It’s OK To Cheat: Cut Down on Prep Time With These Particular Pre-Cut Vegetables and Fruits
Sometimes, it pays to pay for convenience — especially, when you know where to find good value in the produce area
A 10-pound bag of Russets, sitting in a cart; a full rack of ribs, plopped in a basket; and a well-dressed pair of sweethearts, browsing among the aisles. What they all have in common is, quite possibly, the possession of a pre-prepared food item or two.
If anything — Monday, Sunday, or Easter — each experience in the produce area has given me a fair bit of insight into people and their choices. Just as I see their buying habits, the items that they so desperately need for tonight’s dinner party, or the kids in tow that they need to feed — grocery stores are just as observant.
In fact, they’re super into you — respectfully, of course.
Whether you’re about to head to the cottage or you’re on your way home from work, you know that having a home advantage — kitchen shortcuts — matters when it comes to getting a meal in for supper, and in time for your show.
You may not have much time, however. And you may not have any access to a spiralizer. But you want to cook up a healthy, balanced meal with colourful carrot curls and delicate zucchini ribbons to complement your grilled salmon or seared steak.
Your grocery store fully understands your compound pressure point. Rolling out more and more convenience items, redefining certain parts of the grocery landscape, it seems as if you often come across new products and solutions.
Pre-washed, pre-packaged, and pre-cut: You need to make an informed decision of which ones are yet actually worth the extra change. As with every other purchase, you still need to weigh the pros and the cons — and quite literally with the amounts in each bag of cauliflower rice or coleslaw.
Here are great options for when you’re pressed for time, without sacrificing flavour, texture, and quality.
Hard Vegetables
Don’t be so hard on yourself with harder produce. Yet chances are, you’ve already learned the hard way around them, trying your hand at the hand-held spiralizer to create strands of sweet potatoes, carrots, or parsnips.
Plus, what about handling those healthy, yet problematically round beets that stain your fingertips, just as they slip away from you? They’re quite hard to work with as well, and it can sometimes seem unfair.
There’s no need to spiral out of control.
Pick up a box of pre-prepared hard vegetables, already conveniently spiralized. While not totally fresh by textbook standards, they’ll need to be slightly sautéed or blanched, anyway, so there’s leniency with losing a bit of freshness.
Besides, if you don’t own a spiralizer, to begin with, buying pre-prepared, spiralized produce is an excellent way for you to find out if you truly enjoy cooking and eating these vegetables prepared in this way. And it’s the perfect way to figure out if you’ll be asking Santa for a spiralizer.
Sweet Potatoes
Also hard and lacking in moisture content, but incredibly nutritious and versatile, pre-prepared sweet potatoes can yet be worth the marginal splurge for the sake of convenience — and the peace of mind.
Because they’re often irregular in size, shape, and weight, you may even feel burdened by the task of having to sift through the mountain or the bin of them in search of similarity.
But you may even find that the package of pre-prepared orange root vegetables contains just about the right amount for your cooking needs.
Butternut Squash
Although perfect for a warm, winter soup, butternut squash can be a bit of a catch to break down when you’re in a mad dash. As with the previous mentions, it’s also hard, clunky, and irregular.
And the delicious and nutritious winter squash is rather hard on your knife, too — and if it’s blunt, it can pose a danger.
In any case, it’s not a bad idea to go for the already prepared option if you’re seriously low on energy, time, and patience in the kitchen — because we’ve all been there.
Cauliflower Rice
Most often situated next to the veteran salad kits, cauliflower rice, vacuum-sealed in bags for optimal freshness, is a remarkably popular convenience buy. And it’s easy to see why.
Most often in direct replacement of regular rice, bags of the nutritional and keto-friendly option frequently find their way into many carts and baskets as just another daily staple.
While definitely pricier than picking up a whole head of cauliflower, you might not have the means to make the magical transformation in the first place, or at least, in an easy and tidy way.
From a chunky head of cauliflower to what can be, affectionately, described as a beautiful snowy scene — the transformation is sometimes yet not enough to justify the use of your food processor. Because washing up it up after just one preparation task can be, well, annoying.
However, the convenience format is even more compelling when you live alone. Because a full head of cauliflower is a tough one to get through when you’ve got to eat it for a while. Not a problem — just pick up the bagged version.
Coleslaw
In a similar predicament with cauliflower, coleslaw calls for dense, heavy cabbage. Yet because they’re most often sold as both large and whole, it can be tricky to come up with ways to cook with it when only the coleslaw needs just half of it.
While weighing in at an affordable price, your question often becomes: How to use up the crunchy Brassica in multiple ways without, well, losing interest in eating it?
It’s a tough question, but to make matters harder for you, grocery stores, more often than not, prefer to stock larger, as opposed to smaller, cabbages. So it’s a hassle in and of itself to find small to medium ones.
And while it’s true that the heavy vegetable will keep well in the refrigerator for quite some time before spoiling — if properly stored— it is yet one with a reputation of an early compost fate. Because it’s difficult to get through if cabbage rolls aren’t in question, for instance.
Practically, it also makes more sense to go with the pre-cut format when you’re only in the odd mood for coleslaw, which is a fair observation as it’s more of a summer salad. So stick with the bagged version if you’re uncertain about using most of the cabbage before it goes to waste.
Beans and Peas
Removing strings from peas over the morning newspaper, while listening to the radio, is a scene as tired as the task itself. And the same can be said about prepping any bean variety.
Sometimes it’s worth going for the pre-washed and -prepped version, especially when pouches of them go on sale. Just make sure to double check the dates on the package for the highest quality and optimal freshness.
Sliced Mushrooms
As one of the more prominent meal-prep protagonists — sneak them into virtually any dish for added substance and nutrition — sliced mushrooms can be a huge time- and cost-saver. And this is especially true when considering that they come around the same cost as their whole counterparts.
What’s more, they offer health benefits as a low-calorie source of fibre and antioxidants with convenience — just toss a handful of them into your morning scramble or your evening stew.
Pineapple
It may seem strange for some to eat the tropical fruit in the middle of winter — yet pineapple is a wonderful healthy snack, nonetheless. And it makes for a tasty and exciting addition to stews, especially featuring pork, as a natural sweetener and tenderizer.
While you may get slightly more out of the prickly fruit by cutting it up at home, the task can yet make for a rather sticky and juicy mess. And that’s rarely an ideal situation — especially, when multiple things are already happening in the kitchen.
No sticky floor or countertop: It is a great choice to opt for the pre-cut option since they’re done in-store every day, so freshness isn’t too much of a concern.
Plus, if you don’t plan on eating a whole bunch of pineapple in one go — needless to say, not much can be done about the dreaded burning tongue sensation — the pre-cut amount sold at your grocery store is sensible.
Whether you’re strapped for time — or willpower, for that matter — to put together a healthy and composed meal, there’s always a good time and reason to add these particular pre-prepared items to the cart.
Related: Stretch Your Veg: Best Practices for Storing Your Produce
