Semi-finished homemade products - we do it ourselves. Homemade frozen semi-finished products

Every woman dreams of freeing herself from household chores, even for a short time. Recreation or joint family leisure in comparison with daily standing at the stove clearly wins. Regular consumption of convenience foods from supermarkets can hardly be called healthy food, especially for children.

The freshness of the product is also in question, as well as the observance of the correct storage conditions in the store. Reduce cooking time and meet the needs of each family member by preparing a variety of convenience foods once a week and sending them to the freezer.

Production of frozen meat and fish semi-finished products

The main advantage of homemade semi-finished products (as opposed to store-bought ones) is that they are made exclusively from natural products. They do not pose a risk to human health and can be safely fed to children. After a busy working day, semi-finished products are brought to readiness and a side dish is prepared for them.

Meat and fish semi-finished products ( cutlets, meatballs, zrazy and much more) are prepared in large quantities according to a standard recipe. Next, the finished product must be placed in a dish, after making sure of its frost resistance. After that, the container can be sent to the freezer. Consider the features of cooking frozen fish cakes at home.

As the main component, you can use small-boned fish ( hake, zander, perch, etc.)

It is noteworthy that in the case of using frozen fillets of industrial production, the cooking process is greatly facilitated.

The fish should be cut into fillets that will not contain skin and bones. Then they are cut into small pieces and passed through a meat grinder.

Adding Soaked Bread allows you to increase the friability of the cutlet mass, and its repeated passage through a meat grinder contributes to uniformity. A raw egg favors the viscosity of the resulting mass. Spices ( salt and ground pepper) improve the taste of the finished product, as well as finely chopped onions.

Careful manual kneading and shaping of cutlets is the next step in cooking.

The proportions of the initial ingredients are as follows: 1 kg. minced fish, 300 grams of bread, 2 eggs, onions, salt and pepper to taste. Perishable items must be placed in the freezer immediately.

Otherwise, the development of microorganisms in a favorable environment makes cutlets completely unsuitable for consumption. Meatballs are cooked the same way..

Semi-finished products are individually decomposed on the board(plate) that have been floured beforehand, as contact with each other will cause deformation. It is recommended to freeze fish cakes in small portions. After a short freezing process, the finished products are placed in a food storage container and hermetically sealed.

The advantages of this method are obvious, even our ancestors actively resorted to it. Due to the lack of freezers, prepared semi-finished products were prepared in large quantities and stored in special bags all winter.

Other, no less useful semi-finished products - home-made

Frozen cabbage rolls or stuffed peppers are very tasty. It is noteworthy that you can start cooking them without waiting for defrosting. Homemade pancakes are not inferior in popularity, and it is quite possible to spoil household members with them with the help of blanks.

To prepare the dough, we need: 2 eggs, salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Beating should occur until the sugar dissolves in the egg mixture. Then flour, previously sifted, is gradually added. Gradual sifting of small portions of the main ingredient will prevent the formation of lumps, and the dough will be airy, elastic and very light.

Adding a glass of milk with constant stirring will result in a liquid (creamy) consistency. The baking process will be facilitated by adding 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil directly to the dough. The preparation of the meat filling consists in frying the minced meat along with onions.

Pouring milk and simmering the filling until cooked will provide a soft and delicate taste of pancake filler. Baking, forming the traditional form - the so-called pancake "envelopes" and placing the semi-finished product in the freezer are the final stage.

In the case of choosing this technology, in the process of cooking pancakes, it will be enough to use a microwave oven. The use of raw minced meat implies further frying of a popular product.

It is noteworthy that catering establishments with a large flow of customers are acquiring a crepe maker - compact equipment for instant dough preparation.

This is a very useful preparation. Frying can be used for soups, as well as for side dishes and second courses.
Frying is done in several forms: carrots with onions, fried in a small amount of oil; grated fried beets and fried carrots and onions together with tomato paste (preparation for borscht); grated raw carrot.

It should be borne in mind that fried onions, if they lie down for more than a month in the freezer, then begin to absorb the smells of the refrigerator, so its aroma and taste change for the worse. If this is not so strongly felt in soups, then it will be felt in a side dish. In principle, onions do not tolerate freezing very well. But here a lot depends on the freezer, how well it freezes.

