Batch cooking for busy weeks: cook twice, eat five times

Batch cooking sounds like a Sunday spent chained to the stove. It doesn't have to be: two ordinary cooking sessions, each just scaled up, can cover most of a week's dinners. The hard parts — doubling the ingredients correctly and remembering which night eats what — are exactly what a planner should do for you.

Pick batch-friendly dinners

• Stews, chili, curries, lasagne and roasts all reheat as well as (or better than) they cook — pick two of these per week.
• Scale the recipe ×2 or ×3 when you plan it, so the grocery list gets the doubled quantities automatically — no mental arithmetic at the store.
• Book the repeat nights immediately: cook Monday, plan “Leftovers” for Tuesday and Thursday, and the week is nearly done.

Let the list do the maths

The most common batch-cooking failure is under-buying: you double the recipe in your head but shop from the original quantities. A planner that scales ingredients per planned meal and merges them into one aisle-sorted grocery list closes that gap — 750g of mince twice becomes 1.5kg on the list, and everyone shopping sees the same numbers.