How to Handle Cooking Burnout

Are you starting to feel cooking burnout? I know I have definitely been struggling with cooking burnout off and on over the last two years. Since the pandemic started I felt like I was cooking almost all meals.

Sometimes I felt so overwhelmed planning and cooking meals that I would hit a wall. When that happened I would take a few weeks and use up our freezer meals and do some takeout. This break allows me to recharge and then coming back to cooking is more enjoyable. After the apartment fire it took me about a month to get back into cooking and the break was good for me.

Do you handle all of the cooking for your household? Are you trying to figure out how to get back in the grove of cooking? Below are my top tips to get you back into the cooking game.

1. Start Small. Don’t try to get back into cooking with complicated meals at first. Pick recipes that you are your go to meals for your family. I love to make recipes that I know off the top of my head including tacos, enchiladas and breakfast for dinner.

2. Make a list of all the meals you love to cook to make a meal plan. When making a meal plan I find that choosing meals is easy but deciding what night to cook what can be much harder. Normally I will set up a general plan but allow myself to move meals around as I need.

3. Give yourself grace when you don’t really feel like cooking. There are some nights when I have no energy to cook and on those nights I allow myself to heat up a meal from the freezer or order takeout.

4. Look for inspiration in your favorite cookbooks. Flipping through a cookbook can spark a great idea for dinner. I have found that when I am excited about a recipe I am more likely to cook it.

5. Browse Pinterest for new recipes that catch your eye. Pinterest is a great place to find new recipes for dinners and one of my favorite places to find holiday treat recipes. I love to search for recipes for using different vegetables and always find something new to make.

6. Spend one day a month doing some freezer meal prep. I love to make a big pot of chili and put it up in the freezer for those nights I don’t want to cook. When you have the freezer meals made it makes it much easier to have delicious meals for your family on nights you don’t really feel like cooking.

Cooking burnout is real and effects all of us at one time or another. The last nineteen months have been hard on everyone and having to cook at home for most meals hasn’t been easy on most people. Using the tips above you can help reignite your love of cooking and get back in the grove.