Search
Login
Foodies Only in your inbox
By clicking "Subscribe", you agree to ourPrivacy Policy and to receive marketing emails from Foodies Only
ITC Portal
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
6 - 10 mins
19/01/2026
With a little planning beforehand, you can save a lot of energy and time while preparing meals on weeknights. From chopping vegetables to making dough, and mixing spices, this article focuses on quick hacks and meal preps that would help you cook amazing dinners throughout the week without having to spend hours in the kitchen, yet being fresh and full of flavours.
Indian dishes are delicious and filling, no doubt, but they are equally time-consuming. Each process, cooking the onions, dals, spices, and kneading the dough, takes its own pretty time to impart its flavour. While all of this feels fruitful when you taste the curry or roti, the patience to make this, especially after long hours, is nowhere to be found! But what if you make half of the preparations on a lazy Sunday and use it to help you cook good food throughout the week, without having to spend hours in the kitchen? Although meal prep is the modern term used these days, Indian kitchens have been using this trick since time immemorial, with sides like masalas, papads, and pickles made in batches to be used when cooking feels like a task. This has translated well today with longer working hours. In this article, you will know how, with just a few hours of preparation on a Sunday, you can keep your weeknights interesting with delicious flavour and fewer hours in the kitchen. This will help you plan better, eat good food, and not rely on one-pot meals that can often make you skip meals! Read below to learn more.
By prepping vegetables, you can save a majority of your cooking time. On a Sunday, wash, peel and chop basic vegetables like onions, tomatoes, carrots, beans, coriander, etc. Store them in an air-tight container separately to prevent the strong onion odour from transferring to other vegetables. If you have some time, you can keep other vegetables chopped, but not onions. These veggies can be used in many curries, sabzis, and you can even make a mix sabzi or stir-fried vegetables, or even pulao with them. Similarly, you can slightly blanch spinach or methi and keep them wrapped in a muslin cloth or paper, and use them for dals or theplas. These small yet useful tips will save most of the time consumed in the kitchen.
Dal is an important part of Indian meals, and sometimes, they can stand alone as your entire dinner if you want to eat something light yet nutritious. However, cooking dal is slightly time-consuming. To save time, you can cook two to three varieties of dals like toor, masoor, moong and store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator. When you want to eat it, all you have to do is add a fresh tadka of cumin, garlic, asafoetida, curry leaves, and green chillies, and your day is ready within five minutes! You can eat it along with roti or rice, or simply in a bowl.
A lot of Indian gravies are based on the paste made from onion-tomato and nuts. All you have to do is chop them, mix some nuts and make a paste of it in the mixer or grinder. One thing you have to be sure about is not adding water to the paste, as water can make it go bad. This base masala can be used to make curries like rajma, chole, paneer, or even simple aloo sabzi. If you want your meal to be fibre-rich, you can also make a spinach puree ready. It can be used to make palak paneer or just a simple bowl of soup! With just a couple of hours’ work, you can prepare base gravies for a week and thank yourself later!
Although Indian kitchens have been using this hack for centuries, it needs to be highlighted here to show how Indian kitchens were well ahead of their time! If you keep your dough ready on a Sunday, it can easily go up to three days, and the same goes with idli and dosa batter. By using these simple tricks, the majority of your cooking time will be saved without having to compromise on the flavour!
Meal prep is of no use if you do not store it properly. While storing, make sure to use glass containers, airtight containers, zip pouches, and steel dabbas to keep the ingredients fresh and odour-free. If you use steel dabbas, make sure you label them before storing, as looking for each box and getting frustrated can be more time-consuming than preparing a full-fledged meal! Make foil, airtight containers, tight wraps, your best friends, along with meal prep. With these simple storage tricks and tips, your Thursday meal will taste as delicious asyour Sunday meal without any compromise on the taste!
