This Batch Cooking Hack Will Change Your Life.

I'm a professional chef who loves a good dump. Dump bags are going to change the way you cook. They are so easy and so simple, and they make delicious, easy, simple food. It's a big old freezer bag. You put a load of ingredients into it, freeze it, forget about it, and then when one day you go, ah, I wanna do this for dinner, you get it out the freezer, into the fridge, and then you cook it in the slow cooker. No prep, no nothing. You've already done all the hard work. All you need to do is get it cooked. So let's take a dump together, babes. We're gonna start off by making Caribbean spiced lamb shanks. A little tip, before you do any of your batch cooking, label the things first, because once you put the ingredients in, it's really hard to get a nice label on it. So what is the date today? It's sometime in August. I don't know when you're seeing this. Put in 18th of the 8th, 26th. Contents, lamb shanks, bitch. I'm gonna use the book just because I can't remember off the top of my head, but there is a whole dump bag chapter in my new book, the Actually Delicious Batch Cookbook. God, there's so many recipes, I can't find it. Here we go. This is, can I just read? This is the prep. Tip all the ingredients into a large freezer bag, seal the top, and freeze. That's how easy it is, but you do need to do a little bit of chopping. So we've got a couple of onions, and because it is going into a slow cooker, like if you've ever used a slow cooker before, basically all the ingredients cook down so much that even if you don't really cut them precisely, it just gets cooked anyway. So it's not, you don't have to worry about being like, doing your brunoise, just get it chopped, whichever way is easiest. Ooh, another little tip as well. If you're doing a load of prep and load of dump bags, or even just prepping food to go into bags anyway, try and find something that you can fold the bag over, and then it's just gonna make easier, make it easier for you to put stuff into it. So for example, I'm gonna chop this onion. Again, I'm not being precious about it, and that can go in, rather than having to keep like, try and open a bag and pour stuff into it. Obviously, my lamb shanks ain't gonna fit in, so I will take it off at that point, but for now, for the like, dry ingredients, we'll just use it like this. So a couple of onions. Oh my God, oh my God, they're strong. That's some strong onion. Breathe through your mouth. It's aromas in your nose, I think. I always see so many other things about onions, I don't know which is true anymore. I'm obviously using these plastic freezer bags, but I just wanted to kind of show you, you can kind of use anything, but if you want to use the silicon ones, amazing. If you want to use little glass boxes instead, you could do a dump box. Oh, my eyes. Next up, a couple of tablespoons of plain flour. This is gonna help thicken it when it goes into the slow cooker. Also, if you wanted to, and it could save you even more time, and I wouldn't hate it for it, you can do what you want to do, but you could use already frozen diced onions if you wanted to, ready to go. You could do already chopped garlic. I'm all for a little time-saving hack. Who wants to be peeling garlic? Not me. Mince this slightly. So what's really good is that these can kind of just be done. Let's say you have, I mean, that is completely randomly chopped. It don't matter. It's all gonna be cooked for hours. If you've got a day where you're like, I have got a few hours here where I could just prep some stuff, this is perfect for that. Prep it all, and then you've got it ready to go whenever you need it. Well, not ready to go, it needs to be cooked, but it's basically ready to go. We've got one teaspoon of nutmeg. We've got one teaspoon of allspice, ground allspice. I love these sort of smells. Oh my God, allspice is delicious. It's so savory and so like. We've got a lamb stock cube. You just throw this in unwrapped, or a little stock pot, you know, the little like jelly sort of ones. Couple of bay leaves, just the dry ones, they go in, and then a little bit of jerk seasoning paste. Now this is gonna be 150 grams. It's about half that jar. Yeah, it is exactly half that jar, perfect. Tablespoon of tomato puree. I've done that horribly. I hate doing tomato puree like that, but I've done it. I'll re kind of wind it down at some point. Last but not least, shanks. So I've got four lamb shanks. One, two, three. And now you want to get most of the air out so it's flatter in the freezer for you. Just give it a little bit of a rough and tumble without breaking the bag, just so that the marinade kind of gets onto the lamb shanks. Yeah, that'll do. And then get it fairly flat, and then that can go into the freezer until