Six Weeknight Meal Hacks

As much as we love to cook and create new recipes, family life during the week is not always conducive to this.  Just figuring out how the schedule of everyone’s comings and goings each night takes almost all my mental energy.  Then, let’s say your refrigerator slowly dies while waiting for a repair service date to arrive (true story!).  Now you find yourself living out of a cooler and some ice packs in the garage.  HELP! It got us thinking how important having easy meal ideas at the mental forefront can be. Everyone needs weeknight meal hacks to survive.

We all know what we should do. Planning and prepping ahead of each week for meals is a major time saver. Additionally, keeping recipes short and simple during the week, also wise.  Being organized enough to shop one day a week for everything you need helps too.  But let’s be honest.  Who can be this organized all of the time?  Here are a few of our other favorite weeknight meal hacks that make life easier when you have kids with competing sports and activity schedules, a partner who travels, and/ or your refrigerator decides to call it quits. We hope you find a few of these weeknight meal hacks as helpful as we do.

1.  Weeknight Savior- the Rotisserie Chicken

Add rotisserie chicken from your favorite grocery store to the weekly shopping list.  It can be the inspiration for several meals and significantly cut down on meal prep time.

Use it for the base of a simple chicken tortilla soup, a salad (try this barbecue ranch chicken salad), one of the chicken bowls mentioned below, or just use the breasts and legs alone served with veggie and starch side.  Another great thing about the rotisserie chicken is that you can also use leftovers for putting together salads for your own lunch the next day.

2.  Freezer Clean-out Medley

My family likes to get involved in this one. We each choose something from the freezer that has been lingering, putting together a meal of random items which do not always “go”.   This makes us laugh because the combinations are often odd (chicken tenders, waffles, and peas anyone?) – so no humor is lost on us.  Personally, I also am pleased that we are using the 9 potstickers that keep floating from place to place in the freezer.

Add a side salad from whatever veggies you have in the fridge or try this simple roasted broccoli to add some green. At the very least, this weeknight meal hack provides full stomachs and some good laughs.

3.  Refrigerator Roulette

Sometimes small amounts of leftovers start to build up.  It seems like waste, until you invoke the refrigerator roulette dinner night.  Then you are hopeful for small bits of leftovers, so everyone has something to choose from and one night’s dinner is taken care of, all at the same time.  This weeknight meal hack works particularly well on nights when everyone seems to have a different schedule and there is not a possible family sit down mealtime.

4.  Identify One Routine Weeknight Meal

Taco Tuesday is our weeknight regular.  It is the night I can count on not having to plan for or think when making.  Everyone knows what will be served, so I get less “what’s for dinner?” questioning at least one night per week. We do tend to vary the type of taco depending on what we have around.  It could be fish tacos because I have cabbage in the fridge or a ground beef crunchy taco, as we nearly always keep a stash of ground beef in the freezer.

Some other easy weeknight regulars could be breakfast for dinner night of the week (I wish I could get my husband on this train, believe me), Spaghetti Wednesday or Pizza Friday.  These nights are especially easy because you can have the ingredients stocked and ready.  Keeping ground beef or sausage in the freezer and a supply of jarred marinara makes spaghetti night easy. Once my kids are older, I fully intend on “Kids Cook Thursday”.  So, stay tuned on how that pans out!

5.  Two for One: Prep a Protein for Two Dinners

Often for me, coming up with the ideas is what takes the time.  If I have a plan for a few days of simple weeknight meals, I can be more efficient in cooking and in my day in general. Prepping enough meat/ protein for two meals is a huge time saver and provides a starting point to build an easy meal around.

 Chicken:

Some of my favorite weeks are when I have the time to grill or sous vide a double batch of chicken breasts and then use it for two different meals.  For example, night one would be chicken fajita bowls. Then, the remaining chicken would be used on night two for Greek chicken bowls.

Pork:

Similarly, you could roast or slow cook a pork shoulder or several pork tenderloins to be used for two nights. Night one could be roast pork loin (try our citrus rosemary marinade) with grilled veggies.  Then night two you chop or shred the remaining pork for barbecue sandwiches.

 Beef: 

Marinate a large flank steak or two all day Sunday or overnight.  (Try our one of our favorite flank steak marinades. )Then grill for night one to have steak with some easy roasted mini potatoes and a veggie side. On night two, use the left over grilled beef to make steak fajita tacos or steak sandwiches.

6.  Make Two; Freeze One

If you have extra freezer space, this is the best way to get a stockpile of ready to roll weeknight meals.  Doubling your recipes for one fresh meal and one to freeze does not take much more time yet actually saves a ton of time later.  This also works for making a larger batch of chili and freeze half of it for later- no extra work aside from prepping the plastic freezer bags and labeling.

Take Home Weeknight Meal Hack Message:

Less Weeknight Pressure Equals More Energy and Time

Take the pressure off yourself to grocery shop and or design new meal ideas each day of the week.  Decide which weeknight meal hacks fit your family lifestyle to make life just a little easier!  And don’t forget our favorite strategy of all, ask your best friend or sister what they are making for dinner, to get ideas.  Not only will the busy weeknight evenings go more smoothly, but you can save that creative cooking energy for the weekend when you have more time to explore new recipes.

Bon Appetit!