Sustainable cooking is a function of the amount of time you’re willing to commit to cooking and the tools you have at your disposal. A slow cooker, for example, can involve almost zero prep and very little time actively spent cooking (you toss it all in the pot and hit go). A much more involved meal which requires regular attention, on the other hand, might take less total time to cook, but more active time cooking.

I think the best way to provide advice is to get a grasp on a few important factors:

• Price sensitivity/budget
• How much time do you tolerate between starting cooking and eating the food (active cooking + all other time, such as time spent in the oven or slow cooker)?
• How much time do you tolerate where you are in the kitchen actively cooking or preparing ingredients?
• Do you have any food restrictions or preferences?
• How varied do you want your cooking to be? Are you okay with eating the same thing every day or want more variety?

For me, cooking at home is less about finding the time and more about decision fatigue. I still fail at this a lot, but on the days I’m successful it’s because I planned ahead of time what I’d be cooking for dinner. That way when dinner comes around it doesn’t require thought, just a bit of chopping.

I am not great at this, but I find these things helpful:

Cook before you’re hungry. That’s kind of a Captain Obvious line, but sometimes a meal can take more than 1/2 hour to cook and that’s a long time when you’re starving.

Have a limited menu. Find a few things you can stand eating on the regular. Example, I could probably eat meatloaf once every couple of weeks till I die. I keep a list of things like this so if I’m drawing a blank, I can look at it. It’s funny how you forget.

Figure out how to make leftovers not be awful. Example, make meatloaf on a day you don’t work so there’s no time crunch to get dinner on the table. The next day a slice of meatloaf (microwaved or not) with toasted bread and mayo or whatever sauce you like makes a good sandwich with a salad. The salad doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be lettuce and dressing. No time crunch if you rinse the lettuce while the bread is toasting. The next day you could make spaghetti. It’s easy and cheap and you can throw cubed meatloaf into the sauce to be “meatballs”. If you have two days off in a row, make two different meals those nights and rotate the leftovers to last a week without getting bored.

Make a Taco Bell system. By this I mean think about the Taco Bell menu. Most of their menu items are made from the same ingredients, but are prepared differently.

I make something called burrito soup which is browned ground beef, undrained canned green chilis, taco bell sauce (you can buy it bottled at the store), undrained ranch style beans, undrained black beans, undrained canned corn, and whatever else is in the fridge that would work. Seems like it’s all cans, bottles, and beef, but it’s really good. Sometimes I’ll throw in fresh bell peppers or other veg. Anyway, a batch of this is great for burrito filling, served in a bowl with tortilla chips for scooping, in a bowl with extra milk to make a soup, on top of rice, on top of a salad to make a “bowl”. All of these are heated up, btw. One thing is used in a bunch of different ways. Sour cream and guac make this extra special.

Find a “burrito soup” that fits your tastebuds and run with it.

Keep “fast food” in your freezer. It’s no big deal to keep a pizza in the freezer (or something else you know everyone will eat) for when you’re too sick to cook or just aren’t feeling it. It beats eating just chips for dinner or calling for food. I also try to keep the fruit bowl full for snacking. Being hungry will make you quit before you start. Go ahead and eat an orange while you’re making dinner.

Bonus tip If you’re cooking something that can be frozen, double it and stash some for another meal when you aren’t in the mood to cook.

I doubt most people are good at this. Anyway, good luck.

I’m far too lazy to meal prep on my weekends. But I will choose 3-4 dinners for the week and write it down like a menu and get the ingredients I need for them. If I know it’s going to be a crazy week, I will cut the vegetables immediately after grocery shopping that way I can just dump them in the pan or bowl or whatever when I’m cooking. Then I have options to choose from several different foods over the week.

I always make enough to have leftovers so I don’t have to plan for lunches too.

Best of luck

I don’t cook much. I’m chronically ill, but if i were working full time I imagine the same problem would come up - it’s too labor intensive to do all of the time. Switching from “is this a real meal” to “is this something that i enjoy eating and will it provide me with enough energy” has made me a lot less miserable about it. What I’ve done for myself is find out which foods are simple, good, filling, yummy, and don’t take a lot of effort for me, and then eating those throughout the day while cooking bigger batches of things throughout the week . It takes a minute to find out which foods are good for this, but once you have a few “i know i can make this and i know i will want to eat it” foods in your back pocket, it gets easier. Some of my faves are premarinated cuts of meat which can be baked and then cut up later, fried up bell peppers onions (eat them with toast or goat cheese!), bean salads or chillis, roasted potatoes, and baked patties of hot sausage with a bunch of oatmeal mixed into it (good on toasty bread or alone). You can also pre-cut or pre-prep things like veggies and spice mixes so that you have them already ready to go when you’re hungry. I also eat a ton of stuff that people don’t consider real food- oatmeal, fruits, nuts, cereal, english muffins with avocado, cheese and crackers, peanut butter, baked beans, toast, banana breads, bread and olives, etc. I find it helps to plan “laziness” directly into the process. Doing what you can to minimize dishes can also help a lot, as can trying new foods. You never know what thing is going to become a go-to.

I’m a big fan of instant pots. chili, curry, risotto, etc all without any prep other than chopping.

When my wife and I were both working we faced this challenge. We meal prepped on the weekends, portioning the meals out and storing them in our freezer. You could, also, just cook 3 days worth of meals to be frozen and have grab and go type stuff in the fridge (like salads, sandwiches, etc.). We, also, would choose Saturday to have our main meal out and Sunday we would make a pizza (My wife made a crust from scratch or sometimes we would use a pre-made store bought crust) with fresh ingredients.