But frozen raw carrots are stored remarkably and do not change the taste at all. Since carrots are not fried, they are perfect for children's soups.
The nuance in the preparation of fried frying is not to add a lot of oil, it is better to add a little water during the frying process than to add oil again, otherwise the frying will turn out to be nasty and slimy.

Another point is the manufacturability of the freezing process. Any ready-made dish that you have prepared, whether it be sauce or frying, must first be cooled at room temperature, then placed in the refrigerator, and only then, when the workpiece has cooled normally, packaged in bags.

It is better to freeze with the thinnest briquettes. It is very convenient to use zip packages. Place a fairly thin layer of frying in the bag, about 1 cm. So it will be easy to break off the right amount from the briquette. Also, you can store such flat bags quite compactly.

2. Sauces

You can do different options. For example, fry onions, then add minced meat, then tomato paste or mashed tomatoes, as well as spices and salt.

If you have limited time or really want to eat, then it remains to cook a side dish, for example, pasta and quickly defrost the ready-to-eat sauce. It is convenient to pack such blanks in portions, for this, simply sign on the package how many servings are there and take out the bag that you need in this situation.

For preparing sauces, you can freeze pureed tomatoes and tomato paste. It is very convenient to freeze in silicone molds. Just put what you need to freeze into molds and send it to the freezer.

After the workpiece is frozen, pull it out of the molds and pack it in bags. Such a blank can be used not only for making sauce, but also for soup.

Homemade convenience foods: dinners in 15 minutes

I don't like to spend a lot of time on daily food preparation, so I'm always looking for simple recipes and cooking methods. The idea of homemade convenience foods seemed very interesting to me - and, as it turned out, it can really make life easier.

Famous chefs are often advised to regularly make preparations for the future. So, for example, the legendary Spaniard Ferran Adria recommends always keeping fish, chicken, beef broths, tomato sauce, bolognese and pesto sauces, peas, spinach in the freezer. I use frozen vegetables all the time, but I have never tried to store sauces and broths in the freezer. So, one Saturday, I stocked up on patience, as well as a set of colorful containers and packaging of plastic bags, and I was going to spend half a day in the kitchen, so that later I could enjoy homemade food without any effort for as long as possible. I decided to cook lazy cabbage rolls, hedgehogs with cheese, stuffed peppers, meatballs, bolognese sauce, cheesecakes and broths - vegetable and chicken (and boiled chicken meat at the same time).

Cutlets are the first thing that comes to mind when you think about semi-finished products. I used to cook them for future use according to the simplest recipe of ground beef, white loaf, egg and onion. But with freezing at first there were difficulties. Many advise putting the cutlets first on a cutting board and put them in the freezer with it, and when they harden, put them in a bag. But for some reason, things didn’t work out for me: either the cutlets froze tightly to the board, even though it was sprinkled with flour, or they didn’t have time to freeze to the end and then stuck together in a bag. As a result, I came up with a method that turned out to be very convenient for me: I put the cutlets on a plate covered with cling film or a bag so that there is free space between them, and then I cover it with another layer of film on top. Already frozen cutlets are very easy to separate from polyethylene, put in a bag and store in it.

I cooked lazy cabbage rolls according to the classic recipe. Having fashioned cutlets from the cabbage-meat mass, I sent them to the freezer, also laying them out on plates covered with cling film.

For hedgehogs with cheese, I took 1/3 boiled rice and 2/3 ground beef, egg and onion. Having mixed everything into a homogeneous mass, she made small round cutlets out of it and, putting a piece of cheese in the middle, pinched the edges well, like a pie, and then gave the cutlet the shape of a ball. I froze the hedgehogs using the same “technology”.

Next came the turn of stuffed peppers. I chose classic with meat. It seemed to me that this is one of the most beautiful options for homemade semi-finished products - it's very quick to cook, it's easy to freeze.

From the remaining minced meat, I prepared a huge frying pan of bolognese sauce according to the recipe of Ferran Adria (however, I excluded pork and butter, but added a little red wine), and then, having cooled, I laid it out in containers and sent it to the freezer.

Bolognese sauce (from the book "Family Dinner. Cooking at Home with Ferran Adria")

(can be stored for 5 days in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer)

Ingredients (for 2.5 kg): butter - 225 g, minced beef - 1.2 kg, minced pork - 350 g, onion - 500 g, celery - 150 g, carrots - 400 g, extra virgin olive oil - 150 ml, chopped tomatoes in their own juice - 1.6 kg, sugar - 2 g, tomato paste - 12 g.

