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If you're new to following recipes, get out all of the ingredients you'll need and prepare them. If a recipe calls for dicing, mincing, or slicing ingredients, for instance, do all of the prep work first so you can start making the food. If you already feel comfortable doing prep work while you cook food, read through the recipe to see when to do specific prep. For example, if you're caramelizing onions, they'll probably take a long time. Get them cooking and then prep the rest of the ingredients while they're caramelizing. Instead of roasting large chunks of vegetables or boiling entire potatoes, chop them into smaller pieces than you usually do. Vegetables that are 12 to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5cm) in size will cook much faster than 2 to 3in (51 to 76mm) pieces. If you're really short on time, try dicing or grating the food. For example, instead of cooking chunks of home fries, grate the potatoes to make hashbrowns. You can even cut meat and seafood into smaller pieces. Slice a large roast or fillet into smaller and thinner pieces to cut down on cooking time. A lot of cooking and baking recipes direct you to use softened butter instead of cold butter from the fridge or freezer. Although you could warm the butter in the microwave, you might accidentally melt it. Try grating the butter against the coarse side of a box grater before using it in the recipe. This works best if the butter is very cold or frozen. Try this trick the next time you're baking biscuits or scones. It's much easier than rubbing or cutting chunks of butter into the dry mixture! The time you spend washing, chopping, and preparing ingredients adds up if you're cooking every day. To save on some of this prep time, consider what you'll be cooking for the week and prep the ingredients at the same time. Then, you can just pull what you need out of the refrigerator when you're ready to cook. For example, if you need diced onion for 2 meals, chop the onion and store them in separate containers in the refrigerator. If you're making rice for dinner and you also plan to serve it in a few days, make a double batch and refrigerate half of it. If you're making a few different things to serve, think about which dishes take the longest to cook and which can be prepared right before serving. If it helps you stay organized, write down a timeline of when to prep and cook each dish. Your list might look like this: Marinate chicken for 3 hours Start the grill 30 minutes before dinner time Remove the chicken and thread it onto skewers Put the chicken skewers on the grill Bring a pot of water to boil and cook rice noodles Remove the chicken from the grill Make a tossed salad to serve with the chicken and rice noodles Your food will cook evenly if the oven is already at the recommended temperature when you put the food in. If you put food into a cold oven while it's heating up, it will take longer to cook and the bottom or outside of the food could overcook before the center is done. For example, if you toss a frozen pizza into a cold oven that's heating up, the bottom may burn while the center only becomes warm. If you put it into a hot oven, the whole pizza will cook within the recommended time.
Cut or chop your ingredients before you start cooking. Cut food into smaller pieces. Grate your butter so you don't have to wait for it to soften. Prep food for several meals at once. Plan the cooking order for a meal. Preheat your oven while you prep the food.