Everyday French – Ep.11 : Le Batch Cooking

Hello everyone and welcome to this 11th episode of Everyday French, a podcast to let you listen to the most natural French possible — the French that often gives you so much trouble when you talk with French people.

So this week I decided to talk to you about a topic I already touched on last week: batch cooking, a technique for cooking that saves you time during the week.

Let's go!

So like I was saying, I really want to set up batch cooking this year, so to explain it again: it's a cooking technique that lets you, in just a few hours during your week, prepare all your meals for the week — or maybe even more if you cook in really big batches. It's a technique more and more French people are trying to adopt, especially people with families, because when you have kids it's a bit hard to juggle work, home, and the children all at once. So it lets moms and dads save time by cooking a lot at once and storing it in the fridge or freezer.

For example, what does batch cooking involve? If you're making rice for a dish — say a risotto — instead of just making the amount you need for the risotto, you make a bigger batch, so you can then use it for another dish — say, I don't know, a chicken curry, where you'd serve your curry chicken with rice. Well, you'd make a bigger quantity, and you'd keep that rice for another time. So you can freeze it, or you can just put it in the fridge if you think you'll eat it soon — otherwise you freeze it, that way there's no food-safety risk. And it works with lots of foods. Of course, you can't batch-cook everything — for example, you can't fry eggs and then freeze them, I don't think that's possible. So you'll still need to adjust during the week and maybe make a little salad, some vegetables, but the goal is still to freeze the foods that take the most time. For example, in France, there are dishes you can really adapt for batch cooking. Quiche Lorraine, for instance — that's great, you bake it and then you can put it in the freezer. It also works with lasagna. It might work with a curry, a chicken curry for example. It works with lots of dishes, and there are plenty of French dishes that can be made through batch cooking.

Now, we're only at the start of the year, so I don't know if I'll stick with it and really do it all year. Anyway, I hope so, because I'm someone who likes cooking, but boy does it take time, and I don't like wasting my time in the kitchen. So maybe with this technique I'll actually enjoy making more dishes and storing them, and being able to eat them little by little over the week or the month, so I really hope I'll stick with it.

So, has this made you want to try batch cooking too? Do you have the space for it, because you really need room in the fridge and freezer to use this technique. So is this a technique you'd already heard of, that exists where you live, or is it just not possible because you live in small apartments and there's no room to store enough food? You can tell me in the comments, and I'll see you next week for a new episode. See you soon.