Cooking. Place a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Melt the butter. Add the minced beef and sauté until it changes color, then add the minced pork. Saute for a few more minutes, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook for another 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until the mince is golden brown. Meanwhile, finely chop the onion, celery and carrots. Place another saucepan over low heat and pour olive oil into it. Sauté vegetables lightly until tender, about 12 minutes. Add meat to vegetables and mix well. Add chopped tomatoes and puree. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and sugar. Cook over low heat for an hour and a half.

By the way, homemade pasta can also be made for future use and frozen, as, for example, Valentino Bontempi advises. Then your homemade spaghetti and bolognese sauce can be taken out of the refrigerator at any time and cooked in just 15 minutes.

Chicken broth (from the book "Daddy's Girl" by Gwyneth Paltrow)

Ingredients: 1 chicken carcass, 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, 2 celery stalks (chopped), 1 large onion (chopped), 2 carrots (chopped), 3 thyme sprigs, 1 teaspoon coarse salt

Cooking. Place all ingredients in a large soup pot, cover with cold water (2.8 L) and bring the broth to a boil over high heat. Remove foam, then reduce heat and simmer over low heat for 1.5 hours. Cool the broth, then strain and pour into freezer containers. The broth is stored in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks, in the freezer - 6 months.

I added a little more water, but the broth still came out quite strong. When it cooled down, I divided it into 4 servings (about 1 liter each) and froze it in plastic bags - not very aesthetically pleasing, but convenient.

Boiled chicken meat

I took the chicken meat off the bones and, dividing it into portions and putting it in containers, also froze it. It can be added to salads, soups, vegetable stews, or, lightly fried, mixed with mushroom, garlic and cream sauce.

Vegetable broth (from Gwyneth Paltrow's Daddy's Girl)

Ingredients: 1 large onion (chopped), 2 carrots (chopped), 1 celery stalk (chopped), 1 leek (chopped), 3 garlic cloves, crushed with the flat side of a knife blade, 4 sprigs of parsley, 4 sprigs of thyme , 2 sprigs of tarragon, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon of coarse salt, 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, 2.8 liters of cold water.

Cooking. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring the broth to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes over low heat. Let cool and strain into a clean container. Such a broth is stored in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks, in the freezer - 6 months.

The vegetable broth is very flavorful. I froze it in small bags, like chicken.

Syrniki

I made cheesecakes with dor blue, and their taste did not suffer from freezing. The same cannot be said about lazy dumplings, which I often cooked before and once froze as an experiment: they immediately crumbled during cooking.

Results: everything about everything took me about 5 hours, I tried to cook several dishes at the same time. But the end result didn’t just make me happy, it shocked me. The resulting blanks were enough for my husband and I for almost three weeks. All this time, we spent a minimum of time cooking, and it seems that we saved a lot of money - after all, store-bought semi-finished products are not only much inferior in quality to homemade food, but also more expensive. Of course, the issue of lack of time can be solved in another way: going to a restaurant, ordering food at home, or, in the end, cooking pasta with sausages is a personal matter for everyone, but I found the perfect option for myself, and perhaps it will turn out to be useful to someone else.

Digging on the Internet, I found a rather interesting topic that I copied to you, especially since the author has nothing against it.

Homemade convenience foods: dinners in 15 minutes

I cooked lazy cabbage rolls according to this recipe, although it was quite possible to make classic ones.

Having fashioned cutlets from the cabbage-meat mass, I sent them to the freezer, also laying them out on plates covered with cling film.

Bolognese sauce (from the book "Family Dinner. Cooking at Home with Ferran Adria")

(can be stored for 5 days in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer)

By the way, homemade pasta can also be made for future use and frozen, as, for example, Valentino Bontempi advises. Then your super homemade spaghetti and bolognese sauce can be taken out of the refrigerator at any time and cooked in just 15 minutes.

Chicken broth (from the book "Daddy's Girl" by Gwyneth Paltrow)

Ingredients: 1 chicken carcass, 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, 2 celery stalks (chopped), 1 large onion (chopped), 2 carrots (chopped), 3 thyme sprigs, 1 teaspoon coarse salt

Boiled chicken meat

Vegetable broth (from Gwyneth Paltrow's Daddy's Girl)

Cooking. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring the broth to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes over low heat. Let cool and strain into a clean container. This broth is stored in the refrigerator for 1-2 weeks, in the freezer - 6 months.

