Meal Prep is a great tool that allows you to get nourishing food on the table in no time flat.
I have been meal planning and prepping for some time now. Some weeks I get every meal planned and prepped, other weeks I do not. But I always make sure that I get a menu planned. That alone makes life so much easier!
Having a plan in place reduces my stress because I only have to make a decision one time, instead of seven times throughout the week! Stresses me out just thinking about all that decision-making, lol! I no longer stand in the kitchen at 4:30 with the frig door open wondering what I can throw together to fed my hungry family.
On the weeks that I can get all prep done, life is even easier! All the ingredients are either prepped or cooked, I simply pull out what I need and get to cooking.
In this post, I went over the nuts and bolts of meal planning and prep. I went more in-depth with the meal planning portion of the process in this post. If meal planning and prep is new to you, please read these posts first to give you a good understanding of how it works.
Recap: Steps to Meal Plan and Prep
- Pick a day to plan meals, shop, and prep.
- Decide all meals and snacks for the week.
- Make a grocery list.
- Go shopping.
- Decide when and how you will prep
- Prep your food.
Tip #1 – Adjust meal prep to fit your life!
Meal planning and prep are great tools because they can be easily adjusted to fit your life and cooking style, as well as how you prefer food cooked.
Life is never the same, meal prep doesn’t have to be either. It is very easy to adapt these handy tools as you need to from week to week.
The reason for this is because there are many different ways to meal plan and prep. Read more about meal planning here.
You do not have to prep every recipe. Prep can be done for just the recipes that take the longest to cook or require the most prep.
Simply prepping your starches or proteins for the week could be helpful for you.
You can even break meal prep up into two mini-sessions instead of one big session. This would look like doing meal prep on Sunday for meals you will cook from Sunday through Wednesday. Then on Wednesday, you have another prep session for meals from Thursday to Saturday.
The point here is not to get stuck in an all or none mentality. Make the process work for you!
Tip #2 – Organize your meal prepping
Prepping all the ingredient for real food meals takes a bit of time so make sure you go into meal prep with a plan!
Take a small amount of time beforehand to break down your recipes. Determine which recipes you want to prep the ingredients, cook completely, or make at the time of eating.
Make a list of all the ingredients that need to be prepped, group all the same ingredients together. For example, if you need 2 cups of sliced carrots for one recipe, 1 cup of shredded carrots for another and you want some sticks for snacks. Write them all down together BUT be sure to notate which recipe they are for. That way you can label and store them properly.
Organize your time and keep it running smoothly by starting the items that take the longest first. Let’s say you want to roast 2 whole chickens to reheat for meals later in the week. Put those babies in the oven first thing! As they are roasting, you can work on quicker tasks like those carrots we talked about.
Tip #3 – Mix and match the various meal prep styles
There are various ways to prepare food for future meals. And you do not have to stick to just one way!
If you prefer meats to be freshly cooked, then do not worry about them and focus on prepping all the side dishes.
If you want to make a casserole, you can either cook it fully or prep all the ingredients to stir together when you are ready to cook it.
Here are some various ways you can meal prep:
- Ingredient prep: For this method, you prep all of your ingredients for the recipes you will be making in the week. You then portion the ingredients per recipe and store them separately.
- Batch cooking: During batch cook, you are prepping and cooking full meals or side dishes to be reheated later.
- Assembled, but not cooked dishes: This is just as it sounds, you will prep all ingredients and store them together. Think freezer meals that you will toss in the crockpot or Instant Pot later.
You can even ingredient prep a few recipe for the week while batch cooking a couple others. Let your schedule determine how you will prep.
Another idea is to double up a recipe while prepping it. This will allow you to have the meal twice, you can eat one now and freeze the other for later. You could even cook the entire double batch, eating some for dinner and the rest for lunches within the same week.
Again, I go back to using meal prep as a tool and adjusting it to work for YOU!!
Tip #4 – Store correctly and label in detail
So you have sent a few hours in the kitchen prepping all your food, now what the heck do you do with it??
Now you want to store and label everything so that all your hard work is not in vein!
Make sure you have plenty of storage containers so that you can separate ingredients and meals as needed.
Depending on the recipe, you can store all the ingredients together or you might need to keep them in separate containers. For example, all the veggies for a stew can be stored together, but the meat would be in its own container since you will be searing it off first.
Salads and slaws can be stored together but leave the dressing off, storing separately and adding to the veggies just before serving.
Be certain to label your storage container with detail! List the ingredient and recipe it is for. If using glass, you can write the info in a dry erase marker. Or use Post-It notes on each container. I find it helpful to stack the containers together per recipe.
Also, be sure to store your food properly. Nobody wants to go through all that work of prep only to have the food go bad. Here is a great article on how long to store foods for safety.
Meal planning and prep is so handy! If you do not use it, I urge you to give it a try, even if it is for one or two meals a week. I know you will find benefit in it as I do.
Let me know in the comments if you meal prep. Share your favorite tip too! I love finding new tips to make the process easier.
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