we need it. I've got my frozen lamb shanks. Now I'm gonna defrost them in the fridge overnight, all about 12 hours until they're fully defrosted. Lamb shanks are defrosted and ready to go into the slow cooker. So I've got a nice big slow cooker for this one because we've got some big shanks in here. Basically, this is where the other half of the dump comes from. You dump the ingredients in and then you dump the ingredients out straight into the slow cooker. If you can, always have a bread scraper, pastry scraper, that's the one, in the kitchen. And then just very carefully, without ripping the bag, push all the lovely goodness to the open side and then we can squeeze everything out. Last little bit of sauce into the slow cooker. You do just need a bottle of beer. It's about 330 ml. Why have I lost the ability to open a beer? It's been a long time. Oh my God! There we go. In reality, we should be using a Red Stripe, but we've got a Peroni instead, it's fine. And then about 300 ml of water as well. Doesn't need to cover everything. It's just so you got some liquid to help cook down that delicious lamb shank and just keep it nice and tender. Where's my lid? This is my mom's slow cooker and the lid looks like a melted witch is hat. Very on brand, but you can't, well, that's that. Get that in there. Five hours on high. Let it do its thing. The lamb shanks are ready. Oh, oh, I did it. I managed to get it off with the lid. Hang on. Whoa, they smell so delicious. Spiced, aromatic. The all spice really comes out, which is beautiful. The whole kitchen has smelled gorgeous all day because of these. So carefully get your lamb shanks out because these will fall off the bone. One has already fallen off the bone. It's the nature of the game. When the meat's so tender and it's cooked so nicely, it's just gonna happen. They are so tender. Last little bit with this recipe is just to, because this sauce in here is so gorgeous, we're gonna reduce it down in the saucepan, make it nice and thick and delicious. I need to stop saying, is there another word for delicious or is all my food just so good? I can't help calling it delicious. Umptious, irresistible. Tasty. Tasty's not enough. Thank you. Delectable. Ooh, delectable's a good one. Onions and all straight into the pan. One thing about lamb, it is fatty, so you want all that lovely fat. And then we'll just reduce this down by about half so it's a nice thick, umptious, umptious? Delectable. Delectable sauce. Our lovely spicy sauce has reduced down, super thick and delicious. And you'll get a lovely layer of fat and oil on top. Just use that to then just drizzle over your lamb shanks so they get that gorgeous sheen on them. We can plate it up. Super simple. I've just done some sweet potato mash by roasting sweet potatoes in the oven and mashing them down with some butter. I'm gonna plate it that way. Just like that. Little bit of wilted spinach. This is just a suggestion of what you can do. Wilted spinach, butter, garlic, and chili. Throw that on there. Then your gorgeous, delicious dump bag. Dump bag, let me remind you, dump bag lamb shank. You wouldn't think that this came out of a dump bag from the freezer. And then loads of your lovely spicy, thick, rich, blammy, rich, delicious, spicy, rich lamb sauce over the top. Ooh, have I got any sprinkles? Hang on. Should we do parsley or chive? Bit of both. Like we're in a restaurant in the 70s, very finely chopped. And that is a lamb shank dump bag. Please, just look at how tender this is. That is falling off of the bone. And there was no effort. We just put a load of ingredients into a bag into the freezer and put it in slow cooker. It's not your usual, oh, my simple dinner, my easy dinner. This is so delicious and exciting and different and grand because of it being a lamb shank that no one would believe you if you said this was a dump bag from the freezer. And that is why it's an actually delicious batch cooked dump bag. Oh my God, that's so good. You have to try that. The next dump we're gonna be taking is a little tagine dump. So this is chickpea, courgette and red pepper tagine. Super simple, super easy. So remember, just write down your date and your recipe title. Oh God, I've done that wrong. Tagine, super simple. Large jar of the, I do like the queen chickpeas. If you can get the queen chickpeas, get them. If not, just a tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed. I'm not gonna add them in yet because I've got some of the little bits to add in first. We've got harissa and I wanna say toothpaste, not toothpaste. It's tomato puree. Harissa tomato puree, go into the bag. About a tablespoon of each, to find out in my book. A teaspoon of turmeric, coriander and ground cumin. Lovely, delicious spices. We've got chopped up apricots, dried