO of a life sciences company and I used to struggle a lot with making good meals, healthy meals for myself and for my family. So I have developed a system that allows me to prepare meals and to optimize the time that I spend in the kitchen so that I have those fresh, healthy meals available on tap throughout the whole week. In this class, Kym is going to be teaching us, so me and you watching this, all of the basics behind this productive meal prep system so that we can stop relying on takeaways and start actually eating healthily and eating well. Eating well isn't just about recipes, it's about having a system for shopping, for prepping, for cooking, and for storing food so that you can assemble that at a later date, and it's also about building your recipe repertoire so that you have a few key ingredients and you don't have a lot of stuff than you never use sitting in your pantry. In this class, we'll start by talking about the basics of what everyone should have in their kitchen; so cutlery, crockery, and tools, and we'll talk about the spices, herbs, and ingredients that we should have in our pantries at all times. Then we'll talk about the principles behind meal prep. What we're going to buy at the grocery store, how we're going to actually cook and store those meals in the most time-efficient way possible. Then will combine all of this knowledge to make some gourmet healthy meals, including a Chicken Teriyaki, a salmon bake, a vegetarian sausage and vegetable combination thing, and some very nice Instagramable overnight oats. The idea is that once we've got these basic recipes done with the basic ingredients, we can then mix and match them to add some variety to our lives without making the cooking process itself any more difficult. Honestly, when I first realized that cooking didn't have to be a struggle, it absolutely transformed my life. So hopefully, we're going to do the same for you. I'm super excited to learn the stuff for the first time myself and hopefully, you'll gain something by following along. Thanks for watching and we'll see you hopefully on the other side.
2. Class Project: Before we get started, I just want to tell you a little bit about the class project. Now, if you look down below in the projects and resources section, you'll find a place where you can submit the class project, and the project for this class is to challenge yourself to make one of the productive meal prep plan recipe things that we're going to be teaching you in the class. Then once you're done, all you have to do is post a photo of it and just share some thoughts about how the process of making that particular recipe went. Feel free to modify some of our recipes if you like. To be honest with a lot of these dishes, you can substitute the vegetables, you can substitute the protein, you can substitute the carbs. If you do make changes to it, we'd love to see what changes you've made through a photo and a little quick description about what you've added, what you've edited, and if you can give us the quantities, like 400 grams or six ounces of whatever you've added in or taken away, that would be really handy because then we can crowdsource a list of productive meal prep plan type recipes in the project section down below. Just to reiterate class project is to take one of our recipes, snap a photo of it once you've made it, and write a few words about what you learned about yourself and about your culinary techniques in the process, and do let us know if you've made any changes that you found helpful to the recipes. Thank you for watching. Hope you enjoy the project and I'll see you in the next video.
3. The Struggles: Welcome to this class on how to make this healthy, productive meal prep system. So I've been working with Ken for a few weeks now, the thing that really surprised me about you is that you've got all this stuff going on in your life, but you also manage to cook for yourself and cook for the family and stuff. The thing I really liked about it was you've got this system that systematizes everything so that you don't really have to think about it. Because one of the problems that I have is that I go home from work. I know I have to churn out a YouTube video and it feels like the mental effort of cooking, blind buying, cooking, eating, washing up, all that stuff just feels like too much effort. I feel like I might as well just order a takeaway because then I can film a YouTube video. How do you get around that fear of diving into this? Yeah. I mean, it isn't something that you can solve on the spot. So this is something that requires planning, like all good things do in life. But you can systematize it and by systematizing it, you can make it habitual. Once something is a habit, it's something a lot more easier to do. It's something you can actually just do on autopilot. So the system that I've developed is around how do I make sure I have what I need in the house when I want to cook it. Then the second bit is, how do I cook it as least amount of time as possible and as infrequently as possible, but still have meals, both for lunch. So something that I can take to the office and reheat there, but also then when I get home and you know how it's manic when everybody gets home at the end of the day, particularly with kids, I can just then reheat things. So the system that I've developed is a weekly structure that allows me to shop and then prep everything during the week, set it all up in storage containers, and then go and eat the meals in the evening and during lunchtime on autopilot. The other thing I really like about the system that you were talking me through earlier is that it's based on a minimalistic number of ingredients. It's not like you're shopping this huge ass long shopping list. It's that you're focusing on a few specific ingredients and then mixing and matching them in different ways. In a way like, what's your system for knowing what to buy when you go shopping, to the grocery store? Well, a lot of it has to do with when I first started out doing this, I would cut recipes out. What I found was a trend, and the trend was I liked the same flavors over and over again. I think that we do that. It doesn't mean I don't like variety, because I certainly do. But what I started learning to do is to be able to vary flavors off of a core central set, if you will. So that allows me to eyeball when I'm working in the kitchen. Oh, I'm getting low on that. I can then whack it right away onto a grocery list so that I'm constantly restocking and it's not taking me, I don't have to actually sit down and think really hard, what I need. I'm constantly tracking what I'm running low on. So that helps a lot. Then like I said, it's experimenting with those flavors. So then I see something, I go, oh, well I cook a lot with say, mustard, which you're going to see here today. But if I make it a little bit spicy or I make it a little bit sweet. So you can start varying your dishes without a lot of ingredients. Again, that keeps your clutter in your pantry and your shopping list down a lot. So yeah, it seems like this whole system is based around minimizing the mental overhead. Like minimizing the friction between deciding you want to eat something healthy and then eating the healthy thing. Exactly. So in the next video, we're going to be diving into a brief overview of how the system works and we'll take it from there. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.
4. An Overview of the System: In this video, Kim is going to kindly give us an overview of your productive meal prep system. How does the system work? How does it work? I've been hearing about meal prep for a while, but I've always thought that, "Who's got the time to spend six hours on a Sunday afternoon just like batch cooking?" It just felt like too much, again, like mental overhead to actually even start doing. Yeah. How does it work? The first thing that you want to do is you want to plan out when you're going to do your grocery shopping. I like to make that routine. Again, as much as I can put on autopilot and reduce that mental requirement, I like to. I pick Thursdays for myself, but it could be any day. Then every evening on a Thursday, I actually prepare my grocery list, so that I can cook then on the weekend. The thinking of it and I do most of my grocery lists while I'm watching TV, so I'm multitasking there. Nice. You do it at a time when you can think, but not too hard about what it is that you're going to do. Because again, if you don't have the groceries, for sure, if you're doing your cooking on Sunday, you're not going to do it because you're going to have to then go shopping and then you're going to meal prep, and that's way too much time of your life. That is such a nightmare. I walk into Sainsbury's or something. Exactly. I think it's too much choice. I don't know what to buy. I don't know what I'm doing. You're not going to do it. You want to spread this out. It's basically bearing the weight across the week in terms of your activities for food. You will go ahead, like I said, on a Thursday in the evening, when I've put the kids to bed, I sit down and I think about what I'm going to actually cook, and I make my grocery list. Then, either on a Friday or Saturday, you go to the grocery store or I'm a big advocate for online grocery delivery, which I think we're going to talk about a little bit more later, how to manage that. That's obviously the most efficient way to be able to do that is to have the groceries delivered to you. Either you go out to the store then on your Friday or on a Saturday to get your groceries, and then if your goal is to cook and do your batch cooking on a Sunday, then you've got everything that you need and you've spread that intensity, that time requirement out over a few days rather than getting it all in one fell swoop. It sounds like step 1 of our system is kind of doing the planning and doing the shopping for groceries, and I guess step 2 is actually doing the cooking. Is that right? That is actually doing the cooking. Again, by now, you will have everything that you need, and again, think about the time of day that you want to do this. I tend to cook in the morning because other people are doing other things and then that way I can get it out of the way for the afternoon. But some people would prefer maybe to go out and get things done, maybe go to the gym and then come and do it later. It doesn't matter when you do it. Just know that you're going to do it. You will have everything that you need in order to start your cooking, and then you go for it. As you're cooking, what I like to be able to do is, again, make multiple meals. This is a principle of batch cooking, but I augmented it slightly to make it as efficient as possible. I have a slow cooker, so I get something going in my slow cooker, and that obviously takes the longest to do. I tackle that first, then I tackle something on the hub so that I'm cooking and using that space. I also put something in the oven so that I effectively have three meals on the go pretty much simultaneously. Rather than spending five hours doing it, I'm condensing it because I'm overlapping it. It does require a bit of multitasking. If you struggle with multitasking, you might not want to compress it that much at first. But with practice, trust me, you'll be able to get it. Then what you can do moving that concept forward is to actually prepare your favorite things and have them ready so that you're really only spending two tops, three hours cooking for yourself and your family the whole week. Which if you think about everybody would spend at least say two hours grocery shopping, physically going to the grocery store, and then at least 45 minutes at night to prepare these healthy meals. You can see that it is going to be a little bit more efficient. Okay, awesome. Step 1, prepare and shop, step 2, cook, and I guess step 3 is somehow figuring out a system of Tupperware containers. Exactly, yeah. Storage containers are the bane of most people's existence when it comes to storing them in your kitchen. I have gone through a lot of different storage containers, getting the right size. What fits for the amount that you're actually cooking is important. The ease to stack it and to actually store it is really, really important. Some of them come up with all these funky lids that makes stacking, and I'll give you some examples of ones that I have found that I use that are really simple, really basic, and actually quite cheap. The storage containers are important. You also need to think about how you're going to batch. Say for example, if you want to cook everything, and then put it in its own individual serving sizes, you literally just have to pull it out of the fridge, pop it into the microwave or the oven, then you're going to want to look for storage containers that are smaller in portion size. That's actually quite a great thing, particularly if you're trying to control the volume that you eat. I definitely recommend that if you are concerned about portion sizes. If you are going to use a microwave, then you can use things that would be plastic based. Then if you're going to pop stuff in the oven, you might want to get storage containers, that would be glass. That's the basic principles. It's not rocket science by any stretch. Like I said, it's the discipline and it's making it a habit that transforms this from being a slightly overwhelming proposition into something like I said, you can do pretty much on autopilot. All right, so that's all making sense so far to me. Step number 1, prepare and shop. Step number 2, cook and step number 3, store in the legit storage container so that during the week, you just whack out storage container, stick it in the microwave, and you have your meal pretty much sorted. That was an overview of the system. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.
