Semi-finished products for a month for a family. How to easily and effectively save on products - tips on proper purchasing. Freezing, meat products

This is not an advertisement for factory-made frozen semi-finished products, not at all. We made our own preparations, on a free day and to the taste of family members, so that on weekdays all that was left was to bring the dish to an edible state, add a side dish and salad.

Two rules for thrifty housewives

1. Food shopping rule- we buy what we need, and not what they want to sell us:

a) We make a list of products and buy strictly according to the list.

b) We monitor nearby supermarkets on the Internet for ongoing promotions on products that interest us.

c) We don’t fall for all sorts of “temptations”, such as “buy two for the price of three and get the third for free.”

d) We go grocery shopping, having thoroughly refreshed ourselves at home.

e) We choose slowly, compare prices and check the expiration date.

f) We make basic purchases once a week, according to the prepared menu, and during the week we buy only bread and dairy products.

g) We do not buy semi-finished products.

2. To eat economically, you need to cook yourself, creating a menu.

Since wasting money on food is directly proportional to the number of visits to supermarkets and markets, we can reduce it to a minimum

To do this, we’ll choose a time (preferably right after payday), draw up a menu for the week (month) and purchase all the basic products once.

Advice: If we purchase products in advance, some of them need to be quickly processed into semi-finished products. It is better to do this on Saturday (and devote the whole day to family on Sunday).

It is cooked and frozen semi-finished products that will allow you to no longer spend money on groceries and will reduce the time for preparing meals on weekdays.

Meat dishes

If you want to save money and eat meat, you need to spend it sparingly. From the same piece of meat, you can fry chops and eat them at one time, or you can, as we suggest, grind it into minced meat.

Homemade liver is very profitable. It is easy to prepare, inexpensive and, as needed, you can use it for pies, pancakes, dumplings or navy-style pasta.

Our advice: instead of the usual kilogram of meat for minced meat, take two, two and a half kilograms. You will spend the same time preparing minced meat for cutlets, but will provide yourself and your family with food for a month. And it is not at all necessary to cook only cutlets from minced meat. You can make cutlets and meatballs for variety, goulash, meatballs,beef stroganoff (thin strips) etc...

I won’t say a special word about dumplings, khinkali and manti - this is already clear to everyone.

I place the blanks on cutting boards. I have a lot of them specifically for freezing semi-finished products. I always put a plastic bag on the board so that the pieces can be easily removed after freezing.All this must be placed separately either in the refrigerator or in the freezer. Remove and cook as needed.

Goulash

Cut the meat into 3x3 cm pieces and generously pepper it. Fry and cool, place in a container. You will add salt directly when preparing dinner.

Chops prepared for a couple of days

Making this semi-finished product is quite easy: take a piece of tenderloin or neck (pork, veal, lamb), cut into portions, beat and place in the marinade. The marinade is also done quickly: add 1 tsp into boiling water (1 liter). salt, 0.5 tsp. sugar, 1 tbsp. dry white wine or a weak solution of vinegar, 2-3 cloves, 3 peas of allspice. Place the chopped pieces of meat into the cooled marinade.

Air balls

Prepare the minced meat: meat, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, eggs beaten with a mixer. We knock it down well so that it becomes plastic. With wet hands we form round flat balls and place them on a stand. Then there are two options: either keep it in the refrigerator and use (fry, stew) for a maximum of 2 days, or put it in the freezer.

You can also make meatballs for soup - for future use.

Well, with cutlets things are even simpler:
We take the frozen cutlets out of the freezer.
Place in a frying pan preheated with oil and fry on both sides, as we always do.

Add a teaspoon of water to the pan and, closing the lid, let the cutlets steam for no more than one minute, turning off the gas. All. Our cutlets are ready. The time spent is no more than 10 - 15 minutes. We prepare the side dish and the second course is ready for dinner.

Therefore, if you want to save money, listen to my tips and your own “voice of reason,” include dishes using minced meat or liver in your menu.

Also with Use meat boiled in broth for salads, casseroles, or, like liver, for filling dumplings, pies, and pancakes.

The semi-finished products you have prepared are also good because if they are not used, they will be perfectly preserved until the next big purchase of food.

