How to Simplify Food Prep for the Holidays

Thank you to Best Buy for sponsoring this post. All thoughts are our own.

With the holidays just around the corner, I know I am going to be spending a lot of time in the kitchen. With 6 kids and an assortment of friends and family who will be stopping by, food prep and cleanup takes up a huge amount of time. These tricks will help you simplify your holiday food prep and help you enjoy the time you have with your family.

Create a staple meal plan

With so many things coming up at the last minute during the holiday season, I like to keep things simple whenever I can. I make a 2-week rotating meal plan that we can make on repeat throughout the holiday season. For those days when something special comes up like a night out with friends or a family dinner, I just eliminate that night’s dinner in the meal plan.

I fill the rest of the schedule with family favorites like chili, soup, and breakfast for dinner — things I can prep in my sleep because we have made them so many times. I LOVE using this freezer meal plan when I am really short on time. Keeping meals simple leaves me some brainpower for the rest of the things on my to-do list.

Set aside one day for food prep

Prepping once a week (and cleaning up once a week) saves me so much time when life gets busy. For basics like chopped onion or veggies, I bag them up in freezer bags after chopping and pop them in the freezer until we need them. I can do a full month’s worth of chopped onions and veggies in less than an hour and limit the time it takes me to get dinner on the table and limits extra grocery trips too.

For items that don’t freeze well like cucumbers or lettuce, I prep them and seal them up in a container with a paper towel to keep them fresh longer.

Use kitchen tools that serve more than one purpose

I only keep tools in my kitchen that can multitask as well as I can. I don’t have the space for one-trick ponies. Because of that, I love kitchen tools that save me time though because they make my time in the kitchen shorter and more enjoyable.

The Breville Combi 3-in-1 Microwave fits that requirement perfectly, now available at Best Buy. With the ability to work as a microwave, Air Fryer and a convection oven you’ll have all the tools you need to prep dinner quickly on those nights when things are busy. I love that it is 50% quieter while it is running too, so it doesn’t add to the chaos that we already have going on. The “Fast Combi” function of the Combi Wave 2-in-1 cooks your favorite dishes faster so you can get dinner on the table even when you are short on time.

Delegate kitchen chores

I’m a big fan of sharing the workload whenever possible. Assign each family member a day of the week to be in charge of cooking dinner. Make everyone responsible for keeping a different area of the kitchen clean. I get overwhelmed when my kitchen isn’t put together so having some help ready to go lowers my stress level so much.

The kitchen is the heart of our home during the holiday season. I hope these tricks help you enjoy your time in the kitchen more so you can stress less.