We hope you love our recommendations! Some may have been sent as samples, but all were independently selected by our editors. Just FYI, BuzzFeed and its publishing partners may collect a share of sales and/or other compensation from the links on this page.
We asked the BuzzFeed Community for their cooking shortcuts, and here are some of their best tips!
1. Set aside an afternoon to chop a BUNCH of onions (or other veggies!) then stick them in the freezer to pull out whenever a recipe calls for 'em.
2. Or just go ahead and buy chopped, frozen onions and other frozen, prepped veggies at the grocery store, so all the hard work's basically done for you.
3. If you prefer fresh produce but hate the time it takes to dice things with knives, get a little food chopper to take care of all that work in no time.
4. Or upgrade to a full-sized food processor to slice, dice, shred, chop, and purée to your heart's content.
5. Skip the forks and save your fingers: Shred cooked chicken in no time using your hand mixer or stand mixer.
6. To keep rice on hand — or quinoa, or whatever grain you like best — without having to cook it each time, make a huge batch then stick it in the freezer for later.
7. Or just get a rice cooker, which makes it super simple to keep grains around whenever you might want some.
8. With an electric kettle, you're only ever five minutes away from a big boiling pot of water.
9. Or, boil your water while you start your pasta sauce, turn it off/down to keep it warm, then reheat it to boiling again when it's pasta-o'clock.
10. Or, if you'd rather just set it to cook and forget it until it's actually time to eat, put your pasta in a microwave cooker while you heat up the sauce on the stove.
11. Upgrade your vegetable peeler — or just buy a nice one in the first place — because prepping carrots, potatoes and zucchini faster means dinner's done that much sooner.
12. Head to Trader Joe's or Amazon to pick up a tray or two of Dorot's crushed garlic frozen in small cubes — it has all the flavor of freshly minced garlic, because that's what it is, with none of the mess.
13. Or make your own frozen garlic by mincing a bunch of cloves in the food processor and freezing them in an ice cube or mini-muffin tray.
14. Look for pre-prepped packs of veggies at your grocery store that can make short work of a simple stir-fry.
15. Make incredible spaghetti sauce by just adding meat and extra garlic and herbs to your favorite store-bought jar.
16. For a quick and simple side, steam chopped or frozen veggies right in your microwave.
17. Whether you call it a dump bowl or a garbage bowl, keep one next to your cutting board to skip multiple trips to the trash.
18. When you're planning to attempt a particularly complicated dish or an easy one you haven't mastered yet, try practicing ~mise-en-place~.
19. If you'd like, you can simplify mise-en-place by using prep bowls that have measurement markings on the inside.
20. Kitchen shears chop small things (like herbs and scallions) and messy things (like chicken breasts and canned tomatoes) in way less time than it takes to use a regular knife.
21. Make friends with the seasoning mix aisle in your grocery store and explore other gourmet seasoning blends for inspiration to try different recipes.
22. Prep a bunch of chicken breasts in different marinades one weekend, freeze them, and then pull them out each morning to defrost in the fridge in time to cook for dinner.
23. Pick up a rotisserie chicken and make it the base protein in a quick and easy meal.