First meal

It is better, of course, to prepare broths in advance in a large saucepanYou can make stock of broths for first courses. Boil the chicken or meat (we boil the meat for broths, and also freeze it fresh). Boil rich broths, 5-6 liters in a large saucepan, and divide the finished broth into 5 servings and freeze. As needed, take one portion, defrost and add the required amount of water. Do the same with the next portion of preparations for the first courses when these run out.

"Frying" for first courses: I usually also peel 2-3 carrots and onions and leave them in bags in the refrigerator. Then in the evening, preparing the “frying” for the soup takes at most 10 minutes, in fact, the frying of the vegetables itself.

I also boil mushrooms and freeze them especially for soups. This is also a semi-finished product. Alas, this trick doesn’t work with potatoes.

Side dishes for the second course

A make-ahead option for side dishes is rice. Prepare fluffy rice, cool it, and transfer it to a container with a lid. Instead of rice, you can also do it with other porridge - buckwheat, pearl barley.

Cook it more and complement it with goulash or chop. However, I don’t do this - any porridge, except corn, does not take long to cook, requires practically no expense from the housewife, and is delicious fresh.

But you can come up with the following menu: on Monday you have buckwheat as a side dish, but on Tuesday it would be nice to have chops with cabbage. And please! If on Saturday you finely chopped the cabbage, topped it with grated carrots, peppercorns, grated it with salt and sugar (just a little) and put it in a jar, then by Tuesday evening you quickly take the jar of cabbage out of the refrigerator and fry it in vegetable oil. , add spices to taste - after 7 minutes the side dish for the chops is ready.

Boiled ones are also perfect for side dishes.frozen vegetables. Well, don’t forget about the preparations from the fall either: they will diversify your menu.You can also stock up on boiled beets, carrots and turnips. Then on Wednesday evening you can have a fabulous salad of boiled vegetables to go with the meatballs.

Rolls with fillings

Cook the meat as you would for chops. You just need to beat him back more strictly. Salt and pepper the pieces. Prepare the filling: mushrooms with onions, cheese, boiled egg and herbs, thin strips of fried bacon with walnuts and garlic. Place the filling on the meat and roll it into a roll. Then you can fry and stew the rolls, or you can put them in the freezer.

Pancakes

Bake some pancakes. You can make pancakes from them, with the same minced boiled meat or cottage cheese or something else, or you can just freeze them in a stack, and then defrost them in the microwave and serve them with sour cream or jam.

When I cook stuffed pancakes, I fry the pancakes on one side (this will save time), then I put the filling on it, wrap the pancakes in an envelope and put them away for freezing. The filling for pancakes can be any:

Boiled meat from broth, twisted in a meat grinder, with overcooked onions;

Cottage cheese with or without raisins;

Boiled rice with boiled eggs;

Mushroom mince, etc.

Fish

I buy big fish - pollock, salmon, pink salmon, halibut, cod. I clean, hustle, and cut into portions. And I freeze these pieces separately. And then I take it out as needed. If you fry, in the morning I put it from the freezer to the refrigerator, by the evening it defrosted, 10 minutes in a frying pan, and it’s ready. And if you stew or bake in the oven, take out the frozen pieces, season them, put them in foil or a casserole, and leave for 30-40 minutes.

Here are a few more options: cut up pieces for frying, ground minced meat for delicacy cutlets, or completely frozen cleaned small fish.

If the product allows and there are plans for fish soup, then I always put the fish broth kit in a separate bag. It cooks quickly and offers many options for soups.

Dessert

With desserts things are not so simple. If you have time on your day off (and your family loves it), then bake more cookies, or cupcakes, or gingerbread. You won’t be able to stock up on pies: a rare pie is truly delicious on the 2-3rd day of life. But the jams, frozen berries and fruits we have prepared will decorate cottage cheese, porridge, and hot toast.

I often use plastic containers for storage. They are refrigerator/freezer friendly and have tight lids. My friend prefers plastic bags and minimal marinade. Try it, choose!!!

Well, you worked a little on Saturday, but during the week with this set of semi-finished products you will quickly prepare food for your family. And at the same time, you won’t spend a lot of time standing at the stove.

I have given several examples of preparation home semi-finished products. You may have your own options that save you time, write about them in the comments. Young and novice housewives will most likely find these tips very useful.

This is not an advertisement for factory-made frozen semi-finished products, not at all. We made our own preparations, on a free day and to the taste of family members, so that on weekdays all that was left was to bring the dish to an edible state, add a side dish and salad.

