Cooking Dinner become a Chore? 4 Easy Dinner Ideas Guaranteed to Help

Cooking dinner at home saves money, but can quickly become a challenge. Having a hot nutritious meal on the table every night is work that can become monotonous and boring. Here are 4 ideas to rejuvenate your enthusiasm for cooking.

1. Cooking like the Pros

Nearly everyone has eaten a meal that was so delicious that they asked for the recipe. However, famous restaurant recipes are hard to come by because restaurants are very protective of their unique recipes and try to keep them secret.

Now there are numerous copycat recipes sites that offer these “secret” recipes for you to prepare at home. One of my favorite dinner ideas sites offers the recipe for my favorite meal, Applebee’s Honey Grilled Salmon. To find yours, visit this site, or google copycat recipes.

2. Step-by-Step Pictures

There are some recipes that we might hesitate to try because they seem too complicated, or use cooking terms that we are unfamiliar with. Watching all the food network cooking shows is one way to learn, but if foodtv isn't right for you, another solution might be this easy cooking website, where you will find free recipes, with step-by-step pictures, which can make trying new recipes less intimidating. This site is especially great for those who learn best by seeing something done, rather than just reading about it.

3. Grab a Crock pot

To avoid coming home and having to start cooking, use your crock pot so that you can come home and find dinner waiting for you and your family. You throw everything in the pot in the morning, and let it cook all day without you. Slow cooker cooking makes mealtime as nice for the cook, as it is for the diners. If you’re not using your crock pot regularly, dust yours off and start making some easy recipes with it.

4. Organize Your Recipes

Cooking every night is hard enough, but especially trying when you can’t find where you put the recipe. When you find a dish that you want to make a permanent addition to your dining schedule, take the time to place it in with your other recipes. If all your recipes are scattered about, try a recipe organizer, or some online recipe software to help you organize all your recipe ideas.

How to Save Money?

Cooking at home is one piece to the frugality puzzle. For more ways to save money, subscribe to my Frugality Blog.