I cook 6-7 nights a week for a household of four adults. I work a full-time job, but it’s WFH so I don’t have commute time. This is part of the strategy, but I could do and have done it while commuting to and from work each day as well.

Each Monday, I plan out the meals for the week. I write them down. The meals are based on ingredients we have on hand as well as things which are on sale from the local ads, or which someone from the household has requested.

If any ingredients are needed for the week which we don’t have, they are added to a mutual shopping list and someone picks them up while they are out.

When I’m done with work, I relax for 30-60min and then it’s time for cooking. I bring out all the ingredients for the meal and get them set up near my cooking station. I bring out pans, cutting boards, utensils - whatever I feel I will need.

I try to fill “dead” time with prep for other parts of the meal - that way time is used efficiently. Sometimes I’ll rope one of the others into cutting veggies or doing other prep, but i usually like to fly solo. Just some music to keep me moving and maybe a beer.

As I’m cooking, I’m also cleaning up. Utensils which are no longer going to be used are getting rinsed and put into the dishwasher. Pans are getting rinsed and set aside for washing up later. Counters are getting wiped down as needed. The idea is to have as little to do at the end as possible.

After the meal is ready, if stuff needs to cool, that’s a great time for a smoke out on the porch. Then back in to eat.

Rinse and repeat. I enjoy cooking, it keeps me centered at the end of the day, and a good meal at least once per day is important. The key things I have learned are mainly to prep everything in advance which you can, to clean as you go, and to buy ingredients which overlap for multiple meals in a week.

Bonus: Make a few extra helpings and freeze them. Freezer containers are cheap, and it’s generally only a small extra cost for the additional food. Then you have ready to go meals when you don’t feel like cooking.

Our primary motivation was weight loss ahead of our wedding, but the guiding principle should transfer: make it super easy. We’ve found that the lowest effort method will win out over all our intentions, so we’re rolling with it.

An example: chicken curry with rice. Also a disclaimer, we have a couple of appliances that make stuff slightly more convenient but I’ll put the alternative down too.

It takes around a minute to wash the rice then chuck it in the rice cooker. you can get microwave rice cooker pots or just use a pot on the stove. Once you’ve got the weights and timings dialled in this produces perfect rice just as you’re going to serve with no interaction during.

Then cook the chicken breast and set a timer for when the rice will be ready. We use an air fryer, but used to use the oven.

5 minutes before the chicken is done whip up the curry sauce.

Then it’s just serving - rice goes in the bowls, slice the chicken and put on top, then pour on the sauce.

Whole process looks like this:

• start rice cooking
• start chicken cooking, set timer for 25 minutes
• go do something else for 20 minutes
• start heating the sauce
• when chicken timer goes ding, put the rice in bowls
• slice the chicken, add to bowl
• pour on curry sauce

Total cook time is around 26 minutes. Total interaction time is around 10 minutes.

It’s also super cheap.

Edit: forgot to mention that you can cook whatever veggies you want in the same thing as the chicken and don’t need to adjust your timings

I dunno if my life is easier because I’m a vegetarian or what but we mostly make our food and most of what we make is not time consuming. Steamed greens and carrots with boiled potatoes. Roasted veggies in the oven. Stir fries. Beans and whatever stewed in a crock pot with canned tomatoes.

For breakfast, oatmeal with chia seeds, hemp hearts, flax meal, sunflower seeds, peanut butter and fruit goes together real easy. Alternatively, frying some eggs and having the above things on toast instead of oatmeal.

Usually we make a bunch of stew or soup that will be used for lunch over several days. Cook like 4 cups of rice to go with it. Then for dinner, usually steamed stuff or perhaps roasted veggies or a stirfry with rice or noodles.

Homemade pizza is also pretty easy. It takes about 5 minutes to throw the dough together, then you can prepare whatever toppings you want while the dough rises for 45-60 mins. Takes ~10 min to bake when ready. I can post the recipe if anyone wants it but I’m sure you can find stuff online.

My fiancé and I both work and we usually get groceries for 1-2 days at a time and cook for the two of us most days of the week. For us there have been a few key elements to being able to cook after work:

• Find dishes that you like that take max 45 min to cook including prep.
• Once you each have a handful of go-to’s (let’s say 5-7), you can rotate between these on a regular basis. Of course some will be more suitable for lazy days than others.
• Be sure to update your short list when you feel it’s getting boring to cook and eat the same things.
• It really helps to always have tortillas, pasta and rice in the house.

Hope some of this is helpful!

We eat yogurt marinated chicken breast pieces cooked on a frying pan with curry sauce, alongside rice-cooker steamed veggies. We usually get 6 lbs of chicken, chop and marinate in an evening, then eat that for ~4-5 days; also keep on hand things like pasta and frozen meatballs for the days where we’ve run out of chicken but haven’t shopped yet. We allow ourselves to order food once or twice a month but no more; this usually happens on days where we’ve run out of chicken.

That both of us are totally cool with eating the same thing for months on end really helps cut down on cooking time. 😅

We usually cook a large meal or two during the weekend. And will generally get two to three meals out of the dish.

What does “working full-time” mean for you?

How many hours are you away from home each day? I suspect everyone is answering with their view of what working full-time is, but it can be different depending on where you live, how long your commute is, if you work shifts, overtime, etc.

Just for reference, between last Monday and Tuesday I spent 90 hours at the office. Luckily exceptional, but no, I didn’t cook.

Also, leftovers can be great.

Using some prepared ingredients like already marinated chicken or precut veggies can help if you have a small kitchen. Also things like frozen pizza and bag salad is great when you don’t feel like cooking and much cheaper than takeout. As far as meal planning I decide what I want to cook for the week and write it on a whiteboard on my fridge.