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

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:

• Fruity salmon skewers with yogurt dip
• Vegetable platter
   

What we need for this:

• AMC cookware
• Audiotherm acoustic control
• Navigenio mobile cooking plate
• The new Cook & Go app

 

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.

 

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

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.