5. What's in the Kitchen - The 80/20 of Tools - Part 1: In this video, I thought we would go over what are the very basics, the bare minimum, the 80-20 analysis of the things that I should have in my kitchen because I've got a load of stuff that I got from my mom and grandma and various presents, but I just don't really know what I should be having in my kitchen. Yeah. It's it's tough and there's a lot of different options out there. What I've done is I've selected the bare-bones. Obviously can get other ones and I'll tell you as I go through it, where I think maybe you might need more than one. But we'll start off with the absolute basics for this. The first thing that we'll talk about is your utensils. Okay. At a minimum, what you're going to want to have is something to flip. I think realistically, you're going to want to flip your food at some point. You're going to want to have a ladle, so something that we're spooning and I use this a lot, so I have at least three I would say personally, you need that. Also, this which is spatula. The spatula as you can see it's a bit rubber and I use this a lot because we're going to be talking about non-stick pans and so this all helps, so as much for non-stick as you can, they won't scratch, that's going to be really important. So spatula and wooden spoon. Why do you need a wooden spoon, surely this does the job for everything. Yeah, you could do it but a spoon you may want a ladle. Again, it's a little bit more flexible there also. You will need more than one of these if you're cooking, if you're batch cooking, and they tend to be less expensive. Okay, cool. So there's that. Then we move on to what we're going to use, which is a knife. This is a chef's knife. It's very sharp, so be careful. This is where I would say, spend some money if you can afford it because a good sharp knife is, anybody who's working in the kitchen I'm not just going to say a chef, but anybody who's working in the kitchen, it makes things go faster. So if you can, invest a little bit in that, get a chef's knife. You may want to add to that one smaller knife that would help with smaller tasks, but that thing should probably do just about anything you need. I'm so sorry, when you say chef's knife, you mean this format? Exactly. Yeah. So it's a type of knife, it's not extraordinary. Exactly, yeah. If you went into a store and asked for a chef's knife. They'd give you something like this. Yeah. I've seen all these videos on YouTube like Gordon Ramsay teaching you how to hold a knife properly and stuff. I guess people can watch that if they want to. Yeah. Absolutely. There are certain techniques that you go, but most of it's going to be around safety, just making sure that you don't injure yourself or anyone around you. Then moving on from that, I do cook with this a lot which you're probably going to ask me why I cook with this. These are tongs. That's because if something is quite hot on the hob, you don't want to get too close to it, you got to pick it up and flip it versus using this, which would be more suitable for a pancake. You can then pick it up and flip it. Also, if you do own a grill or use a grill outside, these are great to have, but I do cook a lot with these. So I would recommend that. The next item in my repertoire are scissors. Scissors? Scissors, yes. Scissors are great things, as you see these come apart, which is great for cleaning. But I cut a lot of my food, things like chicken. If I'm trying to dice chicken, we're going to use scissors rather than a knife. Again, that's to expedite how quickly it takes to do things. These are great for chopping fresh herbs as well. I use these in my kitchen a lot. I have one that I use for vegetables and then one that I use for meats and fish as well, but definitely important. Then we need to measure. One of the things that I've learned to do is to eyeball measurements, which is something that I encourage everybody to do. It's easy to learn how to do. But first off, certainly when you start you want to be measuring things. It's not like baking. Baking, you have to be really precise because that's actually chemistry, when you're trying to get a dough to rise in a particular way or a cake to sit with a certain level of fluffiness. But in most of the dishes that we're going to be doing here, and certainly when you think about your evening meals, you don't need that level of precision. So one of the caveats that I will say is use this as an estimate. It isn't going to destroy your meal if you use a little bit more or a little bit less. These are measuring spoons. I like these because they're- Magnetic? Magnetic. That's nice. Yeah. That's great for organization in your drawers, in your kitchen drawers. You just tuck it in, I think I've got one that's strong together and it's always a real pain in the bum to get out. Yeah. I do have one of those myself. I find myself getting very frustrated if I'm using it because the other little spoons are banging in the way. This one's a great one to have. Then bare minimum, a measuring cup. Again, because we're batch cooking evening and lunch meals, we probably are going to do more pouring than we would say the measuring cups that we would be putting flour or what have you in. If you can't do anything else, get one of these. Otherwise, if you can, add some normal measuring cups to it. But this one as you see has a spout, so we can mix things in here and then pour it directly, also for gravy it's always good to use. That wraps up your basic utensils and prep stuff. Okay, so that was the basic utensils. In the next video, we're going to be talking about the other stuff that you need in your kitchen, the bare minimum. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.
6. What's in the Kitchen - The 80/20 of Tools - Part 2: All right. We've talked about the 80-20 analysis of the bare minimum of utensils. What about the other stuff that we need in our kitchen? The other stuff, okay. Not too much more to go. What you now want to think about is your chopping. We discussed in the previous segment about a knife, at least one. Now we'll talk about the chopping boards. I use one plastic, I tend to get the biggest size that my countertop will allow. They do come in different sizes. But again, because of batch cooking I tend to get the larger sizes for these things. This is the one that I would use for my meats and proteins, fish and the like, just because of the hygiene involved with it, and then I have a separate one that I use. It's wooden and this one is for my vegetables, my herbs, and the like. Again, get the largest size that your countertop will accommodate when you are batch cooking. That takes care of what we need from the chopping. Now let's move to what we need to actually do the mixing. Mixing bowls, the ones that I have here, as you can see, are not see-through. You can get glass ones. The only thing I would say about getting a glass one is then you can also use them to serve. If you plan on doing entertaining, sometimes the glass would be a better investment. But as you'll see, this is a nesting so that it has different size bowls in-between. This is important to help you in your preparation. How many you do actually need? You've got five here. Yeah. I mean, again, if you buy a stacking one, it's not taking up a huge amount of space. When you're desperate, this is a nice cereal bowl. But yeah, I would say at least three bowls for batch cooking. But I should buy stacking sets of that. Yeah, this takes up as much room as a single one would. Exactly. That makes sense. Efficient. We've got those and then the next, let's move to our hob cooking. I know it's a bit heavy, isn't it? It's quite heavy. Yes. Pan. This is a non-stick surface. Again, for what we're doing for efficiency and speed, you're going to want to have a non-stick cooking pan. Buy, again, for batch cooking, you'll hear me say this over and over again, the largest size that you can. It's worth putting a little bit more money into these rather than the cheaper ones, because trust me, by the time you use these a few times, you're going to end up ruining the other ones, and then just spending the money. So if you can afford it, do go for the best that you can, should be a little bit heavy, something that will protect your hand. Some of them don't have this nice rubbery bit, and it can get quite hot when you're cooking. If you don't have a protective thing, they do sell these little sleeves that you can put on that. I know a lot of people when they first start cooking they actually burn themselves, not realizing how hot handles can get. But this one, we won't have that issue. On a few YouTube videos they said stainless steel and cast iron. Well, those are very fancy. I do have cast iron, and I do have stainless steel. Again, if you want to move more into the gourmet cooking where even heating is really important, and searing is really, really important, certainly those are the kinds of things you're going to want to invest in. But for our 80-20 principle with a gun to my head, if I had to have one pan, it's going to be a non-stick. Easier to clean up as well. Now we're going to move into the oven items. Bare minimum again, you're going to want to have a baking sheet, as we've talked about, go for the largest size that you can accommodate. Because we do a lot of baking. There are quite a few recipes that you can get that talk about sheet pan baking, so you can make a whole meal on one of these guys. It's really good to have a large size. You can also use it to make cookies if you're really fancy. Then we have our roasting tin. This is important. I use these all the time in batch cooking. Probably one at a bare minimum, maybe up to three. Again, because they stack, if you buy them to be slightly larger than each other, they can stack, and won't take up a huge amount of extra space. At least a few of these. Again, as you see, they're non-stick. Again, that helps with the cleaning up effort. Is that it? That's it. That's everything we need in the kitchen. Well, it's a place to start. Okay. Awesome. I guess that was the 80-20 analysis of the 20% of things that you use 80% of the time in the kitchen. That's it. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next video.
7. What's in the Pantry - The 80/20 of Ingredients: We've talked about the 80-20 analysis, the bare minimums of what we need in our kitchen in terms of tools. What about the stuff that I should have in my pantry at all times? Because that's something I worry about. I go to the shop, I don't know what to buy. Then I end up buying ready meals and frozen yogurt or something. This is the stuff that you want to have around that will allow you to pick up fresh items and then come home and know that you can actually make something nice from it. Let's talk about the basics. Again, we've gone to the real basics here. One thing that I use a lot are stock pots. I've got a beef stock pot and a chicken stock pot here. I do have fish, as well as vegetable. Those are important because we will use those a lot. At a minimum, you're going to want to have a pepper mill, something that you can freshly grind pepper on because that's really important for delicious taste. Then kosher salt. Kosher salt? Kosher salt, yes. What is kosher salt? Kosher salt is the way that it's actually processed. The kosher process itself produces some of the most flavorful, if you can imagine, salt. The iodine in it and the way that it access it is not quite as tangy, it's actually a smoother flavor. I used to scoff at this, personally, thinking, "What's the difference with salt?" But it's true people. I use this religiously now. So you're saying I shouldn't get those 25 P table salt? It really will taste different. It genuinely makes a difference in the way that you cook. That's not just me saying it. I think there's a lot of much better chefs than I saying stuff like that. Kosher salt alongside your pepper mill. You're then going to want to look at what you need in terms of your accessories, I would say. Some of the things I mentioned earlier that I cook a lot with, mustard. So mustard is a core flavor for me. I have a wholegrain version here, as well as a smooth version. Again, you don't need to buy brand names for it. Most of the grocery stores have their own brands and that's just as good. Those are important. Honey is another thing that you're going to want to have in your pantry. You can slap it on oats or all kinds of things that I do cook quite a bit actually with honey, then my sweet and sour soy sauce and teriyaki. We're going to actually cook with teriyaki today and soy. Those are great ingredients to put in your pantry. Then we have our vinegars. If I had to pick one vinegar, it would be apple cider vinegar, but there's other ones. Balsamic is another great one that you might consider adding to that. But as a bare minimum, I have that. I also have another sweet ingredient that I cook a lot with, which is maple syrup, and we're going to use that today as well. That's maple syrup. Then we move to our oils. I rely heavily on two types of oils. One is olive oil. The other one that I use quite a bit is this one. It's Caratino. Caratino? Never heard of it. What is that? Yes. It's got a lot of good vitamins, Omega 3 and 6. You can use it like you would any vegetable oil. We're going to use that today. You don't have to have this one, but if you are conscious of making the healthiest that you can, this is a really, really good oil and it cooks really well with it. The only other one that you may consider adding is just a standard vegetable oil, Canola or something like that. We have that. Another key ingredient is corn flour. Corn flour? Yeah, corn flour. I've never used corn flour before. You're going to use it today. Corn flour is helpful for not necessarily thickening things, but for making sauces. When we do the Teriyaki chicken today, we're going to actually use that in there. Corn flour is really good to have as part of my staple. Then we move into the wonderful world of what kind of herbs and spices do you need? There are so many. Don't get too many because they do go off. A lot of people will only cook around the holidays and they find that they have little cobwebs on these things. Regularly check them. Don't buy too much. Buy what you use. Again, that's why I said if you pick a recipe repertoire that works around these things, you'll use them all the time, but you'll be able to mix and match and get different flavors out of them. The key ones that I've picked here are garlic. Some kind of garlic granules or garlic powder, really important. Oregano, really important. Garlic granules, parsley. We'll move into the kinds of things that we will be seasoning our meats with. Tarragon is another important one I use a lot, chives, thyme. I probably used thyme the most and I save time. I like that. Then here is an Italian style or blend. That's got a bunch of them together. But that makes it quite easy when you're rushing. Basil as well and rosemary. That takes care of the garden herb group. Also then add on to that onion granules. To kick things up a bit. I like a little bit of cayenne pepper, and smoked paprika is another one I use quite a bit. Then last, but certainly not least, is cinnamon. This seems like quite a lot of herbs. If you had to only choose five, what would you go for? I knew you were going to ask me that. I probably would pick cinnamon, thyme, garlic, and oregano. I got one more, probably my smoked paprika. Okay. Cool. I don't think I can deal with having these, but you've recommended, with the rest of them, you buy them once and then you've got them for a while. Yeah. Exactly. They don't go off that quickly, but you don't want them sitting there for years and years in there. But certainly, like I said, don't underestimate how a good set of herbs can transform very basic needs. Okay. Cool. So this is all the stuff that we should have in our pantry at all times. What about things like onions, potatoes, garlic? What do you think about having those to handle at all times? Those are definitely important. I would say garlic. Again, as a big believer in shortcuts, one of the ones that I like to buy is actually my onions chopped. You can buy those in grocery stores, either in the freezer section or in the fruit and veggie aisles and they're pre-cut up. As much as I can get things that are quite time-intense, to buy pre-chopped, I do. But I would say, garlic, onion, for sure to keep around. I cook a lot with red onion, and we're going to be doing that today. I find that it has a little bit more bite to it, so a little bit more flavorsome than regular onions and suits certain types of foods better. But yeah, I would say at least onion and garlic. If you can keep potatoes. Again, we're going to look at what we can do, in terms of mashing versus cubing. Again, you can, on some instances, find places that will actually sell those pre-cut and pre-cooked so definitely. Cool. Garlic, onions, potatoes, anything else you want to have in your pantry? This is a good place to start. You could go on and on. There's certain canned items like canned tomatoes and tomato paste and things like that, but I think as you start cooking, again, just keep a small set of this going so that you can start saying, "Oh, I'm adding to that. Oh, I'll never use that again." Then you start learning what you like and what you don't like and you just don't then buy it again. Okay. This is a pretty good starting point. In the product and resources section or wherever, maybe on this video, we'll put a list of all these things so you can go out and shop for them, which is what I'm going to be doing this evening when I get home. Thank you for watching and we'll see you in the next video.