The vegetable broth is very flavorful. I froze it in small bags, like chicken.

Results: everything about everything took me about 5 hours, I tried to cook several dishes at the same time. But the end result did not just please me - it shocked me. The resulting blanks were enough for my husband and I for almost three weeks. All this time we spent a minimum of time on cooking, and it seems that we saved a lot of money - after all, store-bought semi-finished products are not only much inferior in quality to homemade food, but also more expensive. Of course, the issue of lack of time can be solved in another way: going to a restaurant, ordering food at home or, in the end, cooking pasta with sausages is a personal matter for everyone, but I found the perfect option for myself, and perhaps it will turn out to be useful to someone else.

Cooking fast or HOW TO BREAK OUT OF THE KITCHEN WITHOUT LEAVING THE FAMILY HUNGRY

IN THE EVENING I PREPARE SEMI-FINISHED FOOD FOR THREE DAYS

No, folk wisdom is always right! I began to make for three days, only not ready-made food, but semi-finished products, for example, strong broth. Having taken out the meat with a slotted spoon on a plate, I separate it from the bones, crumble it, put it in the broth, and boil it for sure. From a part of the broth I cook vermicelli soup on the first day, pickle soup the next day, then kharcho or others. The broth is over - I make milk soup, fish, and on the day off I take longer, I process a lot of vegetables into borscht, I cook fresh meat or chicken broth - again for three days.
If the cooked meat is too much for soups, I put some of it in the refrigerator, be sure to cover it so that it does not wind up and is not saturated with extraneous odors. I use such meat for salad, pancakes, pies, pizza, naval pasta.
I fry not one carrot in vegetable oil, but several at once, I put some of it in a jar and keep it in the refrigerator. I use carrots for first courses, stewing chicken or fish, dressing salad from boiled beans with garlic, etc. Similarly, I pass the onion in large quantities: it subsequently goes everywhere.
I make melted lard immediately from a large piece. Scooping a spoonful of greaves with fat from a jar in the refrigerator is much faster than frying them every time, say, for scrambled eggs or potato dough. I can fry chicken skin cracklings and also use it at the right time, for example, in egg salad or stuffing pies with mushrooms.
Boiled mushrooms (fresh or dried), fried in vegetable oil with onions, in a few days participate in salad, stewed potatoes, zrazy, soup, cabbage hodgepodge.

I keep the broth from these mushrooms in the refrigerator for no more than two days. On it I cook soup or sour cream sauce (with fried onions, you can also carrots) for pasta, rice. Mushroom broth can be added to stewed potatoes or vegetable stew with fresh cabbage. And the cracklings go wonderfully there.
I cook cereals in two or three portions. I cook barley on water with salt, partially set aside; I add sugar, butter, milk, more salt to taste in a saucepan, boil over low heat, if possible, rearrange to languish in the oven - milk soup is ready. The remaining barley the next day, warming up in a pan with fried onions, I serve as a side dish for the second, and use the next portion from the refrigerator in a pickle or mushroom soup. Similarly, rice cooked without fat is used for several days - for porridge, pilaf, cabbage rolls, kharcho soup, etc. I boil rice only with salt (I boil three glasses of water, salt, pour a glass of rice, turn the heat down to the smallest, cover with a lid, do not touch it for 10 minutes, then turn it off; I do not open it for another 10-12 minutes).
I use boiled beans in salads (with fried carrots and onions; with garlic; with raw onions; with cracklings; with fried ham and onions; with boiled or smoked fish), in vinaigrette, borscht, pickle, mushroom and just bean soups.
Cabbage leaves boiled in salt water, in addition to cabbage rolls, go to “cabbage in sour cream”, “envelopes” and “envelopes with fish”, as well as in crushed form - to lazy cabbage rolls, hodgepodge, fish stew.
All these and other semi-finished products without additional heat treatment, for example, in a salad, are used only on the day of preparation, and on the following days - after boiling or roasting.

