Batch cooking with a food chopper: prepare your meals for the week

Batch cooking involves cooking once a week to have your meals ready in advance. A grinder radically changes the experience: where slicing two kilos of onions and preparing homemade ground meat would take an hour with a knife, a meat grinder or a multifunctional electric grinder handles these tasks in a few minutes.

The result is consistent, the portions are easy to package, and you know exactly what is in your ground meat. Here is how to organize an efficient session and which appliances to choose so that your refrigerator is always stocked with ready-to-cook ingredients.

Why a grinder is the ideal tool for batch cooking

The promise of batch cooking is to save time during the week. But this promise only holds if the Sunday session itself is fast. That is where a grinder makes all the difference.

Grinding in large quantities, without fatigue

Dicing two kilos of onions with a knife takes time and makes you cry. Preparing ground meat by hand is exhausting and often uneven. With an electric grinder equipped with a large bowl of several liters, you process the whole batch in a few minutes, with a regular cut. Each piece is the same size, which ensures even cooking and predictable textures throughout the week.

The variety of preparations in a single session

A good grinder is not just for meat. In a two-hour session, you can do one after the other:

• ground meat for steaks, meatballs, and fillings;
• diced onions and garlic for all the aromatic bases of the week;
• ground root vegetables (carrots, celery) for salads and stir-fries;
• chopped fresh herbs to freeze in ice cubes.

With a single versatile appliance, these four steps now take only a fraction of the time spent with a knife. To choose this appliance, see our guide kitchen grinder: which one to choose according to your dishes.

Batch cooking preparations to make with the grinder

Not all preparations lend themselves to batch cooking in the same way. Here are the ones worth doing with the grinder, starting with homemade ground meat, then ready-to-use vegetables and aromatics.

Homemade ground meat: the base of the week

Fresh ground meat is the most valuable preparation. By buying a whole piece of beef or lamb, you control exactly the fat content. Grind 1.5 to 2 kg at once, then divide into 200 to 250 g portions before freezing. Each portion defrosts in the refrigerator and goes directly to the pan for a hamburger, meatballs, or a bolognese sauce.

Two of these portions make the 500 g of most family dishes; our recipe ideas for 500 g of ground meat give ten, from meatballs to lasagna.

Ground vegetables and ready-to-use aromatics

Onions, carrots, and celery ground together, the aromatic base of many sauces, keep for 4 to 5 days in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Grind them at the beginning of the session: every evening, you will only have to open your container and brown the desired quantity. For garlic and parsley, grind them separately and freeze them in an ice cube tray. Each cube corresponds to a portion, ready to be slipped directly into a hot dish without prior defrosting.

Fillings and mixtures ready to cook

Homemade stuffing, made of meat, stale bread, egg, and herbs, is long to prepare by hand but fast with the grinder. Prepare a large quantity on Sunday, divide into portions, and freeze. During the week, you will have enough to fill zucchini, peppers, or tomatoes in ten minutes. The texture obtained with the grinder is much more regular than a coarsely ground stuffing with a knife.

How to organize your batch cooking session with a grinder

A successful batch cooking session depends above all on organization. The following points detail the order of preparations, then the way to package and store each ground food.

The order of preparations: from the most neutral to the strongest

To avoid mixing flavors, always follow this order:

1. mild vegetables (carrots, zucchini);
2. aromatics (onions, celery);
3. meat, last.

Between each category, rinse the bowl and blades with cold water. Hot water should be avoided during the session: it can cause the meat proteins to coagulate on the blades and make cleaning more difficult.

Package and store effectively

Each preparation must be packaged quickly after grinding. Here are the storage times to follow so as not to waste anything:

For ground meat intended for freezing, never leave it for more than two hours at room temperature before packaging it. Opt for flat freezer bags rather than thick trays: defrosting is faster and flat bags take up less space. A still-frozen portion can also go directly into the oven, provided you extend the hamburger cooking time by about one third.

How to prevent meat from sticking in the grinder?

Which grinder to choose for batch cooking?

Needs vary depending on the volume processed each week and the nature of the preparations. Here are the two main families of appliances to consider.

Electric meat grinder: the most efficient in large quantities

To regularly grind more than a kilo of meat per session, an electric meat grinder with several screens is the most suitable tool. Choose a model with at least two screens: a fine one for hamburgers and meatballs, a large one for fillings. Our 750 W meat grinder, for example, claims about 1.6 kg of meat per minute and has three stainless steel screens of 3, 5, and 7 mm. All models with screens are in the meat grinder collection.

Multifunctional electric grinder: vegetables and meat in a single appliance

If your batch cooking includes both meat and vegetables, an electric grinder with a large-capacity bowl and several blades covers most of your needs. Some models offer a slicing accessory for root vegetables and a knife for herbs. A stainless steel bowl makes cleaning between two preparations easier, which is valuable during a long session.

Which grinder according to your batch cooking profile