8. Warm Chicken and Sweet Potato Teriyaki Salad: Let's now talk about the recipes. We're going to be actually applying all of the principles that we've gained from these last several videos and putting them all together to make these amazing recipes. What's our first recipe going to be, Kim? It's going to be the warm chicken and sweet potato, teriyaki salad. Warm chicken and sweet potato teriyaki salad. Yes. Let's do it. Describes the main ingredients. First of all, we want to start off with your bowl. I think I mentioned earlier that if I can find something in the grocery store that is pre-chopped that I use a lot, then I will buy it. In this instance, that's sweet potato and I cook a lot with sweet potato, is very nutritious. It's quite delicious. Not many people dislike it. You can do some really great things with it. So we're going to prep our sweet potato first and foremost. With that in mind, I have bought sweet potato and butternut squash mix. You can get just butternut squash if you prefer, or you can get a mix, or you can just buy regular sweet potatoes and dice them up yourself. But for efficiency, we're going do that. We're going to open these up and put them into the bowl. Here we go. Looks exciting. It's very exciting. This is what cooking looks like. This is what it looks like. Amazing. Lots of them. Noise here. There we go. Beautiful. Very good. Now we're going to use our fancy oil that I was telling you about earlier. Okay. What you want to do is we're going to use about four tablespoons in there. Let me get mine. How do I measure a table spoon? Do we have an official measure of tablespoon? We have it again, just so you can really start eyeballing it. That's a tablespoon? It's a tablespoon. So 15 mils a tablespoon. Yeah. Fine. There we go. Excellent. We've done that, and now we're going to want to season it with our kosher salt. Again, because it doesn't need to be precise, you just want to give it a goodly amount, a little bit more. That's it. Perfect. Now we need our wood spoon. I go ahead and you're going to want to stir that up. Now what we're doing is we're going to roast these while we cook the chicken. So we're going to pop these in the oven so that they can be cooking while you are cooking and preparing the chicken. Nice. That is it. Okay. Efficiency. You want to make sure that you completely cover everything so that they all should be glistening. But you want it, so everything has a little bit of a chin because again, we're going to put it in quite a hot oven, and so you want it to crisp up a little bit, so only the oil. That's step 1. We then are going to put these onto our baking sheet. Do we need any foil or baking paper or we chuck it along? With the oil, that'll keep it from sticking. Some of them will stick. It's hard to get away from it. Then you just [inaudible] when you spread those out, so it cooks evenly. It seems way too easy. Well, it's supposed to be. We wanted it to be easy. I mean, this is a great side with just about anything to make. So what we're going do is we're now going to put this in our preheated oven and let it cook while we make our chicken. So how long are we putting in the oven for, and how hot are we going? We're going to want to, because we're roasting these, we're going to want it pretty hot, so you want to put it around 200 degrees Celsius. For how long? About 20 minutes. Twenty minutes. So 20 minutes, 200 degrees in the oven. For our next step, we've got the sweet potatoes now in the oven and they're roasting, and now we need to prep the chicken. So go for it. Okay. You need to open the packet. What do you want me to cut this into center? You're going to open that up and then you can cut it into either strips or you can cut it into little chunks. So we've obviously washed your hands. Obviously. Yes. Okay. So you take that and then stick that down. So you're saying I just cut into chunks? Just cut it. See how easy that is. Well, just like this. Just like that. Is that it? That's it. You don't have to be more sophisticated. Whatever gets the job done is what's important. So you can make it, like I said, as smaller chunks as you want or larger strips, you do want to have them as even as you can, simply because you're obviously going to want to let them cook evenly. So this recipe calls for 4-5 chicken breasts, boned and skinned. Another quick tip is if you have frozen chicken breasts and you want to use a knife if you semi-defrost it, but it's still a little bit frozen. That makes it a lot easier to dice and chop. Very good. Excellent. So how was it? I felt good. Yeah. Pretty quick. Pretty quick. So let's wash hands. As soon as you touch the chicken and obviously operate with the chicken, you then want to immediately wash your hands and dispose in a container. Now we've diced up our chicken and we're going to put it in our pan, and we are going to use our Carotino oil, and you're going to want to have about two tablespoons worth in there. Then we're going to put the chicken in to that, and then we're going to go ahead and took it on our hot. We're now going to cook our chicken in the Carotino oil, and as you can see, I'm coding it and I will leave that. While we're letting that cook, we're going to do our chopping. So I've brought out something that I got just for you. Because you told me that you didn't like to chop. I hate chopping stuff. So I've tested this out and I think it's a really useful gadget. Okay. So if you have space, you may want to get it, and effectively what it is, is a chopper. Well. We're going put our onion and what have you in there, and we're going to chop it. Okay. So first, we're going to open these up and wash our vegetables. So we have our courgettes here, and we need our knife, and what we're going to do is we're going to cut off the ends and then we're going to cut them into chunks. Now, I cut as you see three in a row. Again, this is part of batching. Is that when you actually cut, if you can line things up rather than doing them individually, it does take less time. Roughly, even again, if you're not going for a gourmet competition, I don't think you need to worry too much about it. Then you use this wonderful gadget, and what I'm going to ask you to do is put one of those in there, and then just press your hand down on the soft part. So we've got that. Now look. Wow. Isn't that cool? It dices it. It dices it. [inaudible] something to all of them. Yeah. I can do more than one at a time. You could do as many as you want. See there is efficiency in motion. That great? Oh, sick. It's fun. That's really fun. It works really well. Incredibly satisfying. Yeah, definitely. So you see why I said you might want to have this in your limited repertoire, your 80-20 rule. Indeed. Yeah. So three courgettes just about fills that up. Well done. Okay. I know. I'm going to get a bowl for that. I can put those in there. Chicken's cooking. Excellent. So we got that. Now, because we're going to be mixing these together, you don't necessarily have to clean that out. Now, we're going to do a red onion. Once I said I like red onions a lot. I think that they add a lot of flavor, and that was one of those things I didn't realize until I inventoried the kinds of recipes I was being attracted to. Actually, a lot of them are with this. So we just cut it into half. Yeah. Yes. Go for it. That's it. Now we have it. Oh, my Gosh, we have a diced, red onion. Look how quick that was. Incredible. It's one of these genius inventions. This has changed my life. Yeah, definitely. It is also good if your eyes get really sensitive to onions because you'll take care of that. So we're prepping that and now we just need to let the chicken cook just a little bit longer. How long do we normally cook the chicken francese? I would say about eight minutes. Again, I like to eyeball everything that's given to me that's an approximation. So you obviously want to make sure your chicken is not clear. I don't know if the camera can see this. See how that's still raw-looking. But eight minutes at medium-high temperature should be fine. So now, our chicken has cooked and we're going to put that aside. I'm just using the same bowl that we mixed the sweet potatoes in, and better not squash because it still has some oil in it. So I'm going to do that. Now we're going to just set that aside for a moment and we are going to cook these guys in it. You may want to add a little bit more oil, so maybe another two tablespoons. Isn't this quite a lot that we are using? I thought oil is unhealthy. It is. You don't want to use too, too much. This recipe does use quite a bit. But again, that's why I use the healthier stuff where I can. So you mix that up. Great. Now we're going to move this over to the hub. So we're going to want to stir frequently with this. While it cooks, get everything covered with the oil, and should be about another eight minutes so everything gets nice and tender. You're going to add the garlic as well. So chopped garlic. Yeah. You can buy this frozen and it's wonderful, and then you don't have to chop it yourself. So you're going to want to add about two teaspoons of this. And that's going straight into the hub? That goes straight into the hub. You cook it from frozen. Here we go. How many poached servings have we got? Because I batch and I don't serve it up, so I just have one big Tupperware thing, which is that behind you, and I just dump it in there and then I scoop it for each serving. Yeah. That's [inaudible]. How long does it last for? How many days? Yeah. I would say you'd get a good three meals out of that. Three meals as in three days or three meals as in one and a half days? Well, if you had it, say, for dinner or for lunch every day, it would be three days. Cool. So if you had it twice a day. So chicken in the fridge is fine for three days? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Cool. I would say probably 2-4 days is a typical range. Then you've got to balance making how much you eat. So this is coming along very nicely. This is all nice, good gauge. How do you know when that's fully cooked? Is it just an eyeball thing? Yeah, it's an eyeball thing. I guess if you undercook it, it doesn't actually matter that much. Exactly. I mean, again, other than your chicken, there's kinds of things that's more important and you know exactly if it's done, and there are obviously tests, and we can talk about what those tests are, but for the most part, it's not going to be bad. What you can probably do is just take a piece out and try it and see what you think. But I start to see a little bit of browning going on with the courgettes there. So I know that's getting to the point that I want it to be at, and then what we're going to do is we're going to add the chicken back in. Should I add that? Yeah. Ready? Yeah. Go for it. There's some juices and such in there, which is good. Okay. There. Yeah, you will stir that up. The next thing we're going to do is our Teriyaki sauce. We're going to want to use about three-fourths of a cup. Again, this is not one of those ingredients that you need to be super precise with. So if you just have a cup and you just put everything less but a quarter full, you'll be fine. Do you want to pop that right in there? So that's just going straight in. Just dump it in there. Very good. So you just want to stir and coat everything. You're going to want to put some fresh, ground pepper. Just like [inaudible]. Yeah. All right. Random seasoning. How much difference is this actually going to make? It doesn't feel like much pepper at all. It does. It's like one of those things, it adds just enough. If you put too much pepper on it, you can taste it. If you don't put enough, you can't taste it at all. So this is one of those seasoning exercise. You see how it's quite a bit of watery? Yeah. The Teriyaki sauce is there. That's good. We've got our sweet potatoes still cooking in the oven, and now we're going to make our sauce. Was that not our sauce in there? Well, it's about to become more of a sauce. That is just liquid in there right now. We're going to turn it into a bit of a sauce, so that's why we need our wheat flour. So what we need, let me grab a little container and then I'm going show you how to make a paste. Awesome. There's about a little bit over about a tablespoon and a half, two tablespoons of water. Just like normal water. Just normal water. Again, don't have to be precise. What we're going to do is we're going to take the corn flour and we are going to take about two tablespoons. Again, we don't have to be precise here with that. That's not a tablespoon, is it? It's a little bit less than it, but I had a big scoop. Fine. A big scoop of it. You're welcome to measure this out precisely. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't really, really matter. Cool. Always use this for guides unless you're baking. So what you want to do is stir this up. I don't know, can the camera see? Gets a bit sticky at first. Yeah. Go ahead and try stirring that. You'll come across some of the stickier bits on the ground, yeah, because you want to make it nice and smooth. Yeah? Yeah, it's pretty smooth. Looks like milk. It does a bit, but it's really not. So we're going to dump that into our chicken mixture. There you go. Now if you want to stir that. You'll start noticing the chemistry, it starts thickening. Is it? You see? Yeah, it is thickening. Yeah. With just that tiny amount of. Just that little bit. Sick. Yeah. What it does is it helps the sauce to coat better on the food. I use that a lot in stir-fry recipes. Just to give it a little bit more zeal around there. Oh, that's looking amazing. That's looking good. We're going to turn the heat down, and then we will add these sweet potatoes when they are out of the oven. What's the point of turning the heat down? Does that just mean it stays warm but doesn't burn or, and why not turn it off all together? Well, you would turn it off once everything's done. I just wanted to check and make sure that the chicken's done. How are you checking that? I'm just cutting into it. I'm making sure that everything's white and that the juices run clear, and that you can see it's flaky there. I'm not sure if the camera can see that. It looks like the inside, I always say or the chicken mcnugget. The inside is white and flaky. Exactly. That assures you that you're done. Certainly, when you first start cooking, I think it's probably fine and to be expected that you might want to cut into it and just double-check and make sure that's good, but that's awesome. That doesn't need, and now I can turn that off until we are ready to add the sweet potato. What's the theory behind meat thermometers? I've had a few YouTube channels like Benji [inaudible] talk about how important a meat thermometer is. Meat thermometers are important if you're doing a lot of roasting, I would say. You want to make sure that you've got a roast right and you want to be able to take it out of the oven at the correct temperature. Yeah, they are important. I didn't put them on our 80-20 list, because I figure we weren't going to be doing a lot of roasting per say. Roasting vegetables, but not necessarily the meat. But certainly, if you've got one as a gift, you can certainly use it. Awesome. We've got another 10 minutes to wait until the sweet potato butternut squash thing comes out of the oven, so let's speed forward time most certainly. We're about to assemble our chicken and teriyaki. A warm chicken and teriyaki, sweet potato salad. There you go. That's the one. See, he says even better than I do. That's just about to come together, so I thought we'd just plate it up. Assuming that we're going to put it into a storage container and then you can pop it in the fridge when it comes time to actually serving it. That's what we're going to show you how to do. Cool. If you can grab one of the plates, Ali. We've got our head of iceberg lettuce. You're more than welcome to buy this pre washed and already torn up in the salad section of most grocery stores. But it is a lot of money. It's about 10 times more expensive way. Exactly. An iceberg lettuce lasts quite a bit longer. I find, I don't know if that's scientifically validated, but certainly, when it sits in my fridge, it sits in there longer than other salads do. I have just bought it in the head. I've washed it and now we're going to serve it up and it is going to be so easy. Cool. How do we do? What you want to do is you want to start reaping leaves. Just with my hands? Just with your hands. [inaudible]. There you go and take as many leaves as you feel. I usually say you want to put it across the plate in about two layers thick. Okay. But obviously, if you love iceberg and you love lettuce, go for it. However you fancy it, really. Us we do one layer at a time, do we? You can. I can chuck this like that? Exactly. Now, my only additional comment with that is that you might want to tear it up a little bit just to make it easier for you to eat. Now, if you're taking this to work, the meal actually can be served cold. It's absolutely fabulous cold. I like it heat up, but it just makes me feel like, I don't know, but a little bit warmer inside. If you do want to heat it and you're taking it say to work, what you can do is tear the lettuce up, put it in one container, and then put your teriyaki chicken and sweet potato mixture in another. Then you can microwave at the office or wherever to reheat the chicken mixture and then assemble thereafter. Otherwise, you can mix it all up and take it into work, no problem. There's our plate 1 for that. Obviously, you want to put that as many plates and servings together as you require. That's probably maybe a little bit too much out of this one and maybe do a little bit less. Again, think about what's your fork is going to do. Doesn't it drive you crazy when you like go and get a salad and the leaves are so huge? Yeah, [inaudible]. They're hanging out of your mouth as you're trying to eat that plus everything else. I tried to think about what size would be dainty. Dainty. Nice dainty size. Okay, fine. That's right. Obviously, we're making up enough for everybody. I assume you guys are going to eat this, yeah? Yes. Okay. There we go. There we go. First, we're going to want to mix everything together. If I get that, you can see how they're just slightly browning. More so the sweet potato will brown more so than the butternut squash that's mixed in there. We're going to pop that all in the mixture. Now we're going to want to mix it up. We can get it. It's nice and warm. It's heavy. You can put it on there if you'd like. It's looking pretty good? Yeah. What's the Tupperware here? The Tupperware. To put this now into Tupperware or food container, this is the size that I typically use. I think it's a four-liter. 3.9 liters. 3.9 liters. Made in China Made in China. This is the size and you just scoop it up in here and then you want to leave it to cool before you put it into the fridge, then you can serve it from there and do it like this. Assuming that you get and you fill that up for your meal when you come time, you would go directly from the Tupperware and then you can put it in a smaller bowl say for an individual portion, hit it up in the microwave. I always, when I'm reheating these items, I do it on the lowest setting of the microwave simply because I don't like food splatter all over the place. Also, it heats it more evenly. You have to do it a little bit longer in the microwave, but it heats more evenly. You can serve this up. Again, you can see this is warm on cold. You want to try it? I can get you a fork. Sure. [inaudible]. Let's try this out. A little bit of lettuce. Have a bit of butternut squash or sweet potatoes whatever the hell that is. Might be a little bit of both. [inaudible]. Very tasty. It's quite simple. Again, most of the ingredients we ended up cooking in the pan altogether, so the cleanup isn't that extensive. It's good and like I said, it's just as good cold. I think this is like 4, 5, 6 servings of it? Absolutely. Depends on your portion size and how much you can, but that should last you at least three meals. Perfect. That was the warm chicken teriyaki and sweet potato and butternut squash salad. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next video.
9. The Magic of the Slow Cooker - Beef Stroganoff: Welcome back. In this video, we are going to be talking about the magic of the slow cooker. I've had a slow cooker since my second year of university, so I've had one for eight years. In seven years, I have used it a total of twice. Once I made a roast chicken which turned out quite well, and once I made a spaghetti bolognese type thing which turned out really well. But it just felt like such a faff to put everything together, and I just wasn't organized enough to continue to do it regularly. But I know it's magical. The slow cooker, it's one of the best tools you can have for prepping ahead because you literally have to prep ahead. Things can take up to eight hours in it on low setting, four hours on the high setting. So you have to get your act together to do it. Assuming that we're working through the methodology that we've described throughout this video so far, and you have been to the grocery, you've done everything that you need to do, and you have all your ingredients, we're going to show you one that is so simple and absolutely delicious. Also, loquito. Let's kick this off. Here's the slow cooker. It is a beef stroganoff in the loosest sense of the word, and we will commence by preparing the meat. Okay. How do we do that? You can use any kind of rump steak. I just bought these because they were on sale. It doesn't really matter, anything that is a cut that is a bit tougher, meat-wise. So you wouldn't want to do this with a filet mignon or anything like that, but certainly, rump steak or these are beef sizzler steak. It's available here in the UK. You can do that. What we're going do is we're going to open these up and using our magic scissors, we're going to cut them into strips. Okay, how big are the strips going to be? How big would you like them? I don't know. Are they big? It could be as big as you want. It's entirely up to you. Again, the thing I think people get intimidated by cooking is a level of precision, and probably as you've seen through these videos, were not all that precise. You don't need to be. You go ahead and Ali has washed his hands. There we go. I think back in the day when I was at university, I made burgers once. I was like, "Oh, this feels like magic," and then I never did it again. Once you've learned to plan and rely on the benefits of the slow cooker, there are quite a few recipes that you can do. I will probably say with this one, you think of it from an organization standpoint. You've done your shopping. You wake up the next morning depending on what time you get up. I get up fairly early, so around six, and I come downstairs and do this straight away and get everything ready before even the kids are up before I go to work. Then the idea is that while you're away at work or doing whatever, your meal is cooking for you slowly at home. Like I said, don't worry. This one, it doesn't matter if they're equal or anything like that because they're going to be soaking in the same thing. Like I said, you could totally do this with a knife, but every bit of trouble that you're having right now, you'd be having as well with the knife. Really? With a knife, it wouldn't just be a case. It's just chopping and it magically working. Not with the tougher cuts. The tougher cuts, it's not easy. So rump is famously a tough cut? It's tougher. Again, it depends. You'd probably have to ask a butcher for the exact rationale behind it, but essentially, the more muscle-related the cuts are where they come from, the tougher they are. The slow cooker is great because it allows time to help break down and soften all the fibers. Cool. Are you good? I will do more? Yeah. I mean, if we're going to batch cook. Sure. Want to do more? Are you okay chopping? Yeah, I got this. I could keep doing it if your hands are really tired. How does it actually work with a knife? Can I try with a knife? Absolutely. Of course, you can. Where has the knife gone? Let me grab it. So if you were making like a steak steak, is this the beef you'd use for that as well? You can. Have you ever heard of the French minute steak? No. Okay. Well, there is something called the French minute steak. Okay. It's literally where you put it on a cast-iron skillet at quite high heat and you just sear both sides. We're going to sear the meat, so it's a little bit more hotter than what we're going to do. But you can certainly do that with this as well. Cool. We've got our beef chopped up. All right, excellent. Let's get your hands washed. That's okay. Hands wash, be right back. So now we're going to put some olive oil and heat up the pan while we're seasoning this. You want about two tablespoons or two good glugs. Two good glugs. Cool. Two good glugs. So you want medium-high heat. While that's prepping- Is there no risk that we're going to burn the olive oil or is that not a thing? Yeah, you can definitely burn it and that's definitely a thing. We're not going to do that. Okay. The best way you tell is if it's start smoking. So smoking is bad? Well, yeah. Because every time I make a scrambled egg, I wait for it to start smoking before I put the egg in. That's probably bad. How does that work out for you? I think it's pretty good. Does it? Yeah. Well, you're searing it. It's a form of searing it quickly, but I wouldn't recommend that you do it too hot. Okay. So now what you're going to do is you're going to season the beef quite generously. Just like a load of salt? Yeah, that's good. Now you're going to crack that, yeah. Give the good. Excellent. I feel like the mock of the pros having a really big one of these. Yeah, they make it really big and it seemed like that. Done with that, okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to wait till that is at the right temperature. Okay. Then we're going to sear. So hot but not smoking is what we want. Exactly. How can you tell that it's the right temperature? Is it how much it moves around? Well, it's how viscous it is. If you see here, we're getting viscous. Okay. It's spreading around easily. Some people put water in the pan. I don't like that because it splats. I tend to just feel the heat to see what it is like. If you do that and you put it in right away, if it's too hot, it splatters all over. So now we're going to pop the beef in here. It's a nice sizzle but not splatter. Hot. You can stir that around and I'll go this surface. Now what our goal is here is to sear the meat. We're trying to sear the juices in, so you want to be flipping it over. Doesn't need to be cooked through or anything like that, but you're literally trying to make the meat get rid of as much of the red bit as you can. That makes the meat much more tender when you actually put it in a slow cooker and you pick the right wood spoon because it allows me to slightly flip it. We're going to stir for a second, Eli I'm going to pick up the heat just a little tiny bit. It's turning from pinky to brown. Yeah. That's all what we want it to do. How important is this step? If can't be bothered to do it, do I have to do this step? It's better if you do for sure. The meat will come out more tender. I've never actually not seared