Cooking at home is one of those habits that can level up your health pretty quickly, help you lose weight, and make you feel like a more accomplished and put together adult…
Yet so many of us struggle to make it a consistent habit.
When you think about it, there’s quite a lot working against the simple habit of cooking:
- We get busy. Cooking takes time. Ordering in, eating out, or chucking a meal in the microwave is quicker and more convenient.
- Cooking is a skill some of us never learned properly. Whether your parents just cooked everything for you, or whether your family ate out a lot, or whether you had zero interest in learning how to cook as a kid (my hand is up there!)… if you never learned how to properly cook a meal that tastes decent, you’re going to be more resistant to doing it.
- Cooking often requires some level of planning ahead. Having the right ingredients on hand, having a clean kitchen with the right tools, knowing what you will be cooking and for how many people, setting enough time aside to cook the meal, juggling kids and pets while also preparing food
- Uber eats and other meal delivery services will deliver delicious food right to our doorstep. This can be a huge roadblock to cooking more, both for reasons of convenience as well as taste. If you don’t have the skills or experience (yet) to cook a meal that you enjoy, you’re going to be more likely to order in.
- Sometimes it’s not that interesting. If cooking has never been an enjoyable hobby for you, or you just don’t like to cook, or you’re trying to force yourself to cook at home because you think you “should”, but you still find it super boring…you’ll be more likely to try to avoid it.
The good news is none of these things are forever roadblocks. With a little planning and forethought, cooking at home can become a habit for all of us, even one we start to enjoy!
Take it from me, as a self-confessed “anti-chef” with no cooking skills whatsoever, I was able to overcome my negative bias towards cooking and start to actively seek out experiences to cook and try new recipes.
Now it’s a regular part of my routine, one I even enjoy!
Today I’ll share a few things that worked for me (and others) to start cooking more at home, and how you can make cooking a regular part of your routine too. Now let’s get cooking!
Identify the main reasons you don’t cook at home
This is where you need to start. Finding the source of your resistance is key in moving past it.
Do you just not enjoy cooking?
Does it feel like a waste of time?
Do you get too busy, or too tired, when it’s time to cook?
Do you lack cooking skills, or not like the taste of the meals you cook?
Do you often forget to plan ahead, and find yourself without the right ingredients or not knowing what to cook?
Is ordering in just a more enticing option in the moment?
Your roadblock could be any or all of these reasons, or even something else entirely.
If cooking at home is important to you, identify your personal roadblocks and find some solutions you can start to work with.
Let’s look at some common roadblocks one by one and I’ll suggest some workarounds.
How to cook more when you have a busy schedule
Plan quick meals ahead of time
If you’re busy, planning ahead is going to be your key to success. Don’t wait until 5pm to decide what’s for dinner. Have it all ready to go.
Now when I talk about planning ahead, I’m talking specifically about planning quick and easy meals ahead. If you have 20-30 mins to prepare a meal, planning a gourmet 2 hour roast is not going to work. There are plenty of meals you can make in less than 30 mins, but you’ll need to plan for that to make it work.
A quick Google search will give you plenty of quick recipe ideas to get you started.
Prepare ahead for particularly busy times
One of the most underrated tricks for cooking on busy nights is to plan it so you don’t need to do much cooking at all…
Yep, I’m all for convenience! Prepare some ingredients, or even the whole meal, ahead of time.
- Cook enough for leftovers the night before a busy day.
- Use a slow cooker and have it bubbling away while you’re at work.
- Use your freezer effectively – keep frozen veggies, frozen soup, and other freezable things on hand for when you’re short on time.
- Use smart convenience foods! A store-bought roast chicken is perfect when you’re in a rush. A pre-packaged bag of salad, pre-cut stir-fry veggies, or microwave bag of rice will save you quite a bit of time. Don’t be afraid of frozen veggies and canned beans.
- Plan your go-to emergency meal and keep those ingredients on hand always. This might be something like a quick pasta bake you can just shove in the oven, soup from the freezer, or Aaron’s favourite – canned salmon with rice and veggies.
No more getting stuck with no time and nothing for dinner. No more needing to order in because you’re too busy to cook. Planning ahead for those times when you need something quick and easy will change the game for your new cooking at home routine and make it doable for future-you.
How to cook more when you‘re not a very good cook
Speaking from personal experience, cooking is a skill everyone can learn. Just because you’re not a good cook today doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to do it, even on a basic level (you don’t need to be a chef to cook a tasty meal!)
- Learn a few basic cooking skills. YouTube makes this so easy now, and many recipe books and blogs include helpful cooking tips these days.
- Experiment with following simple recipes. I mean really simple. Simple meals can taste amazing, so get good at making easier dishes before you try going gourmet. Meals like pasta bolognese, pasta bake, sheet pan veggies and chicken/fish, stir-fry veggies, and soup were some of the first meals I learnt how to cook. These meals alone carried me for a good few years!
- Start slow and build skills over time. Don’t expect yourself to know everything from day one. Google things as you go and learn by doing. I still look things up halfway through cooking a meal when I’m not sure how to do something! Start by just cooking pre-cut veggies, and buy a roast chicken. Practice one new skill at each meal and build up to trying to cook more challenging things.
