Louis Tikaram Has Three Home Cooking Tips for Busy Parents

Between running Brisbane’s acclaimed Stanley, filming a TV series and raising two daughters, Louis Tikaram has had to get smart about cooking at home. Not in a shortcut-the-flavour kind of way – he’s been known to make falafels from scratch after a trip to a Lebanese restaurant sparked his kids’ curiosity – but in a think-three-steps-ahead kind of way.

If you find yourself pressed for time when making meals for the whole family, here are Tikaram’s three home cooking tips for busy parents.

Cook once, eat twice

Tikaram’s biggest tip is simple: stop thinking just about tonight’s dinner.

“Don’t think about only the dinner you’re making today,” he says. “Think about the dinner you’re going to make in a couple of days, and try to do something for that dinner as well.”

In practice, this might mean doubling the rice for dinner, and using the leftovers for tomorrow. It might look like doubling a batch of lamb kofta or dumplings, eating half and freezing the rest. Either way, you’re doing one shop, one prep session, and getting two meals out of it. “It’s not really adding any time,” he says.

Tikaram’s go-to family dish is a seafood fried rice that spans two nights. He steams rice in the Miele Combi Steam Oven and uses half on a different meal that evening, saving the other half for tomorrow (“Day-old rice is better for frying anyway”). The next evening, he steams king prawns and fish fillets before combining it in the wok with the leftover rice, egg, baby corn, green onion, soy, oyster sauce and fish sauce.

Get started on tomorrow tonight

With the chopping board out and the kitchen already a mess, Tikaram uses the time to get ahead on the next night’s protein.

If he’s planning marinated chicken Marylands for tomorrow, he’ll spice-rub them tonight. “Not only is it more flavoursome and tender – you’ve already done a portion of that job,” he says. “The next day, you’re really only doing 25 per cent of the work.”

Steam everything you can

The Miele Combi Steam Oven is the most frequently used appliance in the Tikaram household – and it earns that spot in multiple ways.

For vegetables, steaming instead of roasting cuts cooking time from close to an hour down to around 20 minutes. “It makes everything super quick, super clean,” Tikaram says. No oil required, and no standing over it peeking through the oven door.

When his eldest daughter was born, the steam oven took on another job: making all her mashed and puréed baby foods. Fruit, vegetables, and whatever else she needed were cooked in the steam oven in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take. And because the family doesn’t own a microwave, it handles all reheating of leftovers, too. One appliance, a lot of problems solved.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Miele.