it, to be honest, so I don't know. We'll do a double-blind study at some point to figure out if it makes a difference. Exactly. Cool. Oftentimes, you'll see recipes that will call for you to actually put this in like a mixture of flour, then sear it, so this is already a compromised step. We've got now our meat doing well seared. It's got lots of juices in there, which is good. Now, we are going to just let it finish cooking a little bit more in there and we are going to make our sauce. Okay. That goes in there. We need a bowl and one of our mixing cups, and we need our soy and also a beef stock cube. You can use the cubes or you can use this. It's entirely up to you. Now, I had put the kettle on earlier so that we could boil the water. You're effectively going to have half a cup. Again, doesn't have to be precise. I can bother mushing it up. You can do it. Again, I could be very lazy. Sometimes I'll just wait until it actually gets together and today we will do that. This forms the basis of our stock and it literally is the stock, so this is the stock that goes the base of the sauce. Once we've got that, we can put that in a bowl. As you see, there's still some bits in there, but that will all cook out. Then we take our soy sauce. I use light soy, you can use regular soy and effectively a fourth of a cup. It's a half a cup of liquid to a fourth of a cup of soy. Now, we've run out of soy sauce, so part of the system is to write down that we need to buy soy sauce. You are so good. I do have another bottle there. You do. Then our soy I goes in there and now, we want to add our garlic. Again, I use the chopped garlic that comes frozen. This is a new one, so we got that. It comes frozen. Does it need to be put in the freezer? When you buy it, it's in the frozen section. Then you put it in the fridge once you've opened it? No. I put it back in the freezer. Oh, okay. So frozen chopped garlic. Frozen chopped garlic. Yeah, so it's great. You want basically two teaspoons. Again, if you really love garlic [inaudible]. I love garlic. Well, it's very hard to have too much garlic. But again, you want to feel confident about what you're making. Oftentimes, if you're worried about being precise, you don't want to do it. We've got all that nice and going. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to transfer the beef into the slow cooker. So I guess we can take this out. You can take that out, which is always nice. All the beef including all the juices and stuff? Put everything in there. Everything goes in. Everything's gone into the slow cooker. Great. Now, we add frozen sliced mushrooms. Again, you can do this by hand and you can slice your mushrooms and it is absolutely lovely, but for time-saving people. This is still frozen, guys. It hasn't defrosted, so you can put it in frozen or you can let it defrost. You just whack it in there. All of them? All of it. Mushrooms are interesting, they shrink a lot. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of mushrooms. I know. It always seems like it, but trust me, it's okay. We've got that and now we take our sauce in there. I just stir it up a little bit and now we put it on our slow cooker. Is that it? That's it. Depending on how long you want, so if it's early in the morning and you have eight hours, turned it on low. If you do it later in the day, like around lunchtime, and if you're going to eat it that night, then you would just put it on high. We stick on high? That's it. Now, we'll wait for four hours or so. Yeah. We want to wait and there is a step at the end. But then we can show everybody at the end. Okay, cool. See you in four hours time. The slow cooker recipe has been in the slow cooker for the last three hours and 45 minutes. Now, what do we do with it? We've got this percolating very nicely. We've had it on high. Look at all that. What do you think? Do you think it smells nice? I'm going to point this out to the slow cooker to see what's going on. Yeah, it smells pretty good. What we're going to do, this just gives it a nice creaminess. You could skip this step altogether if you want. This is sour cream. We add about half a cup of it, it works out pretty much to this little bit here. Let me pop that on in there. Then I'm going to leave it for about another 20 minutes or so. It gets about another 20 minutes and then you'll want to take it out and let it cool and then put it in a storage or food container. Then once it's cool, you pop it in the refrigerator and very similar to the other ways we talked about reheating, then you can just spoon it out in the portion that you would like, pop it in the microwave, reheat it on low for about five to eight minutes, and you should have evenly heated portion, then you might want to serve this with cauliflower rice, which you can make yourself, but you can most easily just buy in the store pre-made or mashed potatoes are nice with this as well. Would you have this just with mashed potatoes because I guess we've got the protein, we've got the veggie in the form of the mushrooms, and we've got the mashed potatoes as the carbs. Exactly. Yeah, you can do that. If you really want to add something to it, green beans are nice or some steamed broccoli. Cool. That was the mushroom beef stroganoff. Beef stroganoff. Beef stroganoff and we've got mushrooms in there. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video.
10. Sausage and Veg Medley With Maple Mint Dressing: All right. Welcome back. This is the vegan sausage and vegetable thing with mint maple source which is probably one of our staples of a meal prep, pro to meal prep system. Absolutely. Okay, this is one of the dishes that is cooked pretty much exclusively in the oven. Say for example, earlier we did the Teriyaki chicken mixture, you could be preparing that on your hob at the same time that you're preparing this in your oven. What we're going to start off with here are the vegan sausages and brussels sprouts. Now you can use regular sausages, but we thought that the recipe is so good with the vegan sausages, we thought we'd use that. I like Linda McCarthy's vegan red onion and Rosemary sausages, again, any ones will do, corn, any of those, we just open those up. So we just check them inside. Yeah. Just check them in, you've got that. The next thing we need are frozen brussels sprouts. Which we happen to have right here. Which we happen to have right here. Again, you can use fresh, but I like to put as much as I can into the freezer if possible, so you can have things on tap. What you're going to want to use is this, I'm not sure how much this is, but it's roughly about 500 grams, it's about half of this bag. If you really like you brussels sprouts, knock yourself out. Again, we're not being precise here, is being helpful. So frozen sausages, frozen brussels sprout. That's right. It seems very easy so far. Yeah, it is so easy. Now we're going to mix with a little olive oil. Okay, how much is the little? It would be a glug. A glug, okay. A glug. You do want your tablespoon. No I'll go with a glug. Just glug it, go for it. That was a glug. Okay, that's it. Cool. You can always add more if you need it. Just stir it up so you want it very similar to the last dish where we talked about how you want to make sure that everything is coated. What about using an olive oil spray instead? Will that be legit or? You could use it, I've not used it. The problem that I have with sprays is that they tend to really stick to the pan and I'm not quite sure why they do. Okay. The ones that I've seen, maybe the aerosol ones aren't as good as the ones that are like pump spray. Right. Which I forget. At the end of the day, we've got that, so we can set that aside. We're going to pop that in the oven in just a second. Now we are going to do some more chopping. Oh, perfect. Yes, your favorite. We have our trustee chopper? Yeah we got a trustee chopper and where is the [inaudible]? We have an onion, and a chopping board. Perfect. Okay, there you go. I'm getting rid of the top of the onion. Yeah. I'm getting rid of the bottom layer of the onion, getting rid of the first layer of skin and now we've got that bit of the onion and chop it. Oh no, we want to cut in half first. I've been tried to do what you just did but we're going to do. Yeah. It might work. Then we put in our chopper. Yeah. Boom. This feels like doing chest compressions. There you go. Give me that tomato, I know we have diced onions, it's chilling in our little pot. Yeah. Okay. It's not bad. All right. I'm going to just set this aside here and then get the roasting tray, So you can dump those in there, that's it. Okay. Now we're going to add more sweet potatoes, as you can see, the theme is three potatoes, red onions, to show you how you can use a few products and ingredients and actually create very different meals. These I had in the freezer, there you might see a little bit of frost on them. I do tend to stock up on these. Another glug of olive oil. Another glug, you're getting a whole glug. I could just glug. You could do that, You can use your hands. Okay, now we glug the olive oil into this thing. Yeah. I feel very well coated now. Okay. Cool. Now we're going to, you want to go wash your hands. I'll go wash my hands. Now we can add our seasoning, a little bit of salt in that, some pepper. Very good and now we're ready to put our roasting items in the oven, these now are ready to go into. Both of these things are going in the oven at the same time? Yeah. All right. We won't include a show of them going in the oven, because we can't have a camera for that, but, do you want to put them in? I'm going to get over here and then. We'll go around. So how long is that going in the oven for? Okay, it should be 30 to 40 minutes. The items on the lower rack will cook a little bit slower, you just want to check them to make sure and you should stir it twice, about twice. Stir as in just like. Yeah, just to mix things up a little bit, just sausages, we want to make them brown evenly. We're going to make the dressing, which once everything's done, we will actually assemble it all together. Okay. The dressing is maple syrup, we want about half a cup, this is a two cup, you need it not to be halfway. Want to do the honors? Half a cup of maple syrup? Yeah. Now this is where it gets a bit interesting. Isn't maple syrup very sugary? Yes. Isn't half a cup maple syrup, quite a lot of maple syrup. It is, but that's quite a few bit of meals. If you think about the volume that we're creating, and that's also a thing that can be difficult to get used to when you're doing batch cooking as you're actually cooking multiple meals. So your quantities will be a little bit greater. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to take our apple cider vinegar and you want four tablespoons of that. Very good, that's your dressing. That is it? That is it, told you this was going to be simple. Where is the mint? We're going to do that now. We're going to chop that now. We'll go ahead and set that aside. We'll stir it once everything starts coming together because what we will be doing is, we will be putting everything from one of the trays into the other tray. Now we're going to chop our mint. There's no real shortcut way to do that. Here's some mint that comes in a bag. This is from Sainsbury's. It's about 30 grams of it. You want about half of this. If you want to be precise, you can measure it out on a scale. But again, none of these recipes require precision. It is just the leaves that I want. I suppose so. Yeah. You want to go ahead and pick the leaves. My gosh. This smells so nice. It does, and it's probably the most time-consuming part of the whole meal, is doing this. Yeah, it smells nice. Without a doubt, yeah. The mint just gives this dish a little bit of something extra. So now I can put everything together? You can put it together. I'm going to use my pro chopping skills. Where did you learn this? I didn't. I was very instinctual then. Just watch your fingers. Yeah. It's all about the third knuckle, that's what Gordon says. My pal, Gordon. You've been watching too much Gordon. Gosh, I almost took my fingernail off. Yeah, please don't. It's a sharp knife. Yeah, I told you, these are very sharp knives. No losing digits today [inaudible]. Again, don't worry about it being precise because by the time this is mixed in with anything, you're not going to see what you chopped and what you didn't chop. What you're trying to avoid is somebody getting just a mouthful of pure mint. Cool. Very good. That's fine. We'll put that in a little bowl and then we're going to set that aside until we're ready to assemble the food once it's done in about 40 minutes time. We've got our apple cider vinegar and maple syrup, we've got our mint, which we'll put over there, and we'll see you in 40 minutes once the oven stuff is done. Our vegan sausages and brussels sprouts are done, as well as our sweet potato mix and we're going to mix it up now, and then do the dressing. We chuck everything together? Yeah, just chuck it all in there. That's good. Now one of the things with these pans. Stuff tends to stick in them. What I just do is, soak them a little bit. Just get the kettle and just put some boiling water in there and let it soak so you don't have to scrub and that protects your pans, especially, with the non-stick. You've mixed it all up. Now, what we want to do is sprinkle in the mint. This thing? That's it. Just go for it. That's very chef like. Yeah. It's going to look good on the overhead camera. There you go. This can be one of our shots in the intro. Very nice. I think green always just makes everything look nicer. It does. Now we have our maple dressing. Maple dressing. You just