Two rules for thrifty housewives

1. Food shopping rule- we buy what we need, and not what they want to sell us:

a) We make a list of products and buy strictly according to the list.

b) We monitor nearby supermarkets on the Internet for ongoing promotions on products that interest us.

c) We don’t fall for all sorts of “temptations”, such as “buy two for the price of three and get the third for free.”

d) We go grocery shopping, having thoroughly refreshed ourselves at home.

e) We choose slowly, compare prices and check the expiration date.

f) We make basic purchases once a week, according to the prepared menu, and during the week we buy only bread and dairy products.

g) We do not buy semi-finished products.

2. To eat economically, you need to cook yourself, creating a menu.

Since wasting money on food is directly proportional to the number of visits to supermarkets and markets, we can reduce it to a minimum

To do this, we’ll choose a time (preferably right after payday), draw up a menu for the week (month) and purchase all the basic products once.

Advice: If we purchase products in advance, some of them need to be quickly processed into semi-finished products. It is better to do this on Saturday (and devote the whole day to family on Sunday).

It is cooked and frozen semi-finished products that will allow you to no longer spend money on groceries and will reduce the time for preparing meals on weekdays.

Meat dishes

If you want to save money and eat meat, you need to spend it sparingly. From the same piece of meat, you can fry chops and eat them at one time, or you can, as we suggest, grind it into minced meat.

Homemade liver is very profitable. It is easy to prepare, inexpensive and, as needed, you can use it for pies, pancakes, dumplings or navy-style pasta.

Our advice: instead of the usual kilogram of meat for minced meat, take two, two and a half kilograms. You will spend the same time preparing minced meat for cutlets, but will provide yourself and your family with food for a month. And it is not at all necessary to cook only cutlets from minced meat. You can make cutlets and meatballs for variety, goulash, meatballs,beef stroganoff (thin strips) etc...

I won’t say a special word about dumplings, khinkali and manti - this is already clear to everyone.

I place the blanks on cutting boards. I have a lot of them specifically for freezing semi-finished products. I always put a plastic bag on the board so that the pieces can be easily removed after freezing.All this must be placed separately either in the refrigerator or in the freezer. Remove and cook as needed.

Goulash

Cut the meat into 3x3 cm pieces and generously pepper it. Fry and cool, place in a container. You will add salt directly when preparing dinner.

Chops prepared for a couple of days

Making this semi-finished product is quite easy: take a piece of tenderloin or neck (pork, veal, lamb), cut into portions, beat and place in the marinade. The marinade is also done quickly: add 1 tsp into boiling water (1 liter). salt, 0.5 tsp. sugar, 1 tbsp. dry white wine or a weak solution of vinegar, 2-3 cloves, 3 peas of allspice. Place the chopped pieces of meat into the cooled marinade.

Air balls

Prepare the minced meat: meat, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, eggs beaten with a mixer. We knock it down well so that it becomes plastic. With wet hands we form round flat balls and place them on a stand. Then there are two options: either keep it in the refrigerator and use (fry, stew) for a maximum of 2 days, or put it in the freezer.

You can also make meatballs for soup - for future use.

Well, with cutlets things are even simpler:
We take the frozen cutlets out of the freezer.
Place in a frying pan preheated with oil and fry on both sides, as we always do.

Add a teaspoon of water to the pan and, closing the lid, let the cutlets steam for no more than one minute, turning off the gas. All. Our cutlets are ready. The time spent is no more than 10 - 15 minutes. We prepare the side dish and the second course is ready for dinner.

Therefore, if you want to save money, listen to my tips and your own “voice of reason,” include dishes using minced meat or liver in your menu.

Also with Use meat boiled in broth for salads, casseroles, or, like liver, for filling dumplings, pies, and pancakes.

The semi-finished products you have prepared are also good because if they are not used, they will be perfectly preserved until the next big purchase of food.

First meal

It is better, of course, to prepare broths in advance in a large saucepanYou can make stock of broths for first courses. Boil the chicken or meat (we boil the meat for broths, and also freeze it fresh). Boil rich broths, 5-6 liters in a large saucepan, and divide the finished broth into 5 servings and freeze. As needed, take one portion, defrost and add the required amount of water. Do the same with the next portion of preparations for the first courses when these run out.

"Frying" for first courses: I usually also peel 2-3 carrots and onions and leave them in bags in the refrigerator. Then in the evening, preparing the “frying” for the soup takes at most 10 minutes, in fact, the frying of the vegetables itself.

