Money

Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 4

This is Part 4 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Today topic is cooking. Because I truly believe that eating well is the first step to have a healthy life and body I really enjoy cooking and do my best to cook tasty recipes for my friends or family (or myself ).

The 80/20 principle is of course applicable to cooking and allows me to simplify my kitchen and save money.

Identify your cooking pattern.

Simply answer this question : What kind of food you mostly cook?

I personally cook French or Mediterranean recipes most of the time. That determines what kind of tools I usually need, what kind of cookbooks I have and what kind of food I need to buy. For example I never use a wok since I don’t cook Asian food.

Now I know this point I can smartly organize my kitchen and cooking system.

Kitchen tools and equipments

I use 20% of my kitchen tools 80% of the time.

What does it mean? It means I don’t really need this high-tech mixer I use only once a year or this set of 18 beautiful knives while I use only 2 or 3 most of the time.

Simplifying my kitchen makes me feel calm and zen. I don’t have dozens of closets full of shit and I don’t spend half an hour to find this roasting pans hidden behind my fancy set of 72 cooking pans.

I avoid as much as possible buying new kitchen tools. Most of the time I can adapt a recipe and use something I already have. In the past I bought some items just to cook one recipe. Now these items stay in my kitchen drawers and I don’t use them anymore. I try now to not make this mistake anymore.

You are gonna tell me : “What if I like to try new things, to be adventurous with my cooking?”

First I will answer you there is few recipes you won’t be able to cook with basic equipments. Then be flexible and modify the recipe to adapt it to your taste and cooking system. The ratatouille will have the same taste if you cook it in a basic saucepan and not in an oven dutch as the recipe told you.

Cookbooks

I use 20% of my cookbook 80% of the time.

To be honest I actually have only one cookbook. So the sentence above it’s not true. But I used to get more cookbooks.

I like my cookbook and don’t waste my time to browse a bunch of books when I’m looking for recipe or idea. It saves my time and my money of course. I’am sure you know at least one person who love to buy new cookbooks but never uses them. Ok they are a great decoration for a kitchen but I prefer keep my money and room for things that matter.

I learned how to select cookbooks I liked and get rid of the others. I learned especially to not buy cookbooks I don’t need just because there is ONE recipe I love inside or because the cover is amazing.

Now you are gonna tell me: “What if I’m looking for a special recipe that is not in my cookbooks”.

If you are reading this post it means you have access to a Internet connection. So use it to get new recipes. There is tons of very good cooking Web site. Just type “recipe” in Google…

Last point: Having a lot of cookbooks doesn’t make you a cook…:)

Batch cooking

It’s something I don’t do enough. Batch cooking is a good way to save money and time. Indeed it requires 20% of additional work but saves you 80% of your cooking time or money.

Cooking bigger quantities is not a pain since you have all the ingredient and have already setup everything. Baking two pans of lasagna is not longer than baking only one for instance. You can finally freeze the second pan and eat it later. Thus, next time you will just need to unfreeze and reheat lasagna. What a big amount of time saved!

Moreover you can buy food in bulk and save money. Check out at your groceries store to get discounts.

Add a comment if you have additional cooking advices. I’d like to learn more.

photo credit: Zesmerelda

© 2008 Unbalanced man.