dicky & debbie.com

Planning to do a Once A Month Cooking stint is a little like crystal ball gazing.  You have to know in advance what the future needs of your household will be.

In our household it will work somewhat like this.

28 evening meals consisting of

20 x 2 portions
4 x 5 portions 
4 x 10 portions 

So just for the evening meals I need to plan to cook 140 evening portions.  True that is for a month and true it sounds like a lot but if you break it down into chunk then it is really quite managable.  

For example, the dish that we use to make lasagne could hold 16 portions.  That is over a tenth of the requirement for the month.  Factor in three trays of meatballs and there is another 15 portions.  Two dishes hold a quarter of the months total.  A medium chicken give 4 portions so for the nights that there are 10 or so people, 6 chickens roasted and maybe a leg of lamb or pork and that is taken care of.  Suddenly we are at 70 portions or half the months requirement.  Breakdown a few more chickens for drumsticks, or for Chicken Maryland and we are up to 100.  Chicken breast for stirfry and there is another dozen or so portions.

The key is to maximise the output of your days cooking. If there is a deal on chickens, buy them and break them down yourself.  Breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings, carcass for stock.  You pay less per kilo and with a little effort get a whole lot more variety.

Vegetables.  Not all vegetables keep very well.  This means that you need to return to the supermarket during the month and probably a couple of times.  If you think you are the sort of person who walks in for three items and leaves with twenty then take just a $20 bill.  That way you cant leave with too much more and you will really have to think about those temptations.

An unintended benefit of OAMC is that you will also build up a stock of items that are uneaten in one month and you can carry over.  Make sure that everything you freeze has a date of it and it would be a good idea if at the end of the month you went through your freezer and grouped all the leftovers together and cataloged them for consumption first.

Another idea is to share the work load.  If you have a friend who is in the same boat, have an OAMC day.  Get together and plan the meals your family will have in common.  This helps to share the workload and double the payoff.

Also dont forget the following.

Wear comfortable shoes – bare feet means no support and your back and legs will kill you, especially if you are not used to standing all day.

Take breaks.  You have to treat  it as a job.  Make sure you buy youself something nice for lunch and take a lunch break not in the kitchen. Sit, relax and enjoy the peace.

Get as much of the preperation work done as possible.  Spend the first hour doing the onions, carrots, spices and so on.  Lay them out and if need be label them so that you get a factory line going.  Try and maximise oven time so that it is working as efficiently as possible.  If you have a dish that is pretty easy to prepare but takes a while to cook, for example lasagne, go for that first and prepare the next couple of dishes while waiting for it to finish cooking.

Clean.  Make sure the kitchen is clean and disinfected before you start.  You will need heaps of work space and cooling space.  Make sure the dining room table is free of clutter and ready to recieve any overflow.

Kids.  You really dont want to have to be dealing with kids if at all possible so do your best to unload them.

Friends.  If you can get a friend to help, so much the better.  A job shared is a problem halved.

Recipes.  Print out all the recipes and stick them on the wall out of the way.  That way you can refer to them without touching them or having them sitting under something.

Shopping.  Take a list.  Dont take children.  Buy only what is on that list.  Buy only what you can safely store in your freezer.  Make sure that you clearly identify which ingredients go with which recipe so you can doubl check and tick of on the recipe what you are getting.  You do not want to be going back for ingredients on the day of the big cook off.

Chicken would have to be the most under-rated weapon in the arsenal of the Once A Month Cook.  And inside that chicken is the chicken frame which often gets tossed.  Shame I say to waste what is a natural and even national resource.

If you investigate food and in particular you look at chicken stock, you will see that there is very little chicken involved in the process.  It is chicken flavoured but a lot of the commercial stock, which I do occassionally end up using and they are adequate, are actually based on cereal.  That is how they make them fat free.

I was considering chicken the other day after a shopping experience and I will have to look into this further.  But I bought some good sized chicken breasts, all nicely laid out on a tray.  About $8 for the pair which considering the size and the amount of chicken was about what I expected to pay.  In the frozen section I bought 2 frozen chickens for $8.68 weighing about 1.6 kilo.  This was a much better buy because not only did I get a similar amount of breast meat but I will also get two drumsticks, two thighs and the chicken frame.  I also have a choice, either I butcher the chicken down, roast it whole, roast it in halfs, or roast and freeze cooked.  That will be another article about freezing whole rosated chicken.

If and when I get serious about the whole Once A Month Cooking process, one of the things I will do is look at buying and butchering half a dozen whole chickens and cost out the savings.  A big up front investment but also a big dollarwise return.  It should take maybe three or four minutes to butcher a chicken so maybe half an hours effort.

This article, however, is about the remains of that chicken and how to still wring some magic out of the wasted bones.  The frame is also suitable for freezing for another day until you are ready to make a big batch of stock.

