voices in food.
Confession: I hate batch cooking
For Debora Robertson, the joy of making a meal lies in novelty and spontaneity rather than repeating and reheating yet another frozen-ahead casserole. It’s controversial, mind…
Bear with me, because some of you aren’t going to like this. I say it with love and as someone who respects your choices – dinner is dinner – but whenever I think about batch cooking, my heart sinks like a soufflé too long out of the oven.
I know that for many people – particularly at busy times of year such as Easter, when (we hope) feasting, spoiling and getting together are on the menu – it makes a lot of sense to get ahead if you don’t plan on having shards of chocolate egg for breakfast every single day. And of course, more generally, I understand that desire to plan, to create order out of an entirely disordered world, particularly if you’re a parent.
But personally, if we’re being entirely truthful, I think it kills joy stone dead. Whenever I’ve done it, trying to feel the virtue, thinking it would save time, I often don’t fancy what I’ve made – certainly not the third or fourth or fifth time. Cooking for me is that daily creative act, and this sort of ‘fettling’ feels too much like wrangling food into submission.