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Batch cooking

When several meals in your plan use the same sauce or stock, make it once in a batch ahead of the meals that need it.

When several meals in your plan use the same recipe, like a sauce or stock, Mise en Party combines those into a single batch to minimize your cooking time across the entire week. The app tracks how long each recipe keeps, so you're never planning a meal around leftovers that have gone bad.

When a recipe is made in one batch

The plan: the rice cooked with the eggplant covers the next day's Mapo Tofu dinner too, so that rice is crossed off as done

When you plan the same recipe multiple times, whether directly or indirectly through sub-recipes, Mise en Party checks if the later instance is in the shelf life of the first, and if so, merges them together to save you time.

The rice card at the eggplant dinner: making 6 cups, the Mapo dinner's portion made with this cook

How long a batch keeps

Each recipe has its own recorded shelf life. After cooking, the batch is listed under On Hand in the home page's left menu; it is highlighted in the last quarter of its shelf life and marked Expired once it passes.

On Hand: the Falafel past its shelf life, marked Expired, above the Panang Curry and rice still fresh, and Clear expired below them

How to cook a batched dish fresh

  1. On the meal page, click change ▾ on the instance of the dish you would like to remove from the batch.

    The Mapo dinner's rice card: made with the earlier cook, its change ▾ ringed

  2. Choose Cook it fresh to cook that day's dish on its own day, or pick another day to cook it.

    The rice's When to cook dialog: Earliest (combine cooks), Cook it fresh, or a day

Questions

Does batch cooking mean cooking everything on Sunday? It can! You can use the extra weekend time to make sauces, breads, and broths that can then be used for the rest of the week.

Can I batch a whole dish, not just a sauce? Yes. Scheduling whole meals multiple times will also combine them into batches within their shelf life.