11 easy tips on how to make cooking less stressful

So consider doing some legwork while turning to already-prepped stuff to do a lot of the heavy lifting—for example, combining boxed linguini, jarred marinara and shredded rotisserie chicken for a protein-rich pasta dish, or adding a scrambled egg and fresh spinach to microwavable ramen for a more complete noodle bowl.

6. Select a versatile main

Picking a main ingredient “that you’re going to plan to use multiple ways” is a great way to simplify the process, Dada says. You want something not only tasty and nutritious enough to eat multiple days in a row but that can also be easily adapted to a wide range of recipes. It’s the tenet behind component cooking, which has you prepare different meal elements rather than full-on dishes, so you don’t have to eat the same thing day after day. You can do it with any ingredient, from sauces to sides, but choosing a main—say, grilling up a bunch of chicken at once—can really make those weekdays easier.

But! To cut the stress even more, you don’t even have to cook it yourself. Take a store-bought rotisserie chicken, for instance: “You could turn that into quesadillas, a chicken salad for a sandwich, or tacos, or you could pair it with pasta and pesto,” Dada says. In this case, there’s really two major benefits: Since you already have the chicken handy, you’ll dodge the mental gymnastics of deciding on a new main every time (at least until it’s all used up), and since the chicken is precooked, a big portion of the work is already complete.

7. Meal prep on the weekends

Yes, this still involves frontloading on the work—there’s no real way to get out of that—but doing it when you’re not crunched for time (or wiped from the office) makes it feel a little easier, we swear. So devote a few hours over the weekend to meal prep, whether the component cooking kind or the more traditional version: chopping veggies, making sauces, grilling meat. Investing the time and effort during your free hours will really “take the pressure off the weeknights when you’re tired,” Nielsen says. Besides, she adds, “The more that you do it, the faster it becomes, and the less of a chore it becomes.”

8. Build a meal entirely from the ready-to-eat stuff

In this case, you’re not “actually cooking” at all, Dada says. “You’re just assembling.” Think: Throwing together a sandwich from whole-grain bread, cheese, cold cuts, lettuce, pickles and mustard, or making a custom burrito bowl from microwavable rice, chopped veggies and the aforementioned rotisserie chicken.

9. Pair a ready-to-eat meal with a homemade side

And we’re not necessarily talking anything fancy, either. You can keep it as low-effort as making a green salad to go with a canned soup or frozen pizza. Of course, you’re not locked into these shortcuts for the rest of your home cooking career; you can always get more creative down the road. “As your interest grows, you can say, ‘Okay, I’m ready to tackle some new things,’” Nielsen says.

10. Choose meals that will allow you to multitask if that’s what you need

If time is an issue for you, you might find it helpful to opt for a meal that doesn’t require a ton of supervision during the cooking process—say, a simple sheet-pan recipe. In this case, “I find that your hands are free, so you could be doing two things at once,” Dada says—like giving your child a bath while your meal is cooking in the oven. Similarly, a one-pot meal like a soup, curry, chilli or rice dish involves minimal effort since—as the name suggests—everything ends up in a single receptacle.