I also boil mushrooms and freeze them especially for soups. This is also a semi-finished product. Alas, this trick doesn’t work with potatoes.

Side dishes for the second course

A make-ahead option for side dishes is rice. Prepare fluffy rice, cool it, and transfer it to a container with a lid. Instead of rice, you can also do it with other porridge - buckwheat, pearl barley.

Cook it more and complement it with goulash or chop. However, I don’t do this - any porridge, except corn, does not take long to cook, requires practically no expense from the housewife, and is delicious fresh.

But you can come up with the following menu: on Monday you have buckwheat as a side dish, but on Tuesday it would be nice to have chops with cabbage. And please! If on Saturday you finely chopped the cabbage, topped it with grated carrots, peppercorns, grated it with salt and sugar (just a little) and put it in a jar, then by Tuesday evening you quickly take the jar of cabbage out of the refrigerator and fry it in vegetable oil. , add spices to taste - after 7 minutes the side dish for the chops is ready.

Boiled ones are also perfect for side dishes.frozen vegetables. Well, don’t forget about the preparations from the fall either: they will diversify your menu.You can also stock up on boiled beets, carrots and turnips. Then on Wednesday evening you can have a fabulous salad of boiled vegetables to go with the meatballs.

Rolls with fillings

Cook the meat as you would for chops. You just need to beat him back more strictly. Salt and pepper the pieces. Prepare the filling: mushrooms with onions, cheese, boiled egg and herbs, thin strips of fried bacon with walnuts and garlic. Place the filling on the meat and roll it into a roll. Then you can fry and stew the rolls, or you can put them in the freezer.

Pancakes

Bake some pancakes. You can make pancakes from them, with the same minced boiled meat or cottage cheese or something else, or you can just freeze them in a stack, and then defrost them in the microwave and serve them with sour cream or jam.

When I cook stuffed pancakes, I fry the pancakes on one side (this will save time), then I put the filling on it, wrap the pancakes in an envelope and put them away for freezing. The filling for pancakes can be any:

Boiled meat from broth, twisted in a meat grinder, with overcooked onions;

Cottage cheese with or without raisins;

Boiled rice with boiled eggs;

Mushroom mince, etc.

Fish

I buy big fish - pollock, salmon, pink salmon, halibut, cod. I clean, hustle, and cut into portions. And I freeze these pieces separately. And then I take it out as needed. If you fry, in the morning I put it from the freezer to the refrigerator, by the evening it defrosted, 10 minutes in a frying pan, and it’s ready. And if you stew or bake in the oven, take out the frozen pieces, season them, put them in foil or a casserole, and leave for 30-40 minutes.

Here are a few more options: cut up pieces for frying, ground minced meat for delicacy cutlets, or completely frozen cleaned small fish.

If the product allows and there are plans for fish soup, then I always put the fish broth kit in a separate bag. It cooks quickly and offers many options for soups.

Dessert

With desserts things are not so simple. If you have time on your day off (and your family loves it), then bake more cookies, or cupcakes, or gingerbread. You won’t be able to stock up on pies: a rare pie is truly delicious on the 2-3rd day of life. But the jams, frozen berries and fruits we have prepared will decorate cottage cheese, porridge, and hot toast.

I often use plastic containers for storage. They are refrigerator/freezer friendly and have tight lids. My friend prefers plastic bags and minimal marinade. Try it, choose!!!

Well, you worked a little on Saturday, but during the week with this set of semi-finished products you will quickly prepare food for your family. And at the same time, you won’t spend a lot of time standing at the stove.

I have given several examples of preparation home semi-finished products. You may have your own options that save you time, write about them in the comments. Young and novice housewives will most likely find these tips very useful.

Another way to streamline your cooking, and at the same time save a lot of money, is to prepare semi-finished chicken products yourself. Ready-made semi-finished products are very expensive, breast 250-300 rubles, legs from 150 and even soup sets, and essentially carcasses from cutting - from 80 rubles/kg and more. A whole carcass costs about 110-120 rubles, but is often sold on special offer. When there are discounts on chickens, I buy several pieces at once and “dismember them”.

Yesterday I bought 2 promotional chickens for 93 rubles/kg. The producer "Prioskolye" grows them at exactly 1.7 kg, i.e. 3.4 kg in total.