sprinkle? Exactly. You just pour it on in there. You can pop this back in the oven if you want for a little bit, or you can just stir it and let it go. Now, can you smell the flavors and the mint, all the thing? Yeah, that smells amazing. It's really nice, isn't it? It's one of my favorite dishes nowadays. The maple syrup gives it a little bit of sweetness, and it also coats everything with it. This is really nice as well just to put over some spinach and have as a salad. That roast is done. We'll just transfer it to one of our handy-dandy food containers. I want to try some as well. We've got spoons [inaudible]. Of course, you can. We're going to put some in a plate. Yeah, of course. Peeps. We can all eat from the plate. Make sure you're in shot here. Let's give this a go. Nice. They're good? Very good. Awesome. Well, I know what it taste like. We should be giving you guys to taste. How about you guys. Come on this side, try some. It's really lovely. See what you think. [inaudible]. Nice. But do you see what I mean by the mint? It just gives it just a little bit of punch. There you go. Everyone, this is Michael. That's Nathan over there. Our official taste testers. Indeed. Ooh. Do you believe that's vegan? It doesn't taste vegan. It tastes too nice to be vegan. Isn't that great? Maple syrup. But then it's also got the vinegar so just a little bite to it. This was pretty quick. It was basically all oven stuff, all frozen stuff just shoved in there, and we just chucked in the oven. Now we just chuck in Tupperware. Then when we want to eat, we just take it out. Absolutely. Warming up, and then you serve it. Yeah. Done, that's very good. This is a great staple. This is going to become one of my staples. It is. This is a great dish, particularly like over the holidays. Like if you have somebody who's vegetarian that's coming. Let's wack this. This would be fancy enough, I suppose, and tasty enough certainly to serve. This one was devised trying to get the kids to eat vegetables. I knew I could get him to eat sausage. Here we go. We're just shoving in. Just shove it in. We definitely could have used a smaller pan than this one. But like I said, if you've only got one and you plan on doing batch cooking, it's always better to get them a little bit larger. Yeah. Makes sense. It's not going to hurt you. Get the last gooey bit. There we go. We go. All right, sorted. That just now needs to cool off, and then you can store it in the fridge. Again, 3-4 days, I think is realistic and good. Then you just reheat it in the microwave, again on a low setting for a little bit longer, maybe about 5-8 minutes so that it cooks and reheats evenly. Cool. That was the vegan sausages with veg, with mint, maple sauce. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next video. Thank you.
11. Lemon, Mustard and Rosemary Salmon: All right, welcome back. In this video, we're going over the recipe for Rosemary Salmon and Lemon Mustard, or something like that. Salmon. Salmon. I'm not sure you actually said salmon. Did I not? Did he? That's what I said, Rosemary Salmon. Yeah, you did you. Rosemary Salmon and Lemon Mustard. There we go. Yes. With this dish, you can batch it, and you can put it in the fridge if you want or you can cook it as a special evening meal. This is so fundamentally simple, but it's really, really tasty, especially if you like salmon. The first thing that we're going to do, when we start off any meal, I like to do the thing that takes the longest first. So that whatever needs to happen with that can be happening while you're prepping other things. In this instance, we are going to chop some shallots. Okay. They're right over there. Shallots tend to drive people crazy because they can actually be very, very difficult to chop. To do so, I'm going to show you a trick that's going to make it a little bit easier. What I need to do is, go get some boiled water and a small bowl and we're going to soak these in that for about five minutes just to loosen the skin up and make the peeling so much easier. We've got our shallots. Yeah, shallots. We're not going to use all of them. Okay. So are shallots sort of like onions? They are. Okay. They're in that family. Family of onions. That's right. We basically need two, so put that in there, and then just cover that with water. Then we can set that aside and that's going to do its little magic and loosen things up while we start preparing other things, so we can set that aside. Watch it, must be hot. Right over there. Okay. While the shallots are simmering to make it easier for us to chop, we're going to start our dressing or the salmon. The basis of this one will be mustard. You can use the Dijon mustard style or the whole grain mustard. Do you have a preference Ali? I don't know what either of them tastes like, sorry. Both of them are really good. The smoother one's a little bit stronger than the whole grains, so why don't we do the whole grain this time. Sure. What we're going to do is we are going to take out two tablespoons of that and put that on in there. There you go. Okay, good. So we've got that, and then we are going to take our trusty chopped garlic, and effectively, you can do two wacks of that. Two teaspoons? Yeah, exactly. This is so useful. Yes. It doesn't look any different to like actually fresh chops of garlic. I mean, smell it. It is the same. Then we're going to do our teaspoons of rosemary and thyme. You can use what you've been mixing with. One teaspoon of rosemary. One of that. One teaspoon of thyme, one teaspoon of that. Smelling very fragrant. Yeah. There you go. I just don't really appreciate what different herbs tastes like. Yeah, they make all the difference, I think. I appreciate what coriander tastes like, but that's about it. Yeah, this will give you a flavor of that. That smells perfect. Yeah. You want to give it a seasoning, that's good. Just a random assortment of kosher salt and the random squirts of pepper. Very good. This feels nice and rough. Yeah, it is because we're going to smear this all over the salmon in effect. Now, I like for salmon, lemon. So we're going to add a little bit of lemon to that. You want to pick one of our funky knives, you can use that one, we just need half a lemon. There we go. You can go ahead and take the pits out and then squeeze that in there. That's very satisfying. Incredibly satisfying. Yeah, very much so. That's okay. Cool. Okay, it's good enough. Very good. This seems so easy, just combining ingredients you get in the supermarket. It is, yo just get that. You can go ahead and set that aside, now we're going to be a little bit fancy, it's because when you cook salmon in the oven, I think it's always is really nice to put a little bit of lemon on top. Just slice your other half. Again, this is not for decoration, but it is more for baking enjoyment. Then I tend to cut these in half so that you can put them across. We've got those right now, we can just set those aside. Now, we're going to prepare the salmon in our baking tin. Cool. Now we're going to prepare the salmon itself. I've got a roasting tin out that we can put it in so that it can go in the oven. I'm also going to use some grease proof baking paper, otherwise known in America as wax paper, into line the bottom of the tin. It's not a must have, but it makes cleaning up a lot easier, we like things that make things easier to clean up. You just need to cut that there. Doesn't have to be pretty, and now we want to open up the salmon and put it with the skin side down. Skin side down, okay. Here we go. This looks like proper cooking. Very good. Now our shallots should be ready, we're going to put that aside for just a second and then we're going to chop our shallots. Now we're going to take our shallots which had been soaking. There are still a bit warm but not anything terrible. Again as I said, this is one type of that's always very difficult, but look how easy that comes off. Probably the best way to appreciate it is when you don't soak it and try. That will come right off. Another way to do it's when I'm really in a hurry is I just cut the ends off and then it usually pulls all the skin right off, just like that. Again, because we're using our handy-dandy press dicer, I don't think you need to be perfect about it. Cool. Yeah. So I chop the ends off? Yeah. So that's a small paring knife. It's a nice complement to that big chef knife we were using earlier. This just stops like magic. I'm so glad you like it. There we go. Sort of gets rid of some of the skin as well. Yes. It will. It'll take off whatever doesn't go all the way through. Yes. In there. Then you can just pop it here because we're doing the salmon fillets, we probably want to just really quickly and that should be real easy, is just maybe dice this up just some little bit more. So you don't get a mouthful. That will make my eyes water. Oh, dear. You know what I find? If I'm cooking when I have glasses on, take your glasses off. You shouldn't chop. When I have my glasses on versus my contacts and I've got my contacts in right now. My eyes water, unbelievable. My contact seemed to protect them and I think that it gets in under your glasses. One thing is the fact that you've got lenses on. If the fact that is protecting your eyes. I'm sure it is. My eyes are pretty watery. Yes. Oh, no. That's fine. It's all good. Okay. I'm going to finish the chopping here then. Cool. Because I'm protected by the lenses. You've got the lenses. But yes, so just say it's not quite a mouthful of shallots. Yes, there we go. So pop it all in there. We've been stirring with our teaspoon. But that's okay. Multiple dishes. Yes. So you want it to be thick and clingy together. This is where it's a bit like when you were kids and you got to play in play dough and stuff. Now what we're going to do is, take it you can use either your hands, or if you want to be more precise and scoop it in and then just pat it, can smear it and pat it. There we go. Seems very rough. Over there. That's it. Very good. Okay, and then what we'll do is we take the little lemon bits that we had earlier, pop those. Very creative doing that dish. Yes. There we go. Okay, so we're going to pop this in the oven. It should be at 180 and it'll be about between 8-10 minutes, we'll just keep an eye on it. Remember every oven cooks differently so, you will want to make sure you're actually checking it and we'll show you how to do that. Okay. So we're going to put this in the oven and we'll see you in about 8-10 minutes. All right, so here we are, it's ready. Yes. So it's come out of the oven now, unlike the other meals that we've made so far, this is just salmon on its own. So you obviously want to serve it with something. So we thought we'd discussed maybe a little bit of some serving suggestions. Obviously, you can have whatever you possibly want, but in the interest of speed and efficiency, I like to combine a nice home-cooked meal with something that's a little bit ready-made. So I brought along some of my staples, which is mashed sweet potatoes. You can tell I like sweet potatoes. This is one that you can buy in the vegetable section, in the refrigerated area for sweet potato mash. I buy these usually four to five at a time and I'll just pop them in the freezer. Then, this one, same concept, but this is potato. So if you want to have your salmon with some ready-made mashed potato, that would be good. Then if you wanted to add veg to that I like to have my salmon with some parmesan covered green beans. That's really easy. All the recipes for these will be in the. Somewhere. Yes. Somewhere in the video. In the video so that you can do it yourself, but it's so easy you would just take a handful, or a bunch of green beans, boil them in some water, drain it, then put a little bit of butter on it, and then some parmesan shavings. It's absolutely lovely and a little bit of salt, little bit of pepper would be great. Then you can divvy these up. So we'll store these all in one but you could, if you wanted to put a little bit of green bean, put a little bit of mash, and then one of these fillets on top and then store that individually so you can just grab it to go. One of the other things to add is that we've fully cooked the salmon this time, but you may want to take it out a little bit ahead of time when it was still a little bit underdone. If you are going to reheat it, particularly in the oven, it would be too dry if you fully cook it. So that's just something to also think about. All right, so can we plate? You sure can. Ready to rock and roll? All right, so if we just get one whole one off and we can all have little bites of it. Yes. Probably, you could take the skin off if you want now or you could do it later. Actually, it might be better to serve this up. Yes, I can serve. That's just the voice of experience. That skin should be falling off anyway. Are you supposed to eat the skin or not? I think some people do. A lot of people take it off, so it's entirely up to you. Oh, that's really nice. Yes, you don't want to eat the lemon. I mean, maybe you would. Have some it tastes really good. But see how simple it is. That was so easy. Yes. Well, if you like salmon and you like mustard you're going to love this. Yeah, the kick of lemon. But salmon and lemon just works. Yes. It works Yes. Good. Pretty good food. Do you want some? No, I'm okay. You're good. I'm full. I had one of your size alley size portions. I'm still quite hungry for some reason. Awesome. That was salmon with, mustard, rosemary, and thyme. Was that right? Lemon. Lemon. There's just no thyme. No thyme. Salmon with mustard and lemon and you can serve it with sides, and veg and stuff. So thanks for watching and we'll see in the next video.