I like to crunch the bones up with a big heavy knife.    Just crack the bones enough so that later on when you are boiling the frame the flavour of the marrow comes through as well as the natural gelatine.

On a heavy baking sheet, roast the bones at 180°C until brown and starting to smell delicious, then pull from the oven.  Add to a stockpot and cover with cold water.  Bring to the boil and then reduce to a medium simmer for around 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat and strain into a large bowl.  Cool, then store in the fridge for a couple of hours. The gelatine will lift the fat to the top which can be skimmed off and discarded.

You may notice in the above instructions that there is no onion, celery, carrots or anything else.  I am not convinced you always need it.  You can add these things if you wish but often you dont need to.  It depends on your application.  Sometimes for a really luxurious vegetable soup I will roast vegetables like the onion and the carrot and maybe some garlic along with the boils and boil them down.  Usually I dont find it necessary to do this.

Back to the stock.  At this point it is reasonably fat free and ready to go.  It will keep for a few days in the fridge or you can freeze it.  Another option is to dehydrate it a litle more, especially if you are short of freezer space.  The main component of the stock now is water and you can intensify the flavour and reduce the volume by gently simmering the stock down and down.  I might reduce the volume to a quarter of its original and willthen rechill and prepare it for freezing by bagging it into 1 cup measurements and writing on the bag, for 1 litre stocks add 3 cups water.

As a rule of thumb, one chicken should make about 1 to 1.5 litres of stock.  That is a great base for soups, and soups are a great way to increase vegetable intake in kids and they are super easy to make and last for a week in the fridge.

OAMC, Once a month cooking, freezer feeding, frozen assest, whatever you choose to call it, the concept is taking root as a way to make life easier.

The Industrial Revolution led to the development of Therbligs, specialisation, mass production, economies of scale, and also some really poor quality but cheap food.  The last five years have seen a real development in the production of food – a great example is the Weight Watchers range of prepared meals, low in points but still high in salt.  Better than most of the slop that is frozen after having being dumped in plastic trays but only just. 

The concept has been around for a while and really, it is just the application of mass production to an everyday home based activity; cooking dinner.  The problem with cooking a meal is that it needs to be done 365 days a year.  For those who cook day in and day out, anything cooked by someone else is fantastic and tastes great. 

So with that in mind, I thought I would share some of the OAMC knowledge I have garnered.

Equipment.  Buy quality.  Dont buy the cheapest and often dont buy the most expensive.  Spend the money on items that are designed to last.  For example, the Kenwood FP920 food processor comes with a blender attatchment, a small footprint, and a 5 year motor warranty.  Also, but the extended warranty for as long as you can.  If you are going to thrash an item and put it through its paces, get the warranty and get the piece of mind.

Knives.  Buy quality.  Go to a shop that specialises in knives and try them.  Handle them, are they heavy, are they light, do they feel balanced.  I have small hands so I like a lighter knife than most men so I have settled on Global.  

Sharpener.  Get one and learn how to use it.  $200 for a knife over 20 years is $10 a year, without a good sharpener or steel, cut the lifespan to maybe 1 to 2 years.

Pots.  Cheap pots are not a good idea.  They are cheap for a reason.  Look for something that is solid, sturdy, has internal fill marks for easy measuring, heatproof handles and knobs and in sizes from 1- 5 litres.

Stockpots.  Two stockpots of the 6-7 litre size are a good idea.  One for stock, one for soups.
Vacuum sealers.  Spend the money and get the rewards.  A bag sealer removes all the air possible which extended the freezer life of your meals.  Heavy duty bags may cost more but they stack better, tend to split less, and contain the defrosting juices.  They also snugly seal around the food, being it lasagne or meatballs.

Frypan.  A good large frypan is essential.  Think about the amount of food you will be putting in to it.  Remember it is a frypan not s stewpot.

Oven dishes and trays.  Spend the time to hunt down a good set of oven trays and casserole/lasagne dishes.  Cut out a piece of cardboard as large as the oven tray that comes with your oven.  Cut out another that would fit neatly between the side racks of your oven.  A third to measure the height and you are equiped to go shopiing for the most economical dishes that fit in your oven.

Scales.  I like digital with a back lit display such as those from Breville in their Ikon range, BSK500 and this one also has a thermometer that goes up to 150°C.

Magnetic kitchen timers.  Get a few of these and stick them to the fridge and use them to time different dishes cooking time.

Friends.  They probably have the same need so get them along to join your party and do have the work.
The next big step is to plan.  Failing to plan is planning to fail.  I will write about this more in another article but this is a crucial step.  When you are cooking in mass, you need to plan the order that you are going to do things.  Longer cooking items should be done first.  Ingredients common to multiple dishes should be prepared early.  You need to know what you are cooking, what you are shopping for, what you are preparing in what order.  

A little bit of thought will see you through one day of pain for many days of fuss free feeding.