How much time you can afford to or want to spend in the kitchen determines,  what you can cook. Some meals can be prepared quickly and easily, some meals require a lot of labour. Think about time as an ingredient in itself. What kind of meal you have largely depends on it.

Before you buy your ingredients or even look at a recipe perhaps assess, how much time do I have or would ideally like to spend in the kitchen. So for example we have  1 hour to prepare , cook and serve a meal and perhaps do the dishes. So you would not have time to prepare a Sunday roast from scratch , eat it and clean up , so realistically you are looking at preparing and cooking a meal in a maximum time of 20-25 , fifteen mins to eat - and ten minutes to clean up.

One of the reasons people lose confidence to cook from scratch is perhaps they attempt a recipe which they do not have the time to do, the preparation becomes a chore, and attempting something that cant be done creates pressure and ultimately becomes less enjoyable, if at all. In the end your left a sweaty mess , with a kitchen in carnage, a substandard meal and the desire to do it again possibly gone. A little thought about managing your time most definitely makes the experience, that less daunting and potentially fraught , more enjoyable to do and a better end product.

Make a time plan

In the kitchen, we generally have a jobs list and work like hell to get our preparation done and ready for the doors opening. We work out what tasks are hands off and require time such as braising a beef stew with jobss that are hands on such as preparing a chicken kiev or preparing vegetables ready to be cooked later. We have to make the most of our time between breakfast, lunch and dinner services. We use our experience to make this possible. 

Think about time as an ingredient in itself. 

At home make a time plan, work out 

How much time you have to spend in the kitchen to prepare, cook, serve and eat and clean up on any given day. Work around the time you have. 

Insert sample time plan. 

What can I do at home. 

Use the days when you have more time to batch cook or prepare bits and peuces fir future meals., like some pickles for your next beef burger or prepare a batch of pastry for a quiche or pie. 

Hands off preparation and cooking 

Brining or marinading meat, proving dough overnight, using the slow cooker it slow coking in the oven, can be a very much hands off affair after little work  initially. It's an avenue that is very much worth exploring as using methods such as these can be very beneficial in helping you eat good food on a budget. 

If you don't have time, then supplementing home cooking with good quality ready made ingredients, such as bread products and pastas, puff pastry amongst navy others is a decent middle ground to be on. If you have the time to make fresh pasta and bread post lock down then Iapplaud you and your commitment to cooking from scratch. If your sourdough has long since departed then that's fair enough. Go and buy a nice pack of 4 brioche buns for your homemade buttermilk chicken burgers.