12. Overnight Oats: All right. Welcome back. We've done some main recipes. Let's now do a quick breakfast thing, which is overnight oats, which is a classic of the Instagram basic girl aesthetic, which I'm a big fan of. Okay. What are we doing here? We're going to do a simple overnight oats recipe here. One thing to say, this probably isn't great to batch. You probably want to do this the night before and not keep it long-term. I think it probably would be okay, but my sense is that this is going to be better if you just make it overnight once and eat it. But in any case, let's start. The first thing that we're going to do is to get our porridge oats aside. We're effectively going to put in, this is going to really serve probably one very hungry person, but otherwise I would say the serving size is two. You're going to want to get about 50 grams of porridge oats. Do you want to actually measure that out with a scale? Should we free-hand it? We can free-hand it. Yeah. Okay. Without a doubt. What, about 50 grams? Yeah, so 50 grams is going to be, a little bit more. A little bit more. A little bit more. There we go. Cool. It's about 50 grams. Okay. Yeah. I could do that because I'm a professional. No, I'm not. We have that in there. I've got hazelnuts here, chopped roasted hazelnuts. You can really add any kind of chopped nut that you prefer, but I do like hazelnut. So say about two tablespoons if you want to do that. Of course. You don't have to, but you can free it if you want. There you go. Two tablespoons of chopped roasted hazelnuts. Yeah, that's it, and then chia seeds. I like chia seeds. Have you had chia seeds? I think I tried them ages ago, a few years ago, when I tried overnight oats, but I don't remember what they taste like. Just one tablespoon. One tablespoon. Of that. I like chia seeds in my granola. So put some of those in there. Okay, so we've got that, and then we're going to want about a fourth of a teaspoon, so one of these little guys, so there's our cinnamon, and then we're going to add our fruit. So for this one, let's put that aside, we're going to grate an apple. Okay. Okay. I've washed the apple. You can use the big side. So we are grating our apple here. That's going to be nice and good. You can grate the whole thing, only half if you prefer, but I like a lot of apple. There we go. Now we want to scoop that with this spoon in there. Chuck it in? Just chuck it in. Okay. Set that aside and now half a banana. You can use a whole banana if you'd like. I'm going to go with half for this. Just peel it. You can put any fruit that you like in here. You can buy frozen raspberries, or frozen blueberries, which are much cheaper than the fresh, and then you keep those around, and then baddabing, you just toss them in. Just dice this up just a little bit more. Now that can go on in. Okay. Very good. We're not going to need that. You can just pop that on over. Now what we're going to need is about 250, so for every 50 grams of oats, you're going to want to have about 250 grams of almond milk. You could use yogurt if you don't have almond milk around, but I like almond milk. Oat milk is also really good. So 250 is one cup. So 250 ml. That go straight in? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Stir it all up. You can, if you want, add a little bit of honey to this. You can wait and add honey later. I like to put a little bit in right now. It's probably about a tablespoon. Okay. Okay, and that's it. Now we just take this and pop it in the fridge, and say good night. Here we are. We have waited 24 hours, in the fridge overnight, and we now have some overnight oats. So what do we do with them? You can spoon it out here and see how it tastes. Do you want it to be runnier than that? You can add a little bit more almond milk the night before, even in the morning. That's very nice. Like I said, you can add more honey if you prefer it to be a little bit sweeter. Yeah. All right, so that was overnight oats. If you do it in a jar, it becomes Instagrammable. There you go. I suppose you can have blueberries and stuff over the top, and sliced bananas, take an overhead shot from up above, and then you get all those likes. So thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next video.
13. BONUS - Efficient Planning & Buying Groceries: In this video, we're going to be talking about how to do groceries in an efficient fashion. This is something I struggle with, so am going to be asking Kim about how that works. Hello. Can we talk about step 1 of this productive meal prep system, which is the planning and the buying of groceries in an efficient fashion. Yeah. This is something that I've always struggled with because, I walk into Sainsbury's, for example, and I get paralyzed by choice because there's just too much stuff to buy, or if I want to cook a specific recipe, I would look for the recipe, I'd go around. It'll take me half an hour to find the stuff for that recipe and I'll come home, use half of it and then it'll end up growing mold and developing bugs. Essentially, how do you go about shopping for groceries in an efficient fashion? Like what's a step-by-step method? Okay. Well, the most important thing about efficient grocery shopping is to consider doing it online. What happens with a lot of the online platforms, so whether it's Sainsbury's or Tescos or Waitrose, all of them have a variation on this particular theme. What you want to do is you want to have your core favorite recipes, is where I would start. You look at what those items are, and then you go into your online, and then you can search for those particular things, just let's say it's milk. You always buy milk, right? Yeah. Then you go and your next item is chicken breasts, boneless chicken breasts. So you go in and you get that. Most of the online will allow you to have a favorite, the stuff that you repeatedly buy, and that's what's really most efficient about it. Because if you, then at your next shop, you go right to your favorites and at least sell things you routinely buy. That helps take the overwhelming aspect out of it so you're not paralyzed by choice. Okay. Because you've got your basics. Then you can add to that anything that would be specific and new and exciting that you might want to try. Okay. In terms of actually figuring out what that list of basics is, I guess we'll start off with that pantry list that you recommended. Yes. All of these things, and I suppose, what's your system for knowing when something runs out? Do you order it there and then or how does it work? Yeah, now that's a good question. While I'm cooking, I'm actually looking at what I have in stock. Let's say that it's time because I use that herb quite a lot and I watch it each time I use it. When it starts getting low, I go, and I keep a little post-it note in my kitchen and I just write it down. You could do an Alexa list or you could do it on your phone, it doesn't really matter. It's the habit of being able to say, I'm getting low on something, pause, but I'm doing in my cooking and say, I'm going to write it down. However you do that, you keep a list effectively so that by the time you're ready to sit down, for me it tends to be a Thursday evening where I do my grocery list, I've actually got it written out. Then I get my recipe, whatever it is that I'm going to cook for the next two days I go, okay. What do I want? Actually it's not two days, it's four days. What's my next four days going to look like? Then I plan for what we have for lunch, and then what we have for dinner, and then breakfast, just make sure I have the things that we would typically have for breakfast. Then again, in your favorites list, on online shopping, those kinds of things are going to be there. If you have a particular favorite cereal or whatever, then you get low on that. You go over and write it down so that you can sit there and do it once you've got your online shopping. Okay, awesome. That's making it sound a little less daunting than I've imagined it. Do you do physical grocery shopping at all or are you entirely online now? I'm probably 85 percent online. Okay. But I certainly do go to the grocery store, especially if I'm going to buy stuff in bulk. Because things that I know that I'm going to use quite a lot. We talked about prepared frozen chopped onions. I buy bags of those. It may be that I buy quite a few things like leeks, because I cook a lot with leeks. I buy those and I may only need one from my recipe, but actually three come in the bag, so then I chop them, I chop them all, and I put the rest of the leeks that I'm not using for that particular recipe into a plastic baggie, like a sandwich baggie, and I stick it in the freezer. Then how do you keep track of the fact that you've got these two bags of leeks in the freezer? Do you do it in your head or? Yeah. It's a drawer. I've got it in one of my drawers. I organize it so that all chopped frozen things are in one drawer. Then I go into that drawer. It's like your underwear drawer, or your sock drawer. If you pull it out a lot, you could actually see what's in there, hopefully. That's a good way of doing it and then I would check that. If I had another recipe and I say, oh, it calls for a leek, I would then go over and look and see if I actually had frozen chopped leeks still. Okay. It sounds like overall a big part of this whole system is actually doing the forward planning to one day a week, actually, just think about what you want to eat for the rest of the week. Yeah. Rather than do it as a ad hoc. Yeah. There and then topic. That's why I said it's really good to do it to set your designated evenings or whenever you're going to do it, so that you can get into that habit. So that I know on a Thursday evening, that's what I'm going to be doing. Then I have the groceries delivered on Friday or Saturday morning depending on my availability and when I'm going to be home. The online shopping is nice because you can pick the hour, usually hour slots, so you know when you're going to be around to be able to get those groceries. Okay. Awesome. Cool. That sounds like a good grocery system. Thank you very much. That was the efficient grocery system. If you have any questions, leave them in the discussion segment down below and me or Kim will try and get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Thank you.