First of all, I trim off the excess fat and “butt” and throw it away. In principle, if someone likes cracklings, you can probably use chicken fat. I advocate proper nutrition (PN), and chicken becomes “correct” only after removing all the fat and skin.

Do this manipulation on both sides.

To cut off the legs beautifully and simply, you need to break them out of the hip joints. To do this, place the chicken in front of you and simultaneously break the legs back outwards by both thighs. From the front side, the border of the leg and the joint will be immediately visible.

Cut off the legs.

It is convenient to break the resulting frame in half outward. Then trim the meat from the sides.
Cut off the wings.

I use fillets to make gravy, fritters, chops and rolls. Legs - I just fry them for dinner, or use them for pilaf. And I make soups from the skeletons and wings.

For compact storage, the wings can be tucked inside the chicken's chest to create a compact briquette with a soup set.

I put them in bags, sign them so that later it will be easier to understand what’s inside and how long it’s been in the freezer and freeze them.

As a result, from two chickens I cut:
1 kg of legs, legs only. Many producers now add a backbone to their hams. The price of hams is 160-170 rubles/kg. 900 grams of chicken fillet without skin at a price of 250-300 rubles/kg. And almost one and a half kilograms of bones for soups: the skeletons, on which were the remains of white meat from the breast and red meat from the legs, plus wings at a price of 75-100 rubles/kg. I threw out about 150 grams of skins and butts.

We calculate: 160 rubles for ham + 250 rubles for fillet + 120 rubles for soup = 530 rubles

I paid 316 rubles for two birds. After I cut them, I got semi-finished products worth 530 rubles. The savings are obvious. In addition, without any hassle or additional purchases, I can prepare chicken broth 2-3 times, which is quite rich and meaty, i.e. each for 2-3 days, 2 dinners of legs and 3-4 dinners of breasts. For a family of 4 people.

Dear readers! The rhythm of life of a modern woman forces us to increasingly use semi-finished products. But when I come to the supermarket or the grocery store closest to home, I look with alarm at the store-bought convenience foods. I am always confused by the thought of what they are made from... Sometimes, having bought something from semi-finished products in order to quickly prepare something for the family, you are once again convinced of how tasteless and inedible they can be.

Homemade semi-finished products - benefits

Therefore, I decided for myself that it is quite possible to prepare these same semi-finished products at home. But I am sure that the food prepared from my semi-finished products will not affect the health of my family in any way. But can we save time on meal prep during the week? Quite. And for this you only need to allocate 2-3 hours on Saturday.

Knowing the culinary preferences of your family members and having prepared semi-finished products at home, you will not have to worry about lunch, dinner or the sudden arrival of guests in the future.
You yourself will understand in the very first week, firstly, how much free time you will save on working days, and secondly, you can involve children in the process of preparing semi-finished products - joint work raises children. And your spouse will be glad that you are together and, probably, you will have topics for communication during the work process. Let everyone help you as much as possible, in whatever way they can.

But the most important thing is that later, after a tiring day at work, you will have enough time to relax, be with your family or do what you love. Well, let's get started?

What you need for homemade semi-finished products

What is needed first for this? First of all, of course, you need to prepare food. Groceries can be purchased gradually throughout the week so that by Saturday you are ready. By following a few rules, you can easily provide your family with all the necessary semi-finished products for a whole week.

In most cases, prepared homemade semi-finished products must be frozen. In a frozen state, products will last much longer, and will not lose their nutritional and beneficial properties. This means that freezing equipment is needed for freezing. In the absence of such, semi-finished products can be frozen in the cold, but only if you have an enclosed cold room, such as a veranda or cellar.

From my own experience, I can say that modern freezers are very convenient and simply necessary in modern life, because you can freeze literally everything in them: mushrooms, berries, most vegetables, and, of course, homemade semi-finished products you have prepared. How to properly freeze food, read

Semi-finished meat products

Despite the fact that nutritionists and endocrinologists, not a single family can do without meat.

Cooking broth

For the broth we buy meat with bones. It is better to cook the broth in a large saucepan with a capacity of 4-5 liters. After the meat is well cooked, we separate it from the bones. Our broth will be used for soup, and we can grind the boiled meat through a meat grinder and then use it to fill pancakes or make navy-style pasta.

