A batch-cooking kitchen in Boise
Emma
I cook once and eat five times. Big pots, a full freezer, and food that travels well in a pack — that's the whole premise here.
See Emma's recipesIn her words
Most weeks I'm out of the house before seven and back after dark, so I've built my cooking around Sunday afternoon. One big pot, one tray of something, and a stack of containers. It isn't romantic but it means I eat actual food on Wednesday instead of standing over the sink with crackers.
The other half of this site is trail food, because Boise puts foothills at the end of my street and I keep testing what survives four hours in a warm backpack. Some of it has been genuinely bad. The recipes here are the ones that weren't.
Always in this kitchen
- Deli containers
- Stack flat, freeze square, cost almost nothing. I own forty.
- Smoked paprika
- Does the work of a grill in a Tuesday-night apartment.
- Frozen spinach
- Better than sad fresh spinach and it's always there.
- A 7-quart pot
- If I'm turning the stove on, it's for six servings minimum.
Emma's recipes
- Batch cooking
Sunday chili that freezes right
Built specifically to survive the freezer — no dairy, no pasta, nothing that turns to mush at week three.
1 hour 30 minutes · Serves 8, or 4 with leftovers frozen - Trail food
Trail oat bars that don't crumble
Four hours in a warm pack, still one piece. The ratio of syrup to nut butter is the whole engineering problem and this is the answer.
45 minutes plus chilling · Serves 12 bars - Basics
The green sauce that fixes leftovers
Day-four rice and a plain chicken thigh become dinner. I make it every Sunday and it's gone by Thursday.
10 minutes · Serves About 1 1/2 cups