apricots. Add a little bit of sweetness. Then a tin of tomatoes, chopped or peeled plum ones will be fine, or even the cherry ones. Those cherry tomatoes in the tin are nice. Basically, a tin of tomatoes is what we need. Also, these dump bag recipes also work just as slow cooker recipes as well. So you could throw this straight into the slow cooker if you wanted to. If you're already prepping some stuff, you could do it twice. You could do one that's in the slow cooker straight away and one that you prep in a bag to go into the freezer. Get this out. And then it's your jar of chickpeas, straight in. I've got a couple of onions, chopped. I've got peppers, red peppers, chopped. And I've got a courgette, quite thickly chopped so it doesn't completely disintegrate into the tagine. Ooh, I've lost the pepper. Ooh, I've lost some onion. And then last, start calamity cooking. Then we've got four cloves of garlic. I'll just grate them into the bag. And this is a recipe for about four to six people. Delicious, moist garlic. Now what you'll notice is I'm not seasoning anything in these dump bags. I do that when it's in the slow cooker, so whilst it's cooking, just means that you've got a bit more control over how much salt and pepper you put into it. Give it a little massage. Make sure that's done up before you start tipping it upside down. That would be a disaster. And then remember, just try and take, some people I've seen do this with a straw. Not completely necessary. You can just pull it up across a flat surface with a little bit of that open. And then eventually it will push all of the air out when you get to this point. Seal it back up. Dump bag number two. I'm fancying a little bit of courgette tagine, so it's fully frozen. I'm gonna get that in the fridge to defrost overnight. Get in there! Right. I've got my defrosted tagine, my little courgette roast potato. Sorry, there's some roast potatoes in the corner and I'm really distracted by them. They look really good. That's a whole nother video you can watch somewhere else on my page. So it's all defrosted. And again, I don't know how, like it's a repetitive video, but it's going straight into the slow cooker. The amount of different things you could put in as well. Like if you, I know it's not, I'm pushing my book, but you could also add different flavours into here. You could add different spices, bit of lemon in there. You could add different herbs. Even though I'm giving you the base recipe, change it up if you want to. So this one cooks on high for three hours. So whilst you wait for these delicious meals to cook, why don't I just give you a little advert break? Our delicious tagine has had three hours. Oh, I think it's had a bit more actually, to be fair. I think we got distracted by about four hours, but it's fine. All we want to do, give it a mix. Oh, it looks beautiful. The colours are gorgeous. A little squeeze of lemon going in. Just going to put some pepper in there. Lots of pepper. And a good, healthy pinch of salt. Another final mix. And then this is ready to go as well. So I wrote a slow cooker book, so I know how easy a slow cooker is, but a dump bag slow cooker is even easier. For this, I've just made a little bit of couscous to go with it. So it's just a bit of equal parts boiling water to couscous. I'm just throwing some herbs, lemon, salt, tomatoes and a bit of onion in it. Nothing crazy, nothing major, but it's a delicious side to like mop up the juice from the tagine. And then, whoa. That is a hearty, hearty meal. A little sprinkles of parsley, coriander, anything you've got. I've got some chives as well. And then, oh, you know what? I'm going to add a little bit of yoghurt to this. Feel like yoghurt would be right. That is a dump bag tagine. Now, a little tagine in here, a bit of couscous. This is my go-to dinner when I'm like, oh, I'm not going to eat meat. But then I go back to my chicken tikka masala. Either way, delicious. It's so fresh. Considering it's not, in terms of the process we've gone through. But the flavour's so vibrant and still there. And it's just, it's a really great, simple, easy dinner. Or lunch, actually. Perfect for when you just need something that's going to fulfil you, enrich you, and make you feel great about yourself. Okay, next up we have the British classic chicken tikka masala. This recipe is just my go-to, favourite, easiest chicken tikka masala, but most delicious one you'll ever try. Not to toot my own trumpet or anything, but it's really good. Coconut milk. We've got 100ml-ish, maybe a bit more. Let me just grab a maryse, get all of that out. Then we've got onion. You may need a bigger vessel to get this into, but we'll make it work. Tomato puree, large tablespoon. Little bit of brown sugar. We have got ground almonds, desiccated