You can add the broth right away and then just heat up the required amount of soup. But you can do it differently. We pour out a little of the total amount of broth and season it. In this case, you will have a different soup every day. It is recommended to consume the soup daily, as the broth contains extractive substances that have a beneficial effect on digestion. Find out about the benefits of soups.

Making minced meat

You can make quite a lot of dishes from minced meat: dumplings, pasties, meatballs, meatballs, cutlets, zrazy, etc. And freeze it all in the freezer. If necessary, some of the above is taken out of the freezer as needed and then put into culinary processing.

Dumplings, of course, are worth making on Saturday. We then transfer the frozen dumplings into plastic bags and then it will take very little time to cook them. Before freezing, cutlets and meatballs should not be rolled in breading, this must be done immediately before frying.

But I like to do it this way: I put the cooked minced meat in small portions in plastic bags and put them in the freezer. In the morning, before leaving for work, I take the minced meat out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator: it will gradually defrost during the day. In the evening after work, all I have to do is, for example, season the minced meat with a bun soaked in milk and fry the cutlets. Or make pasta sauce.

Semi-finished fish products

Fresh frozen fish does not require any special preparation. It is enough to peel and gut it, cut it into portions, put it in a container and put it in the refrigerator for storage. When needed, all you have to do is take it out, defrost it, and then fry it.

You can make minced fish for cutlets. In the article “” you can find out how these cutlets are prepared; using the same principle, you can prepare cutlets from any other fish.

Vegetable semi-finished products

It is better to boil vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beets) in their skins. Carrots and beets take much longer to cook, so they can be cooked in the microwave. Read how to do this in the article “”. Store boiled and cooled vegetables in a container with a tightly closed lid in the refrigerator.

Raw vegetables (onions, carrots) can also be prepared in advance. Peel them Place individually in plastic bags or containers and store on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Or you can immediately fry them and store them in a glass jar with a lid, and then season the soup with them as needed.

Boil eggs along with potatoes. Eggs may be useful for salads, but try to store them in the refrigerator for no more than 3 - 4 days. Please note that their shells are porous and eggs, especially boiled ones, absorb other odors well. Therefore, keep them away from fish and vegetables such as onions or garlic.

Buy enough vegetables and herbs for salads. You can wash them immediately, wipe them with a clean, dry towel, put them in a plastic bag and store them in the vegetable compartment. Salads made from raw vegetables are always healthy. They contain a large amount of fiber and improve intestinal motility.

Pancakes

Bake some pancakes. You can make pancakes from them, with the same minced boiled meat or cottage cheese or something else, or you can just freeze them in a stack, and then defrost them in the microwave and serve them with sour cream or jam.

When I cook stuffed pancakes, I fry the pancakes on one side (this will save time), then I put the filling on it, wrap the pancakes in an envelope and put them away for freezing. The filling for pancakes can be any:

• boiled meat from broth, twisted in a meat grinder, with overcooked onions;
• cottage cheese with or without raisins;
• boiled rice with boiled eggs;
• minced mushrooms, etc.

Side dishes for the second course

A make-ahead option for side dishes is rice. Prepare fluffy rice, cool it, and transfer it to a container with a lid. Instead of rice, you can also do it with buckwheat and pearl barley.

Boiled “frozen” vegetables are also perfect for side dishes. Well, don’t forget about the preparations from the fall either: they will diversify your menu.

Well, you worked a little on Saturday, but during the week with this set of semi-finished products you will quickly prepare food for your family. And at the same time, you won’t spend a lot of time standing at the stove.

I have given several examples of preparing homemade semi-finished products. You may have your own options for semi-finished products that save you time, write about them in the comments. Young and novice housewives will most likely find these tips very useful.

Stuffed cabbage rolls

And cabbage rolls also help me out a lot. I have been preparing them since the fall. When I start fermenting cabbage, I remove the top leaves from the heads of cabbage; they come off very easily even without heat treatment. When I undress with sauerkraut, I scald the removed leaves in boiling water or put them in the microwave, in which after 5-10 minutes (depending on the power of the microwave) they become soft. I wrap the minced meat prepared in advance in cabbage leaves and freeze.

As needed, I take out frozen cabbage rolls and then simmer them in sour cream sauce. There is a separate article on my blog and in this video there is another recipe for making cabbage rolls.

According to a Rosstat study, Russian women work on average seven hours a day, and then devote more than three more to home. On weekdays. On weekends, on average, no less is devoted to housework than to work on weekdays. Sad statistics...

