I want to be upfront that this is one of those tips that sounds obvious when you say it out loud but i resisted it for years because i told myself i didn't have time. I was buying those little bags and trays of pre-cut broccoli, sliced peppers, diced onions, the whole range. It felt worth it for the convenience.
A few months ago i actually timed myself cutting a head of broccoli into florets. It took three minutes and forty seconds including washing it. The pre-cut bag of the same amount was nearly three times the price at my store and had a shorter shelf life because cut vegetables release moisture faster and go soft sooner. I've since timed a few other things out of curiosity. A whole bell pepper diced: two minutes. Half a cabbage shredded: four minutes. A bunch of carrots peeled and sliced: five minutes. None of these are the twenty-minute ordeal i had apparently convinced myself they were. The whole thing i think was a framing issue. I'd look at a pile of vegetables and feel like cooking was a big project, so paying extra to skip a step felt rational.
But once i started tracking the actual time it became pretty hard to justify. The freshness difference is also noticeable, whole vegetables just last longer in the fridge. The one exception i've kept is frozen pre-cut butternut squash because cutting a raw butternut squash is genuinely unpleasant and i stand by that decision.
I stopped buying pre-cut vegetables about four months ago and the time difference is genuinely not what i expected.
byu/midnight_libria inFrugal
Posted by midnight_libria
10 Comments
Have you considered frozen veggies? They are often just as fresh or fresher because they are flash frozen peak season.
I have to add some wine sipping time.
I think this is a big example of “it varies.”
Buying precut (or frozen) makes me cook more, especially on weeks where I’m running on fumes and I’d otherwise turn to take out.
Edit: buying precut isn’t an every week thing but in the dead of winter when I really struggle to even get out of bed, having some pre chopped veg I can just toss in the slow cooker to make a healthy soup is amazing.
Meal prep can be incredibly frugal. My wife and I routinely make delicious dinners for under $5/meal for the week. Our lowest was like$2.50/meal. We have a cookbook full of our preps and if something is good and cheap it goes in there.
Also, a good knife and good technique/practice will greatly speed up your veggie prep. Congrats on the progress!
Also, doing *all* the carrots and pumpkin (for example) and having my own pre-chopped veggies is really satisfying.
A whole bench covered in veggies, becomes containers of chopped veggies, mixed and seasoned and even frozen.
Absolutely agree. I meal prep my breakfast lunches and ingredient prep for the week—it includes fresh cut vegetables. Within an hour I can clean, cut, and portion broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, pepper, and celery into 5 containers. All while chicken breasts are cooking in the oven (and buy in bulk on sale a cook a bunch. Then freeze).
I normally do chicken, raw veggies, hummus and crackers for lunch. Super easy to make. I used to more complicated, but in the end I like this and it’s fast to prep. Breakfast is yogurt and (frozen) berries. Why buy individual containers of Greek yogurt when it takes five minutes to portion out into 5 containers.
Add to the prep cleaning a head of lettuce and dicing an onion, and it’s great for tossing dinner together. I do some other ingredient prep depending on the week, but generally it takes less than 2 hours on the weekend, sometimes closer to 1
We use frozen and canned too veggies too, but for lunch I like the fresh.
For me, it’s not just the time it takes to prepare some thing, but also if there are pots or pans and cutting boards involved, then they have to be washed and dried and put away. Or if you don’t have the right tool for preparing some thing, you would have to buy a new knife or other kitchen tool.
I’ve recently discovered that organic veg lasts longer than regular. This def surprised me as I assumed the lack of chemicals would result in the opposite. Example a head of regular broccoli lasts about a,week in the fridge and an organic lasts two weeks so basically green with no brown or yellow spots. It’s firmer and tastes a lot better also and only about 50p or so difference so for me as a singleton really worth it 🙂
> frozen pre-cut butternut squash because cutting a raw butternut squash is genuinely unpleasant
Agreed! Also, even the smallest squash is too big for my uses and it goes to waste.