Get 4 Homemade Meals from 1 Dish & Save Time While Cooking from Scratch
Save time with your scratch cooking efforts, and make four homemade meals at once. You can store the extra in the freezer, or use it for the next few days. Save money, take advantage of the pantry method of meal planning, and enjoy healthy homemade meals all week long.
Cooking from Scratch when it’s tough
Sometimes your best laid plans get messed up. Kids get sick, or it takes longer in town than you planned, or you wanted to take advantage of the sunshine for just a few more minutes in the garden. Suddenly, it’s almost 5 pm, and you’ve got a game or a meeting in a couple of hours. It can be tempting when you are pressed for time, to fall back on takeout food, or to run to the store for a frozen pizza. With a little planning and without extra effort though, you can have a few extra homemade meals in the freezer or pantry to help you through those kinds of days.
When cooking from scratch it helps if you have a few homemade meals that your family enjoys that you can double up on and save half for a day when you are tempted to eat out. This saves money and ensures that your family’s taste preferences and food sensitivities are taken into account.
Some folks simply make a dish and triple or quadruple the recipe and eat one serving that night and put 3 meals in the freezer for the future. This is a great plan to stock up the freezer with frozen, made from scratch but ready in 20 minutes kinds of meals.
Another way to do this is to cook a sauce with added meat and then serve it in several ways. Tomato sauces work well this way. Here’s what I do for my family, by cooking one meaty tomato sauce and then serving it in 4 different ways. If you prefer vegetarian you can substitute lentils for the meat in this dish or even stretch the meat that you have by adding cooked lentils to the sauce. The lentils are hardly noticed and add fibre and vitamins, too.
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4 Meals from 1 Dish
Description
Start with a basic meat sauce and serve four different ways for easy homemade meals from scratch.
Ingredients
- 1 pound of ground meat, lamb, beef, turkey, or your choice of meat
- (or 2 cups of lentils and 5 cups of water, cooked until softened,)
- 2 med onions, diced
- 2 med garlic cloves minced.
- 1 tablespoons coconut oil for frying
- 1 quart of tomato sauce or 1 small can of tomato paste + 2 cups of H20
- ½ teaspoon basil
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon coriander (optional),
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne,
Instructions
Tacos from scratch (double or triple the recipe, if you like to have some to freeze)
Brown together meat, onions, garlic and spices.
If using lentils, cook lentils till soft in water. Separately, fry onions in coconut oil and proof spices with the onions. Add to lentils along with crushed garlic after lentils are softened, rinsed, and drained. Add 1 quart of tomato sauce, preferably homemade, or 1 can of tomato paste plus 2 cups of water.
Simmer all ingredients together for 20 minutes until flavours are melded and sauce is reduced by 1 half.
To serve
Tacos: Serve on Gluten-free coconut tacos, flour tortillas, or corn tortillas.
Spanish Rice: Or serve over rice
Spaghetti with spicy meat sauce: Or serve over pasta
Serve in side dishes: tomato wedges, guacamole dip, lettuce from the garden, homemade plain yogurt or sour cream, fresh tomato salsa, grated cheese.
4 Homemade Meals from one dish
Tacos from scratch (double or triple the recipe, if you like)
1 lb. of ground meat, lamb, beef, turkey, or your choice of meat (or 2 cups of lentils and 5 cups of H20, cooked until softened,)
2 med onions, diced
2 med garlic cloves minced.
1 tbsp coconut oil for frying
1 quart of tomato sauce or 1 small can of tomato paste + 2 cups of H20
½ tsp each, basil, oregano, cumin, turmeric, coriander (optional),
¼ tsp. cayenne,
Brown together meat, onions, garlic. (Or cook lentils till soft. Separately fry onions in coconut oil. Add to lentils along with crushed garlic.) Add 1 quart of tomato sauce, preferably homemade, or 1 can of tomato paste plus 2 cups of H2O. Simmer together for 20 minutes until flavours are melded and sauce is reduced by 1 half.
To serve
Tacos: Serve on Gluten-free coconut tacos, flour tortillas, or corn tortillas.
Spanish Rice: Or serve over rice
Spaghetti with spicy meat sauce: Or serve over pasta
Serve in side dishes: tomato wedges, guacamole dip, lettuce from the garden, homemade plain yogurt or sour cream, fresh tomato salsa, grated cheese.
On the side:
If you double the recipe of tortillas, take half the tortillas, cut them into strips and fry in 1 inch of coconut oil until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Serve warm, sprinkled with Celtic salt and salsa.
Nachos the next day:
Make extra and serve Nachos for lunch the next day:
Take the remaining tortillas and cut them into 1 inch strips. Fry in 1 inch of coconut oil to crisp like chips. Cook a few at a time in a single layer, turning once. Drain on paper towels. Once chips are all cooked, pile them on a baking sheet. Spoon on the taco meat in tomato sauce. Then top with grated cheese; green and coloured bell peppers, diced; tomato wedges. Broil briefly to melt the cheese. Serve with sides of guacamole, salsa, and sour cream.
Now that you get the idea of making one meal and using it for several different homemade meals, you could try this with other family favourites. Remember that frozen dinners are made to simulate restaurant meals, not home cooking. Your scratched cook meals don’t need to look like restaurant meals, they just need to be nourishing, and tasty.
You can stretch this basic recipe even further
Add red kidney beans or black turtle beans for chilli.
Add mushrooms and green peppers for pizza sauce, and spread it over your favourite pizza crust. Top with mozzarella cheese.
Add ricotta cheese, and mozzarella, and serve over lasagna noodles – you guessed it – lasagna.
You can also make the basic sauce, with meat or lentils, in large quantities when tomatoes are in season, and can it in quart jars in your pressure canner (10lbs pressure; 90 min. for quarts; 75 min. for pints). Then you’ll have it ready to go as you need it – fast food made from scratch for homemade meals, using the wholesome ingredients that your family loves.
Your Turn:
What are your favourite homemade meals, or go-to from scratch foods? Leave a comment, and help others find inspiration for their cooking from scratch efforts.
#30fromscratch friends
To see more cooking from scratch recipes and ideas look for the hashtag #30fromscratch on Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Several of my blogging friends are blogging along with me on this challenge of 30 days of Cooking from Scratch.
Kristi at Let This Mind Be In You – Chinese Sweet Peanut Chicken Recipe
Angela at Untrained Housewife – Homemade Fruit Snacks
Heather at Homestead Hippy – Where to get Jars and Bucket for your Pantry
Be sure to hop over to their blogs and have a look at their creative recipes and tips for scratch cooking. These posts are just the tip of the riches that you’ll find from these experienced homesteaders and scratch cookers.
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