How did we do this? I will not dwell on all aspects of women’s domestic work; I will only talk about the kitchen. Quite quickly, through trial and error, we learned to do the only thing that serves as a compromise between lack of time, evening fatigue and the desire to feed the family a fresh dinner and quickly. These are semi-finished products.

Stop, don't close the page! This is not an advertisement for factory-made frozen cutlets, not at all. We made our own preparations ourselves, on a free day and to the taste of family members. On weekdays, all that remained was to bring the dish to an edible state, add a side dish and salad.

First meal

It is better, of course, to cook broths in advance in a large saucepan. I use a pressure cooker, for example. After all, when preparing first courses, cooking the broth is the longest part of the work. Usually I also peel 2-3 carrots and onions and leave them in bags in the refrigerator. Then in the evening, preparing the soup takes about 20 minutes.

I also boil mushrooms and freeze them especially for soups. This is also a semi-finished product. Alas, this trick doesn’t work with potatoes.

Meat dishes

I won’t say a special word about dumplings, khinkali and manti - this is already clear to everyone. The preparations can be made in the simplest ways. For future use, cut the meat into beef stroganoff (thin strips), goulash (3x3 pieces), minced meat. Place all this separately in either the refrigerator or freezer. Remove and cook as needed.

Goulash

Cut the meat into 3x3 cm pieces and generously pepper it. Fry and cool, place in a container. You will add salt directly when preparing dinner.

Chops prepared for 2 days

Making this semi-finished product is quite easy: take a piece of tenderloin or neck (pork, veal, lamb), cut into portions, beat and place in the marinade. The marinade is also done quickly: add 1 tsp into boiling water (1 liter). salt, 0.5 tsp. sugar, 1 tbsp. dry white wine or a weak solution of vinegar, 2-3 cloves, 3 peas of allspice. Place the chopped pieces of meat into the cooled marinade.

I often use plastic containers. They are easy to store in the refrigerator and have tight lids. My friend prefers a plastic bag and minimal marinade. Try it.

Air balls

Prepare the minced meat: meat, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, eggs beaten with a mixer. We knock it down well so that it becomes plastic. With wet hands we form round flat balls and place them on a stand. Then there are two options: either keep it in the refrigerator and use (fry, stew) for a maximum of 2 days, or put it in the freezer.

You can also make meatballs for soup - for future use.

Rolls with fillings

Cook the meat as you would for chops. You just need to beat him back more strictly. Salt and pepper the pieces. Prepare the filling: mushrooms with onions, cheese, boiled egg and herbs, thin strips of fried bacon with walnuts and garlic. Place the filling on the meat and roll it into a roll. Then you can fry and stew the rolls, or you can put them in the freezer.

Fish

Of course, we also treat fish in our own way. If I come across a nice trout, or a great piece of salmon, the first thing I do is separate the fish into “eat now” and “for later.” Eat now - whatever you want.

But “for later” there are only a few options: cut up pieces for frying, ground minced meat for delicacy cutlets, or completely frozen cleaned small fish.

If the product allows and there are plans for fish soup, then I always put the fish broth kit in a separate bag. It cooks quickly and offers many options for soups.

Side dishes and salads

Oddly enough, but something can be prepared for side dishes. First of all, of course, porridge - buckwheat, for example. Cook it more and complement it with goulash or chop. However, I don’t do this - any porridge, except corn, does not take long to cook, requires virtually no expense from the housewife, and is delicious fresh.

But you can come up with the following menu: on Monday you have buckwheat as a side dish, but on Tuesday it would be nice to have chops with cabbage. And please! If on Saturday you finely chopped the cabbage, topped it with grated carrots, peppercorns, grated it with salt and sugar (just a little) and put it in a jar, then by Tuesday evening you quickly take the jar of cabbage out of the refrigerator and fry it in vegetable oil. , add spices to taste - after 7 minutes the side dish for the chops is ready.

You can also stock up on boiled beets, carrots and turnips. Then on Wednesday evening you can have a fabulous salad of boiled vegetables to go with the meatballs.

Dessert

With desserts things are not so simple. If you have time on your day off (and your family loves it), then bake more cookies, or cupcakes, or gingerbread. You won’t be able to stock up on pies: a rare pie is truly delicious on the 2-3rd day of life. But the jams, frozen berries and fruits we have prepared will decorate cottage cheese, porridge, and hot toast.