SEMI-FINISHED FOOD HELP TO COOK FAST

The presence in the refrigerator of several types of semi-finished products of a high degree of readiness made it possible to quickly compose complex dishes in the morning. So, I get a full-fledged mushroom soup in 20 minutes by boiling potatoes over high heat in water with salt and onions, adding concentrated broth with meat, fried onions and carrots, boiled pearl barley, fried mushrooms, mushroom broth, sour cream, boiling, then holding on low heat, bringing to taste and adding dried herbs.
Not quite correct, but “quick” pilaf is done in a few minutes by frying semi-finished products from the refrigerator in a deep frying pan in vegetable oil: boiled meat that needs to be peppered, pour a spoonful of sugar into boiling oil, a pinch of cumin, if you like - a handful of raisins, add from fried carrots and onions in the refrigerator, put garlic, mix, pour in any sauce, even of your own preparation, containing tomato, bring everything to a boil, mix with boiled rice, reduce heat; if there is not enough liquid (oil with sauce) at the bottom, add a couple of tablespoons of broth or water, cover with a lid; bring to a boil, turn off.

BLANKS - A GOOD HELP

I also have blanks that I actively use: adjika from tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, garlic, pickled cucumbers, a semi-finished product for pickle (some, which turned out to be empty, are grated on a beetroot grater, placed in half-liter jars, sterilized and rolled up with tin lids), borscht dressings (summer - one from sorrel, the other from a mixture of sorrel, Beijing cabbage, chard, green onions, dill, spinach, and autumn - from beets, carrots, beans, zucchini, cabbage, onions, cauliflower, red and brown tomatoes, beet tops and parsley; by the way, all the ingredients of the autumn dressing are listed in the order they are boiled in vegetable oil and the released juice before being placed in sterilized half-liter jars and seaming). All these preparations are made without vinegar (they contain preservatives - cucumber pickle, oxalic acid and tomatoes), therefore, perfectly combined with fresh potato broth, meat broth, sour cream, they allow you to prepare a first course rich in taste in a matter of minutes.
For broths, especially fish and chicken, I dry a “broom” of dill “umbrellas” in the summer. Both dry stems and the "umbrellas" themselves give the soup a very pleasant taste. And a mixture of dill seeds, cumin, black and a little allspice peas, dried a little in a dry frying pan (preferably cast iron), grind on a coffee grinder (then you need to wipe it thoroughly with a soft dry cloth) and use chicken, fish stew, fried vegetables - colored cabbage, green beans, common beans, etc.

LONG LIVE DOUGH!

When friends often began to come to the children, pies, donuts, buns, brushwood, pancakes and other dough products helped me out. Therefore, I began to make dough, both unleavened and yeast, in large portions, leaving half overnight in the refrigerator, which made it possible to modify the products the next day, saturate the family and the children's company. For example, the dough for dumplings could be used the next day on ears with berries, pasties, handkerchiefs with fish, brushwood; watery yeast pancake dough, adding flour - for whites, adding muffins - for a roll with sweet fillings (for example, crushed lemon with sugar / I also make such a blank for future use / and pieces of nuts). And pancakes, given that they are fried before serving, were stuffed with either meat, or cottage cheese, or apples (I bake at least 20-30 pieces of thin pancakes from one batch). From another half of the dough for pancakes, I will make pies the next day, and also half with meat, fish or cabbage filling, and the other half with sweets. As a rule, the dough, having spent the night in the refrigerator, with swollen gluten, is neither better nor worse on the second day, it is just different, not so light, but more interesting. A raw egg is mixed into the unused part of the syrniki dough (you can add flour), lazy dumplings are formed, or you can make them from the syrniki dough without adding anything, but with an additional egg they are lighter, not so gummy. Lazy dumplings taken out of boiling water with a slotted spoon are seasoned with butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar (to get it, grind a couple of tablespoons of granulated sugar in a coffee grinder). Such dumplings are tasty and cooled down within a few hours, while those seasoned with sour cream or unseasoned lose their quality quickly.
But if you have time, do everything fresh!

CAST IRON SAVE TIME

Another lifesaver for me was the quick cooking of second courses in a cast-iron enameled pan (goose-cooker) over high heat, including without water, in hot vegetable oil. It quickly cooks pieces of meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, cereals. Either constantly stirring, then reducing the heat and covering it with a lid, in a few minutes I brought the dish to the desired condition and ran away to work, and the thick-walled cast-iron pan kept the food down.

