9 Ingenious Ways to Cook Food Faster

Ditch your saucepan for wider and shallower pans to speed up your cooking time: The increased surface area allows more food to touch the bottom, and so more of it hits the heat and cooks faster.

Need some inspiration? Quick meals like stir-fries and veggie-loaded dishes like tomatoes-and-parmesan pasta are ideal for shallow pans on your stovetop. (Our wok makes especially quick work of these kinds of meals.) Cut your veggies thin and throw them in a wide pan together with a little olive oil and seasoning, and you have yourself a delicious ten-minute meal.

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Your microwave can do much more than cook popcorn and leftovers: it can create whole, healthy meals, too. (For starters, steaming veggies in the micro is a lot quicker than pan-frying or grilling them, and without the added oils or butter, it’s also a lot healthier.)

Microwaves are also a multi-tasker’s best friend in the kitchen. Instead of fidgeting with your stove top or rice cooker, you can cook your rice and walk away to prep the rest of your meal.

You can also bake potatoes in the microwave for five minutes as opposed to an hour in the oven; Stephanie Eckelkamp, senior associate editor for Prevention, recommends putting sweet potatoes in the microwave for a quick cook. “Just wash, puncture a few times with a fork, then cook for five to six minutes in the microwave,” Eckelkamp says. “When I'm in a pinch, I'll also pick up bags of frozen pre-cooked brown rice and cook them in the microwave as a base for stir fries. I'm also in love with mug cakes, which are the perfect single-serve dessert that help prevent overeating and only require a few ingredients.”

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Whether it’s meat or veggies, when it comes to cooking time, the thinner, the better. You can even buy your vegetables pre-cut so you don’t have to waste prep time chopping. If you own a food processor, dump all your vegetables and spices in at once and a few pulses should do the trick. It will cut your prep time in half as well as the cooking time. (Garlic crushers and onion slicers can work just as well to chop up those smaller food items fast.)

Always remember that the perfect meal prep time is while the oven’s heating up, so be sure to use it wisely. Get organized to speed up the process by laying out all tools and ingredients you need before you start cooking (or as the French call it, mise en place). By the time your oven is ready to bake, the rest of your meal will be, too. Have extra time left? You can wash leftover dishes from prepping your meal so you won’t have to do them later.

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If you don’t own a slow cooker, it’s in your best interest to invest in one—they’re one of the few kitchen tools that allow you to cook dinner while you’re at work.

Prep your meal in the morning, throw everything in the pot, and turn it on before you leave; your dinner will be ready as soon as you step through the door. With little to no prep time when you get home from work, crock-pot dinners are the quickest—and tastiest—meals to make when you’ll be in a pinch that night. From pulled pork sandwiches for dinner to apple-cinnamon oatmeal breakfasts that you can cook overnight, there’s no limit to what you can make with a slow cooker. Better still—the cleanup is minimal: You only have to wash one pot!

Next time you prepare a meal you really enjoy, why not make enough servings to save for later? Storing your food can become a huge time-saver throughout the week. If you want to start small, Hurford recommends hard-boiled eggs, especially for travelers and cyclists on the go, because they stay fresh for a long time.

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“They’re a great, easy source of protein, and so tasty!” says Molly Hurford, Level 3 coach with USA Cycling and author of Fuel Your Ride. “I'm a huge fan of breakfast for... anytime, really. So I also love doing a big steel-cut oat mix: In one big mason jar or a few small ones, I'll mix up steel cut oats, chia seeds, a bit of maple syrup, cinnamon, chopped apples, and walnuts.”

When you’re ready to go bigger, think about preparing meals that keep well in Tupperware bins that you can store in the fridge or freezer. Not only will this let you plan out lunches and dinners a week in advance, but you’ll also have fewer dishes to wash. Foods that keep the longest are anything with beans, oats, honey, vinegar, rice, or anything heavily spiced.

Grilling can seem like a hassle, but there is a way to get that charred and smoky taste without the work; in fact, you have two great alternatives to choose from.

The first is a grill pan on your stove. It leaves sear marks just like your outdoor grill, but it’s quick to heat up and clean off, and cooks your food just as fast.

The second option is by going electric with a George Foreman grill. These handy gadgets can make quick work out of your grilling, especially if you’re only cooking for yourself. Eckelkamp uses her grill pan to cook marinated chicken breasts in the summer. “I absolutely love my grill pan!” Eckelkamp says. “After I grill the chicken, I slice it up and put it on top of salads or into tortillas with veggies and guacamole for a quick taco. If you let it get hot enough and grease it well, it still gives you those nice grill marks and a subtle char flavor.”

Ditch your old toaster for something more versatile—a toaster oven. They take less time to heat up than your oven, and can cook a lot more food than your toaster—they can even fit an entire chicken inside!

Eckelkamp suggests using your toaster oven to roast vegetables for a quick, healthy meal. “Just chop up things like broccoli or sweet potatoes, toss in oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook,” Eckelkamp says. “It's faster than the oven and doesn't heat up your entire kitchen. I've also been experimenting with sweet potato toast in the toaster oven, which is a nutrient-packed, low-carb alternative to regular toast.”

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Leftovers don’t have to be boring; Hurford recommends using spice to spruce up your previous meals. She and her husband like to take their go-to dinner—grass-fed ground beef, sweet potatoes, and spinach—and add new ingredients into the mix for the next night.

“Night One would just be the beef and spinach in a pan, plus sweet potato 'fries' baked in the oven,” Hurford says. “Then, the next night, we'd make a curry with the leftovers by adding coconut milk, curry powder, onion, and some more veggies like steamed cauliflower. Or, we'd use the leftover beef and spinach and add some cumin and red pepper and turn it into a taco night with corn tortillas and homemade pico de gallo and guacamole.”