coconut, fenugreek, and garam masala, and cardamom pods, and cinnamon stick. And cumin. And coriander. Now when it comes to it, I'll explain this to you because I'm going to show you how to cook them, but just make sure you take the whole spices out once it's cooked. Ginger, garlic. The garlic just goes in whole, just smashed up. Ginger, just chop it up. Then you want to get tikka masala spice paste. You can get this from all supermarkets. There's loads of different brands of it. But we want two hefty tablespoons. Or three hefty tablespoons. Three hefty tablespoons. Let's get that to spit in. I'm going to do a tablespoon of white wine vinegar. Adds a nice acidity to it. We need a tablespoon of ghee. I'm going to lift this up slightly. I'm going to get a tin of chopped tomatoes in. Mmm, that sounded lovely. So we've got a kilo of chicken thighs here. Yeah, one kilo of chicken thighs. Just need to open it and pour it in. And then, again, just give it a little massage. Get all the meat covered. And then that goes into the freezer as well. And that is our third delicious dump bag. Wish my dumps looked that good. I want to eat my chicken tikka masala tomorrow. So it's out of the freezer, and it is going into the fridge to defrost overnight so I can have it tomorrow for a little bit of cheeky chicken tikka masala dinner. The chicken tikka masala is fully defrosted, so, again, I'm going to try and open it, and then we're going to dump it straight into the slow cooker. There is something so great about dump bags. I mean, is it hard work? No, and that's why I love it. Get that. Oh, it smells so good. But just think, you've got this in the freezer, and then all you need to do is just get it out, defrost it, and then just get it cooked. And by the time you get home from work or whatever you're doing, you've got a delicious meal at the end of it. And this one is a chicken tikka masala because we love it. I think chicken tikka masala is my favorite dish in the world. Lid on. That cooks for five hours on high. Our chicken tikka masala is ready. It is hot. The ghee and all the fat and the deliciousness has now made this beautiful ruby red. Fantastic kind of sheen above the rest of the curry. Carefully get the chicken out because it is super tender. It's just falling apart. The thighs are so, so tender and gorgeous. There's one cardamom pod. Douche. Another one. Douche. And another one. Douche. Okay, the chicken is mostly removed. No, it's not. What's that? Oh, cinnamon stick. You got to remember, you want to remove now the cinnamon stick and the five cardamom pods. I've got three of the pods already. There's the cinnamon stick. Now we're on the hunt. Oh, there's one. One more cardamom pod to get. Where are you, Christmas? Why can't I find you? Now, you can either do this in the slow cooker as it is and use a hand blender, like I'm going to, or you can put it into a food processor if you want to. But to make the sauce, that beautiful, rich, thick sauce, we're just going to blend it. Once your sauce is lovely and thick and blended, you can return the chicken to the sauce to plate up. It's just carefully, carefully, as I tip the whole thing in. Give it a mix and then we can eat. I've got a little bit of rice, which I managed to get into my little dome. Just thought it'd be fun. It was whimsical. And then get a couple of portions of your beautiful dump bag chicken tikka masala. The meat is so unbelievably tender. It's just the best way to eat chicken. Oh, look, the fat's coming back to the top as well. And now, purely because I wanted to, we've got a little bit of sliced up ginger for garnish and some onion. It just felt right. A little bit of coriander. Dinner number three from a dump bag. The most simplest, easiest and delicious way to make dinner. This is my dump bag chicken tikka masala. From ingredients dumped into a bag, to frozen, to defrosted, to into a slow cooker and now into my mouth. The chicken is so tender. The flavours are so prominent, considering the steps we've gone through. It's honestly one of the easiest and best dinners you'll ever make. All hail the chicken tikka dump bag. I've done three dump bag recipes for you today, but there is a whole chapter of dump bags in my new book, The Actually Delicious Batch Cookbook, as well as dump bags. We've got food to grab and go. We've got takeaways. We've got the sweet saviours. And also just like your traditional sort of batch cooking recipes you would imagine, but reimagined by moi, eh, moi, Kat, my home ec. She's been incredible on this book. So if you want any more recipes like this, then please go check out the book. If you don't want to buy the book, then don't and just keep subscribing to me on here. And I'm sure I'll do some more recipes at some point. Anyway, love you, bye.