Company, Tips & Tricks

The Home Office Challenge: Healthy and delicious cooking from your home office

  • June 2021
  • Melissa

For more than a year now, we have been spending not only our free time but often also our working time at home more and more often. Working in a home office has become the new normal for many and will possibly shape the working day of many for a longer period of time. In a small home office challenge, Melissa (our AMC blog editor) tried to cook fresh and healthy meals in a short time and with little effort while working in her home office. Follow her through her working day and find out how she did in the Home Office Challenge.

The AMC The Home Office Challenge

 

If you count as one of those who have been working regularly from home for quite some time now, you’ve surely asked yourself on several occasions what to eat during your lunch break. Reaching for the ready-made salad from the supermarket, the bun from the bakery, or the take-away food from the snack bar around the corner are convenient ways to quickly satisfy your hunger without much effort. However, especially after a prolonged period of time, these options also become monotonous — and aren’t necessarily the healthiest, either. Furthermore, these types of lunch menus can also get expensive in the long run.

Fresh cooking at home is the healthier and oftentimes cheaper alternative for home office lunches. However, anyone who regularly prepares their lunch during their lunch break has certainly reached their time limits more than once: After all, lunch breaks are often finite and can leave little time to prepare and eat lunch.


We too are currently working predominantly in a home office and know this problem only too well. In this little home office challenge, we try to cook fresh and healthy meals in a short time and with little effort while working in the home office. To make it a little more exciting, we want to prepare not only our lunch, but also dinner.


Accompany Melissa (AMC Blog Editor) through her workday to find out how she did in the Home Office Challenge.

 

What we’re cooking:

What we need for this:

 


7:15 a.m.: The prep


The day starts early for many of us — and I’m no exception. I would like to start working at 7:45 a.m. So that I can work undisturbed later, I already prepare all the ingredients now. I want to have fruity salmon skewers with yogurt dip — a simple and delicious recipe from the AMC Recipe Community.

The preparation of the salmon skewers.


Ingredients
 

Mustard-yogurt dip:

  • 2 tbsp. mustard
  • 150 g Greek yogurt
  • 1 tbsp. honey
  • 5 dill stem(s)
  • Salt, pepper

 

Salmon skewers:

  • 1 mango
  • 400 g fillet of salmon
  • 150 g sugar snap peas

 

I quickly cut up the salmon, mango and sugar snap peas, skewer everything, pack the salmon skewers straight into the fridge, and then start my work day.



10:00 a.m.: Into the pot they go


Time for a short coffee break! I have a meeting at 11 a.m. and want to have lunch at noon. Now is the ideal opportunity to already put everything in the pot insert.

The salmon skewers in the pot insert.



The trick? With our new Cook & Go app, I can use my smartphone to conveniently control the entire cooking process. You can easily connect the app to the AMC cooking system and thus conveniently control all cooking processes from wherever you like. I get everything ready and pair the system with the Cook & Go app. In the app, I can then specify exactly when I would like the cooking time to start. So what’s especially practical about it? With the help of the app, I can change the start time, duration, and cooking program as I like without having to be in the kitchen. I set 11:50 a.m. as the start time and get back to work.

Start time, duration and cooking programme can be changed as desired with the new Cook & Co app.

 

11:49 a.m.: The meeting is dragging on

 

We’ve all been there: The meeting ends up lasting longer than originally planned. For me, however, this is not a problem because I’ve already prepared everything and only need to change the start time for the cooking process. So I simply take my smartphone, open the Cook & Go app, and change the start of the planned cooking time to 12:10 p.m. This way my salmon skewers will be fresh, warm, and ready for me to enjoy after the meeting.

 

 

12:09 p.m.: A quick trip to the post office!

 

The meeting is finally over — but now I’ve remembered that I have to quickly take a letter to the post office. I set off, almost forgetting about the salmon skewers. I quickly grab my smartphone, open the Cook & Go app, and shift the cooking time to 12:20 p.m. Even from outside the house, it works perfectly thanks to the Wi-Fi module in the Navigenio mobile cooking plate.

12:30 p.m.: Bon Appetit!


Despite some obstacles, lunch is freshly prepared and waiting for me to enjoy. I quickly mix together the yogurt dip and voilà: my freshly cooked, delicious, and healthy lunch is ready. All prepared without much fuss in my home office. I’ve just mastered part 1 of the challenge!

Fruity salmon skewers with yoghurt dip.

12:45 p.m.: Prepping dinner


There are 45 minutes remaining until the next appointment. That leaves me enough time to prepare dinner for today. I would like to prepare a steamed vegetable platter with the Oval EasyQuick.

 

Ingredients

  • 500 g cauliflower
  • 300 g green beans
  • 2 medium-sized fennel bulbs
  • 50 g butter
  • 3 tbsp. breadcrumbs
  • 3 tbsp. ground almonds
  • Salt
  • Half a bunch of parsley

 

I quickly clean and cut the vegetables before putting everything in the oval roaster.

The cleaned and cut vegetables in the oval roaster.

I then place the oval roaster on the Navigenio and close it with the Oval EasyQuick steaming lid. I set the Navigenio to “A”, connect the Audiotherm to the app, and set the cooking time. Since I want to have my dinner at about 6:15 p.m., I set the start time to 6:00 p.m.

The Audiotherm on the Oval EasyQuick steamer

1:20 p.m.: Back to my desk and on time for the meeting


The lunch break took a little over an hour, but now I don’t have to worry about dinner after work. Ten minutes before the meeting, I’m ready to go and can still answer a few newly arrived emails before things get started.

 

 

5:30 p.m.: Time to wrap up the workday!

 

I leave my work desk for the day and realize that I’m actually already hungry. I therefore set the start time in the Cook & Go app to “now” so that my dinner will be ready sooner. In the meantime, I prepare the almond butter that I want to serve later as a topping for the vegetable platter. It takes just a few minutes to complete this task. While the food is cooking, I use the time to relax and read my book on the sofa for a few minutes.

5:50 p.m.: The meal is ready!

 

The Cook & Go app lets me know that the food is ready. When the cooking time is over, the Navigenio automatically switches to keep-warm mode and maintains a constant temperature of 60°C for an hour. Since I still want to finish reading the current chapter, I leave the Navigenio in keep-warm mode.

In keep-warm mode, the temperature is kept constantly warm at 60°C for one hour.

6:00 p.m.: Challenge completed!


Part 2 of the Home Office Challenge has now also been mastered! Despite some unforeseen events, both lunch and dinner were a success and quite easy to pull off.

Part 2 of the Home Office Challenge was successfully completed.

We hope we’ve been able to motivate you to cook fresh food more often in your home office — and start your own Home Office Challenge! Here you will find more delicious and healthy recipes with a short prep and cooking time. They’re very easy and quick to make from the comfort of your home office.


Would you like to always be sure that your dishes are being prepared using the perfect temperature and cooking time? Do you want to be able to conveniently control your cooking processes with your smartphone no matter where you are? Discover the smart AMC Cooking System now and experience for yourself how easy, fast, and delicious cooking with AMC is.