How to cook more when you don’t like cooking
Cooking in and of itself isn’t exactly a riveting activity. Something that took me a long time to learn is that it’s yourresponsibility to make it fun.
If you want to cook more often, you simply have to figure out how to enjoy it more.
- Find recipes that you enjoy experimenting with.
- Listen to upbeat music, a podcast, or an audiobook you can’t get enough of.
- Get your family involved.
Another way to keep cooking enjoyable is by choosing quick and simple recipes. If you’re trying to create elaborate recipes that are confusing and overwhelming, it’s not going to feel fun. Keep it simple.
Also, keep your kitchen clean. No one wants to spend time in a kitchen that is messy or dirty. 5 mins of wiping benches down, and cleaning things as you go, will make the whole experience 70% more enjoyable (this is a stat I just made up, but it feels true for me).
How to cook at home when you love eating out
Let’s be honest, we all love to eat out. When I find myself getting into the habit of eating out more regularly, I don’t beat myself up about it. It’s normal to enjoy eating out!
I just remind myself cooking at home is important to me, and I plan to make it happen from then on.
One thing I find helpful in these moments is to not completely remove eating out from my life. If we make take away off-limits, we’re more likely to “give in” when we get tired or busy. I give myself one day a week where I plan to eat out. This way, I still get to enjoy eating out, while also cooking most meals at home.
Tips to make cooking at home more desirable:
- Remake your favourite meals at home. Don’t deprive yourself of meals you love when cooking at home. If you do this, it will only make you want to eat out more often.
Love fish and chips? Great – grill some salmon and bake some thinly sliced potatoes for a delish homemade version. Fried rice more your thing? Awesome – fried rice is simple to make at home! Whatever dish you can think of, there’s probably a way to recreate it at home.
- Find ways to make home cooked meals taste better. One of the reasons we love eating out is that chef-made meals taste bloody delicious. It can be challenging, especially for new home cooks, to make meals taste anywhere near as good…until you discover herbs and spices.
I always wondered why my food tasted so bland, until I realised most people add herbs, spices, and other condiments to their meals to improve the taste. The right herbs and spices are a game-changer for your home cooked meals! And don’t forget a healthy dose of salt and pepper, too.
- Remind yourself of why you want to cook more at home. The goal here is to make cooking at home a more desirable option and eating out a less desirable option. While we won’t always be able to completely tip the scale, we can give it a helping hand. Write down a list of why you want to cook more at home, and another list of why you want to eat out less. This will help you remember why this habit is important to you.
- Get others on board. It’s tough to stay motivated to cook at home when your family members are constantly bugging you to eat out (or if they’re just eating out without you!) Try having a conversation with them about why this is important to you, and find some kind of compromise.
Maybe they can suggest meals they want you to cook, maybe they get to pick the take away on Friday nights, or maybe you can cook together and make it a fun experience. If you can get the whole family on board, it’s going to be ten times easier to stick to this habit.
How to plan ahead so you cook more at home
If you want to cook more at home, you’ve gotta plan ahead. If you skip this step, it’s going to be infinitely harder to keep this habit going. Make it as easy as possible for future-you to follow through!
- Make cooking a convenient option. Use the tips suggested above including prepping ingredients ahead of time (if that works for you) or utilising convenience foods, to keep your time in the kitchen convenient, quick, and fun.
- Plan what you’re going to make ahead of time and make sure you have the right ingredients and tools. Set up a meal calendar and put it on the fridge. I don’t plan all my meals, but I make sure I plan dinners and at least have some lunch options available.
- Do one big grocery shop and get as much as possible. The less you go to the grocery store during the week, the less likely you are to change the plan.
Aaron and I do our shopping on Sunday and we usually plan meals until Thursday. On Friday we eat out, and on Saturday we walk up to the shops and decide what we’re going to have on the day. Then Sunday is grocery day again!
It doesn’t always work out exactly on this schedule (and even as I write this I’m thinking of ways I can eliminate that second weekend grocery trip on a Saturday…) but more often than not this schedule keeps us cooking more at home.
Everyone is different, so make sure you try things and experiment until you find a way of doing it that works for you!
Bottom line, everyone has the ability to cook more from home. Cooking is a skill that you can learn with practice, and cooking regularly at home is a habit that just needs time (and a side of smart planning!) to build.
I used to think cooking had to be this long and arduous process, but as soon as I discovered I could make quick and easy meals that are both healthy and delicious, I started appreciating cooking so much more. Aaron and I always make a point to plan meals, grocery shop, and cook together, which makes it all the more fun.
Start with a small goal of just cooking one or two meals per week more than you currently do and make a point to find a way to enjoy the process.
Keep a growth mindset! Realise that just because you’ve never been a good cook, or you never enjoyed cooking up until now, doesn’t mean you can’t turn that around and start to love it with a few small shifts and tricks.
Build the habit slowly over time, and before you know it you might even be looking forward to that time spent cooking in the kitchen!