IN THE FREEZER - EVERYTHING IN PORTIONS

The third help is when semi-finished products in the freezer are already laid out in packages of one serving (for your number of eaters, per frying pan or pan): beef and pork, cut into goulash, chopped chops; fish and liver - in pieces, minced meat is seasoned, for individual dishes, pieces of meat, fish are already seasoned with raw eggs, even the shish kebab is marinated. Then in the evening you can transfer the bag from the freezer to a plate in the refrigerator (on the balcony, on the windowsill or directly on the sink, if it’s not hot), and the next day straight (or through the breading) into the pan or into the saucepan, without cutting, beating, without seasoning. It happened, however, that I took out beef entrecote, and in the morning it turned out that in fact there was liver in this package. Nothing, fries even faster. And one more reason, besides the time spent: semi-finished products are prepared after “shopping”, when no one is sleeping, but would you try to beat the meat at 6-7 in the morning!
The same goes for other products. You can not send unwashed vegetables, berries with tails to the freezer; everything should be ready for use: asparagus beans - cut into pieces that fit in a spoon, sweet peppers - de-seeded and chopped or prepared for stuffing, cauliflower disassembled into inflorescences.

FOOD HEATS FASTER THAN COOKING

The freezer is also good for freezing cooked food. Leaving for a few days on a business trip, she left in the freezer a stack of plates packed in plastic bags (with meatballs, fried fish, chicken liver, stewed chicken, cabbage rolls). All that was left was to heat them up in the microwave. If you still have uneaten kebabs, cutlets, fried fish, etc., and you have time and food for cooking today, put the finished products in the freezer: when there is neither time nor food, you will warm it up as you find it.

IN THE OVEN - IMMEDIATELY TWO-THREE DISHES

If you turn on the oven for any dish, for example, roasting meat, chicken, use it at the same time to cook other dishes, say, sweat porridge, bake sandwiches, make pizza, shortbreads, just dry crackers or roast seeds. Even if you have vanilla cottage cheese casserole on one sheet and fish on the other, the smells do not penetrate the other dish (but there is an original mixture of aromas on the outside).

I AM NOT AT HOME, BUT THE PROCESS IS ON

In addition to the above, you can make the products “cook” even in your absence: knead and leave the yeast dough (if you can’t do it earlier than after three hours, feel free to put it in the refrigerator; yeast, although slowly, will work), soak peas, beans , dry mushrooms and dried fruits, soak buds, scars, peeled radish, pickle semi-finished products, etc. Other products can be left before leaving (or overnight) by boiling a little in salt water (cereals, legumes, broths); subsequently, it will take much less time to bring them to readiness than with continuous cooking.

I'M BUSY AND THE COOKING IS MOVING

And also use the time when you are at home, although you are busy with other things, so that at this time beets, broth, beans or other “long-playing” products are cooked, cabbage and rice for cabbage rolls are boiled, etc.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU COOK?

When preparing semi-finished products for a dish, think about why you can make another blank from this raw material at the same time: it turns out, firstly, saving time, and secondly, a variety of menus. For example, before turning all the available meat or fish into minced meat, look, maybe put some pieces aside for goulash, frying; cut them and put them in the freezer, twist the rest.

When you have free time, cook for the future, then - as it turns out.
I prepare dry cake layers in advance, which can be quickly soaked with warm custard, and with sour cream or condensed milk cream with butter - from the evening before the guests arrive, so that the cake is soaked. Also, a few days before the holiday, birthdays, I bake shortbread (not too sweet) baskets - they can serve salad, pate, fruits with ice cream or cream, boiled condensed milk with dried fruits soaked in alcohol, nuts, soft cheese and custard and etc. You can make blanks from choux pastry - both for cakes and for salad baskets.

A few days before the celebration, you can make preparations of labor-intensive dishes, for example, stuffed fish, chicken, chicken skin rolls, and send them to the freezer in the form of raw semi-finished products, and on the eve of the celebration, when there is a lot of trouble without them, simply by defrosting them, send boil, bake, fry.

WHY THE KITCHEN IS FIRST

The kitchen has become a priority for me over the years, because no one comes home and asks to admire a well-tidy room or a clean window, but everyone wants to eat.

Have food in stock so that the household will not be left on an empty stomach if there is no opportunity to do shopping and cooking, and from which you can quickly make food for those who come without warning.

From the book by Evgenia Efimova "How to escape from the kitchen without leaving the family hungry"