Just as an alternative to the other thread.

What things do you use to save time, or use a short cut when cooking? What are your convenience ingredients?

Garlic puree in tubes is the one thing I always try and have in the cupboard. Yes sometimes I will use garlic cloves, ( I even used to make my own puree) but the puree is so convenient and can be added quickly to anything from soups to cheese on toast. ( you can tell I really like garlic can't you)

Tomato puree in the tubes as well, freeze dried herbs ( chives and fine herbes); coarse ground black pepper for when you run out of peppercorns.

I make batches of stock and then freeze into ice cubes trays, so that I have some always to hand.

I always have a bag of dried chillis in the cupboard.
Knorr stock.
Frozen peas.
Dried Pasta.
Frozen herbs.

Uncle Bens microwave rice!!! 2 mins and its done - worth every penny IMO.... I'd never go back to doing things the old fashioned way

Me too! bought stock cubes are ridiculously over-priced and never taste as good. I also buy huge tins of pineapple and freeze the fruit in one container and freeze the juice in trays for stir-fry. The final ice-cube tray freezer (other than ice!) I use, is fresh finely chopped herbs like coriander.

I always have a few packets of instant white sauce - doing a roux is so time consuming. The cheap packs of instant cakes are good to have on stand-by, just chuck in the blender with an egg and you can have fresh serviceable sponge (or cupcakes) in less than 30mins including cooking time! (though nowhere near as nice as proper cakes, they are very quick and always come out perfect).

Packet stuffing, fast action yeast and custard powder are great time savers and as I can't cook a yorkie pud to save my life, I buy the frozen ready cooked ones!

Tinned baked beans are quicker than growing (haricot) beans by several months and also come in a convenient sauce. Well worth the money.

I slosh a dash or two of one of these into almost eveything I cook: worcester sauce, soy sauce, mushroom relish, oyster sauce.

I use soup as a sauce for a bake.

I use the Rock Chopped Garlic that you can buy frozen from Morissons. I buy the chopped red and yellow onions from Waitrose. I freeze the onions too.

I also buy the ready cooked chicken from Iceland or Makro.

I buy lots of minced beef and cook it all up at once with onions and garlic. Then I freeze it in ziplock bags (about a pound of beef per bag). Then all I need to do is defrost it and put it into my recipes.

I make a huge batch of soup or chili in the crock pot. We eat it for one night and I freeze the rest in portion-sized ziplock bags.

Actually, I follow a lot of the guidelines for OMAC (Once A Month Cooking), but I don't cook really just cook "once a month". I do however like to make big batches of food to freeze (if it is something that will freeze well). It means we have a home-made ready meal any night of the week.

Not everything freezes well. Here is some good info on OMAC style cooking.
http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/oamc.html
http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/freeze.html

OMAC saves time and money. You need a big freezer though! Like I said, I don't really cook only once a month, but when I do cook, I cook a lot and freeze the rest.

OMAC recipes:
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes/oa...zer-make-ahead

I often buy lemons and limes when they're cheap, squeeze them and freeze the juice in ice cube trays. Brilliant for adding to drinks and when you've run out for pancakes, stir fries, salad dressing etc.

Great suggestions. I'd love to do the cook once a month thing, but our freezer is always stuffed anyway. Maybe in the future I'l get organised.

I like the soup for sauce thing I might try a pasta bake with broccolli and cheese soup.

I use a lot of soy instead of salt, have to be careful as everything can come out the same shade of brown, if I'm not careful. I buy the Silver one from oriental supermarkets as I think Amoy is such a rip off for such a small bottle.

i always use crushed garlic and chilli in jars, saves burning horrible places later on after chopping the chillis

I haven't found a brand of crushed garlic (in jars) that I like. That Lazy Garlic stuff is awful--too much vinegar. That's why I like the frozen chopped garlic. It's *almost* as good as fresh garlic.

I agree the paste in jars or chopped is too vinegary for my taste. I have tried the frozen and that's good and reasonably priced. I also once bought frozen garlic greens, which were really nice, and an easy garlicky garnish

Is it that much hard work though to peel a clove and run through a crusher, if it tastes so much better? I have never tried prepped garlic, seems a bit of a gimic to me.
Microwave rice is a stepp too far for me.

It really doesn't taste that much better honestly, a squeeze from the tube and that's it, it's puree and not crushed so it mixes in easier as well.

I loved the puree stuff when we had reasonably priced tubes of it available, but our asda (in their infinite wisdom ) have stopped stocking it and all they have is tiny 'gourmet' tubes that are 3x the price of 3 fresh bulbs. I never knew about frozen stuff, sounds great - I'll have to keep an eye out for it, cheers

Not really an ingredient, but for rice I have a microwave steamer thing that only cost a fiver (from one of those household gadget catalogues they stick through the door) - only takes 6mins for perfect rice every time - can't recommend it enough!

I was just looking at one of those on the rice cooking thread...I might try it. If it can do wholegrain/brown rice in 10 minutes it sounds good to me.

The instructions reckon 10mins, but I find that over does it a bit and makes it stodgy. I do less time (5-6mins) then leave it to sit for a 5 mins with a couple of sheets of kitchen roll trapped under the lid to absorb excess moisture - works a charm.

Gia Garlic paste is excellent no vinegar and tastes just as good as fresh, they have it in sainsburys.

http://www.amazon.com/GIA-Garlic-Paste-by/dp/B000BGPHNS

A clever way to store lettuce, cabbage and the like is to individually punch holes in the leaves and place them in a ringbinder in the fridge. For example you can File 'Cos' under 'C', 'Iceberg' under 'I' and so on. Simple!

Pretty much live off Frozen Veg, no prep and doesn't go off.
Frozen Garlic.
I tend to buy cook-in Sauces and liven them up. e.g Spag bol add herbs & red wine or Curry add chilli and spices.

I try and live off of home made ready meals but I can never seem to make the batches big enough. 2 days and it's gone.