14. BONUS - Healthy Eating: Hey guys, welcome back. In this video, we're going to be talking about the basics, the very bare-bone basics of healthy eating. Firstly, what I wanted to ask is, what's a normal portion size? That's something that I don't understand. It is. It's really difficult. I don't think there's any one normal portion size because it depends on what you do. It's your physical activity that's really critical. If you, say, are a runner and you run a lot, you're going to need a lot more calories than someone who just sits at a desk job all day and maybe their only exercise is actually getting up and going to the fridge. You have to think around that to understand it. Most people eat bigger portions, and more than they actually require. It's something that you want to train your body to match the caloric intake to what you actually expend in terms of energy. Would you do that in terms of tracking your calories for a while or do you think in terms of your weight fluctuations? It depends. Some people like data. If you like data, there's a lot of apps out there that can help you to do this. You can go online, and you can find questionnaires that will take you through your activity level and will come back with how many calories, your target calories. I'm of the not-data oriented type of person. I would rather look at how tight my jeans are and weighing myself so that I can balance that out, but roughly, I try to buy my plates smaller to encourage me to eat smaller portions. I make sure that, roughly, if I'm looking at something, it's a piece of meat, I'll say really it's about that big. It's not a huge piece. Maybe half of a big-sized chicken breast for your protein. Then your portion then should be much more around your carb. Your veg carb. Your veg carb? Yes. Not all carbs are created equal. What do you mean? Cake is a carb. That's not the kind of a carb I'm talking about. I'm talking about the healthy carb, which would be primarily things like broccoli, sweet potatoes, you've seen I cooked a lot with sweet potato, and those kinds of things which are healthy, but they're actually carb. Pasta is probably the most famous of all of the carbs. Is it a healthy carb or an unhealthy carb? I think it's a healthy carb, but again, everything in moderation so that you're not eating too much of the portion. I always say to myself, whatever I feel like I'm hungry I eat half of that. Half of that? Half of that. Wow. That's like an [inaudible]. Exactly. Then I tried to fill up on things like salad. If I have a smaller meat portion on whatever salad I'm preparing, then I have a lot more lettuce than maybe I think I should have to balance that out. A lot of it is just discipline. I don't think there's really any two ways you can get around it. The system that I have allows me to not think as much about it, so it's a habit. The way I serve my portions is exactly the same way. I create smaller plates, so I get into the habit of how much I should actually be having. Cool. That makes sense. I guess, protein vs carb vs fats, what proportions do you aim for or do you not really think about it in terms of percentages, just as a rough guideline? Just rough guidelines. Again, it depends on what you're going for. There are low carb diets out there, and there are low-fat ones. You just always have to say what works for you. I tend towards more of the low carb. I would have, say, my meat portion, which is my protein portion. Again, it would be a reasonable size. Then I would control that carb, maybe have more of a healthy carb rather than a snacking kind of thing. I also think from snacks, just talking about snacks, things like nuts are really good. They're quite high in calories, but they really fill you up. If you can control yourself to have a small portion of nuts, and then drink some water, make sure you feel relatively full, but don't eat it like a load of them, that is a great way. Then within a half-hour you go, "I'm actually more full than I thought I would be." Cool. That makes sense. I guess every meal, the way I should think about it, is just one piece of protein. For example, a piece of salmon like we cooked earlier or a few chunks of the chicken breast that we cooked earlier, or for example, maybe two vegan sausages that come in one protein portion, and then some veg on the side like broccoli or leeks or sweet potato that we've just discussed. Then what about fat? Do I think about fat as a separate component? You can think about fat as a separate component, but I think most of us get all the fat that we need in what we're cooking. If you think about it, remember we we're using oils, so there's usually that in there. It's probably more of a question of saying, I don't want too much fat. Again, if you are working out a lot and you are an athlete, you're going to need a lot more carbs and calories than we've been talking about. I guess it depends on what your requirements are, figuring out how many calories you need per day, and then figuring out a healthy way to make up those calories rather than just eating Big Macs. There's calories, but not all calories are created equal either. Not equal. Not at all. Everything that we cook today, if you were an athlete, you would just have a lot more bigger portions than I would because I'm not quite an athlete. Sweet. I'm just going to talk you through what my future plan is following this whole-day filming session that we've done where you've taught me how to cook basically and not give up. Basically what I need is that I need a few items that we talked about at the start that I probably don't have. I don't think I have a very good non-stick pan, and I don't know, maybe a baking tray. You're definitely going to get that chopper too. That chopper as well, of course. Yes. I've got a decent knife. I don't have a knife sharpener, so I'll just get one of those to keep it sharp. Then in terms of pantry, I have almost nothing in the pantry. I'll do an inventory tonight or tomorrow. I've got the day off work tomorrow, so I'll do an inventory tomorrow to figure out what's in the pantry, and figure out what ingredients I just need to buy online. Then that will be a one off thing. Then I'll try and keep a tally on my to-do list app or whatever of stuff I need to buy as it runs out. I guess every week if I do a shop up, I'm going to need a bit of milk, I'll probably need some cereal or coffee or the things that tend to run out. Then on top of that, once a week, I just need to figure out what am I going to eat this week? I'll start by using the recipes that we've gone over today. We've got that salmon big thing with the mustard. Now we've got this chicken teriyaki, we've got the vegan sausage stuff, we've got overnight oats. That was quite tasty, so I'll get some ingredients for those. Then I'll just Tupperware them, stick them in the fridge. If don't need to use something, I just shove it in the freezer. Then I'll know that it's in the freezer so that when I'm thinking about making a meal, I've got a stock of things to do in the freezer. What do you do about snacks other than other nuts? Do you just have nuts that you snack on if you're feeling hungry in the middle of the day? What do you do? Yogurt. I snack on yogurt and granola. Yogurt and granola is really nice, granola bars. If I know that I'm, say, traveling quite a bit, I'll make sure I have a granola bar in my handbag. That's really good fruit. I like cheese a lot. I may get a couple of crackers, some cheese slices, and maybe some grapes, and then I treat myself to that. Like a little cheese board or something. Yes. Exactly. How about sugar? How much do you care about your sugar intake? Because when you said granola I imagined granola is sweet and sugary and stuff. How much should you overthink sugar? Well, I'm very conscious of it, but I make my own granola, so I know exactly how much sugar goes into it. Anything that's processed and packaged is probably going to have a lot more sugar or salt than you necessarily need. I tend to make a lot more of my own so I know exactly what's going in there, but again, I definitely use sugar, but I don't think I overuse it in any of my cooking. It'll come from things like honey. I tend to use dark-brown sugar a lot which is less refined sugar and gives a great taste. Then natural sweeteners like apple. In the overnight oats there is apple in there. It's quite sweet. Keeping sugar in line, but not over using it, but also not overthinking it. What you have to do is you have to say how disciplined do you want and how structured do you want your life to be? If it's too tightly regulated I won't adhere to it. It's about finding that balance that allows you to say, "Yes, I do have a sweet tooth, and I do like having some sweet things every now and then," but the trade-off is it's going to be smaller portion. That seems very reasonable. I think that's all the questions I've got for now. I'm excited to start this new chapter of my life where I start eating healthily and doing a whole meal prep thing and cooking in bulk rather than just ordering nandos every night. Thank you. All right. Thanks for watching. Take care. Again, any questions, stick a comment down below in the discussion section, Kim and I will try and answer them as best as we can. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.
15. BONUS - Effective Bulk Storage: All right. In this video we are going to be talking about the third component of this productive meal prep system, which is the storage component of it. We've been alluding to this as we've been going along, as we've been apportioning some of the stuff that we've cooked into the different tupperwares, but in this video, I just thought we'd go over what the deal is with the whole tupperware thing, which tupperwares you recommend, and what should we be looking for when we're buying the storage containers, which make up the fundamental part of this meal prep system. The thing about containers is you have to think about storing them, because if you don't think about storing them and doing it neatly and in a small enough space, you're not going to adhere to this process. The first thing that I say is make sure you understand what size or sizes that you need. You don't really need that many. I use pretty much three sizes, and that's pretty much it. The other thing is the stackability of the darn things, because a lot of them come with very fancy lids and clips and whatever, and that makes stacking the tops quite challenging. I'm going to show you what I use. The first one is this one which is, what did we decide this was? It was basically a four liter storage size. What I like about this is that it's quite flat. It allows the food to cool, so I can put this in here and then let whatever I batch cool. With the lid on top, I can actually stack another one on top in the fridge space. This one's a great one, and probably might go for my batch cooking. I've got this size and then I have a medium-sized one, which I think this is about two and a half liters. I can put just pull this out and show you what that roughly looks like. If you see this particular brand which I get from Sainsbury's, it's the really cheap one for sure. But look how easy the lid stack. Everything just goes really nicely together and I store the lids underneath. The lid's stack is in the lids themselves, stuck with each other. Yeah. Well, they do it quite flatly because they don't have all the- All the fancy clips which means that- Clips and stuff, yeah. Then again, what I find is that I won't adhere to it if it's not easy. But this is a good size. If you're making veg, we talked a lot about some of our sides, you can put that in in this one, that should do well with your batch cooking. Then for transport, if you want portion size, this ones's a great size. I'm not sure. Tell me what this is. What it says at the bottom? Yeah. It says one liter. One liter. We talked about portion control. This is a good way to work your portion control. If I'm going to go to the office and I want my lunch, I'll put it in this size. I'll have my meat, and then my veg in here, and then maybe some rice or some smash or wherever it happens to be. If it's salad, I usually will take two, then I would put the salad portion in here and then the mixture point in this one and it mix it together. You could consider also if you do like salads, I'm getting a little container that actually you can put your salad dressing in so that your food's not sitting in it all day. But that's my go-to when it comes to this, and again, see how easy it stacks, and when I open everything up, it doesn't all fall out on me. They all stack nicely together. Take that, and then this. The proportions, it all works really well and that takes care of it. Cool, in terms of putting food in the tupperware, do you tend to go, like you would bulk cook and then he put it into one big tupperware? Or do you tend to put them out meal prep style in different containers with everything together? Myself, I do it in one big one and then I scoop the portions out. But I do know people who swear by just moving directly into portion control. Again, it depends on how much time once you prep it. If you are really rushed, in your mornings before work, you're probably not going to have the time with everything else to portion it out, so you might portion it out the night before or you may cook it and directly put it in right away. It's really what works best for you. Okay. Sounds good. I think for me, I like the idea of doing in a big thing because then it's less effort there and then. But realistically, I don't think I'll have the time or the patience to put it into little containers each morning? Yeah. Perhaps for me if I'm making lunch for the next day, I might as well just put a couple of containers out. Yeah. It's just grab and go rather in the case of having a fuff in the morning and then just letting it, screw it, I'm not going to buy food at work goes or something. Exactly, and that's great. If you'd batch cook two items, one for your lunches and then one for your dinners, then you put your dinners in the big one because you'll be at home and then it'll be easy to split it out versus when you're going to take something to work, you go ahead and prep it right away. Awesome. I need to find some containers that stack nicely like that one. I guess we'd suggest that you do the same if you're in the same boat as I am. Thanks for watching, and we'll see in the next video.
16. Thanks for Watching: All right. That brings us to the end of this class. Thank you for watching along. Thank you very much, Kim, for teaching me the basics of productive meal prep. Any final parting words that you want to share with me or with the audience? No, just say enjoy it, don't be too precise on anything, and make sure that whatever routine that you set up, it's something that is easy to comply to, and that you can actually stick with, and enjoy it, and thank you for watching and let me have the opportunity to share what I do with all of you. Awesome. Yeah, we said step 1 was planning and prep. Step 2 was cooking, and step 3 was storage, and we've talked in depth about all three of these aspects of it. I'm quite looking forward to applying this to my own life. It's just like filming with the overhead setup and then different camera angles, this is really fun. I'm thinking that once I get good at cooking, which is something I want to be doing. Trying to do more YouTube videos about it and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, no, it'll be great. I hope you guys enjoy the recipes. Yeah. Thanks for watching and see you let. All the best with your cooking careers. Take care. Bye, bye. Bye.
17. Exclusive Bonus Materials: Hello again, how's it going? I probably look a little
bit older than when you're watching this class because I'm filming this after the fact. Because just to let you know, we have just added an
enormous amount of totally free bonus material
over to my website, which facilitates all of the different skill
share classes that we have here
on the platform. So if you head over to Ali Abdel.com, forward
slash Skillshare, resources that lingual
appear here and also down in the projects and
resources section or wherever you happen to be seeing this Skillshare often changes the structure
of the website, so it'll be linked somewhere on this page and
also right here, so you can go to that URL and that will give
you access to a bunch more bonus information
relating to all of the different
Skillshare classes. For some of those that might be Notion templates
for some of them might be PDFs and worksheets
and bonus material. It's all on the website,
it's all completely free and you can check
it out with that link. Anyway. I hope you
enjoyed the class. I'd love it if you can leave
a review if you haven't already and hopefully see you
in the next one. Bye bye.
Ali Abdaal, Doctor + YouTuber
