Strategies for quick, healthy meals when getting home from work

I hear people tell me that they are too tired, or can not be bothered to cook after a long busy day at work and so that is why they use ready meals or pick up a take away.  Even one take away or meal out a week could make a big dent in a family food budget.  I could never afford to do either, being a single parent, and to be honest, I am glad now as it meant that my children ate healthy meals.  I would often work 10 or 12 hours shifts and so I had to be organised.   I used these strategies to make sure that there was always a healthy meal that I could make quickly that we could eat as a family, or that the children could place in the oven or microwave when they got home from school.

Our strategies for making quick meals

Batch cooking on my day off, at least one for the fridge and one for the freezer .  This would be things like lasagne, pasties, cottage pies, chilli, pasta bake, curries etc.  I would take the item out of the freezer the night before and place it in the fridge.  They would then just need to be warmed up.  Some times I would make a whole ready meal, for example, curry and rice, or cottage pie with lots of vegetables in, which could then easily be microwaved.

1. Make dump bags of meals like sweet and sour pork, or goulash, and taking them out of the freezer the night before dumping them in the slow cooker in the morning before I set off for work. They would then be ready when we got home.
2. Chopping and preparing the vegetables and placing in the fridge the night before and then making things like a quick stir fry when I got home. I would make sauces in advance and store them in ice cube trays to flavour the stir fry.  I might even buy a pack of ready sliced vegetables if they were discounted on a yellow sticker.
3. Food prepping at the weekend or a day off eg. making pastry, mashing potato, cooking rice, making yoghurt, making burgers, ratatouille, making pizza, cooking pasta, making puddings.  As my children got older this made it easier for them to put the meal together and put it in the oven in time for me to get home.  Some things would just need to be warmed up as part of a meal, or we could make a quick meal from them eg.  I made a savoury rice dish by warming up the rice and cooking it with spices, bits of chopped vegetables and bits of cooked pulled meat, or making it as a side dish to have with cooked meat.  It was ready in 10 minutes.
4. I had a meal plan that involved easy put together quick meals for when I knew that I would be home late eg, burgers, fajitas, bolognaise from the slow cooker, baked potatoes cooked in the microwave (I would use an air fryer now) with left over chilli or bolognaise or with cheese and beans.  Sometimes I would do double cooked baked potatoes and scoop out and mix the potato with a filling. Everything would be a meal that  could be ready in about 15 minutes as I found that I wanted to start snacking if it took any longer.
5. In the summer I would make a salad box the night before or before work so that things like hard boiled eggs or pulled chicken from another meal could be sliced into it for a meal in 5 minutes.  Alternatively I could just grill some meat to have with it.  I was more likely to eat salad if it had been made previously
6. I used ingredients like cous cous or wholemeal noodles that take minutes to cook. I found them great as a quick carbohydrates for a meal.
7. Have a pickie meal using things out of the fridge like hummus with warm flat breads or pitta breads with salad, crackers, cheese, or even wedges or chips.  This helped use up fridge gravel and saved money (as did a lot of my meals like the pauper’s stew)
8. Have left overs on toast.  We would have things like warmed up bolognaise on toast with cheese grated on top because we were too hungry to wait for the pasta to cook.  Some times, if we weren’t really hungry, it might be something simple on toast like  hummus or scrabbled eggs and reheated cooked vegetables.
9. Eat things in wraps.  We like chicken strips with salad, or spicy tomato vegetables, or bacon, beans and cheese.  We have even put left over  curry and then air fried them until they were crispy and served with salad or vegetables.
10. Have lots of part cooked home grown vegetables in the freezer (just a bit more than blanched) which could be cooked or microwaved and ready quickly (sometimes I took them out the night before or cooked them from frozen).  Frozen vegetables from the supermarket would be a good alternative.
11. Make my own part cooked oven chips that were kept in the freezer but that could easily be thrown into the oven by the children (or air fryer now) and would make a quick meal with fried eggs and beans, sausages and beans, pizza, or some grilled meat with a salad. Frozen chips from the supermarket could be an alternative, or wedges, potato waffles.  My youngest like smiley faces.
12. Leave ready prepared but uncooked meals in the fridge that the children could just put in the oven like pizza or pasta bake.

Although I no longer work, we still use a lot of these strategies as it saves time, effort, and fuel to cook.  There are always things in the fridge from my meal plan that I can quickly put together so that we do have something healthy to eat, and don’t grab something unhealthy or want a take away. A lot of these ingredients are flexible and can make a variety of meals if we do not feel like what is on the meal plan,

These are quick meals that we eat regularly.

Fajitas (these take only 15 mins cooked from scratch, and minutes if the filling is already cooked).

Pizza done on pitta bread, French sticks or wraps, with salad

Savoury rice meal with spices, meat and vegetables in

Paupers stew or ratatouille  cooked in the slow cooker and customised with different cultural spices and herbs.  Left overs are then placed in the fridge.  To this we will take portions and add things like sliced sausages, fish, or meat for different meals, or use as a side dish.

Filled wraps.  We have even put left over chips in with something healthy in the wrap to make it more filling.

Burgers in buns with lots of salad

Cooked pasta with what ever has been cooked in the slow cooker,  or a quick cheese sauce with cooked ham in, or made it into macaroni cheese

Toasties or paninis with salad

Baked potatoes with left overs and cheese

Chunky soup with crusty bread, or cheese on toast if there is no protein in it.

Omelette, Spanish omelette, or frittata with beans or salad

Grilled meat and vegetables on skewers that have been left marinating in the fridge

Ready made pasties cooked in the air fryer with pre cooked vegetables

Shakshuka (poached eggs in a spicy tomato and vegetable sauce) with toast triangles

Potato nachos made with left over chilli and done in the air fryer

spicy dhal…………the list is endless, but those are the first ones I can think of from the top of my head.

What are your favourite quick to make meals? Do you have any different strategies to add that help you make healthy meals in less time?