Meal Prep Simplified
Lesson Overview
In this lesson of Onboarding, we’ll cover:
Weekly Meal Prep Simplified
Be Time Efficient In Kitchen
Plan Your Kitchen Workflow
Weekly Meal Prep Simplified
In the previous lesson we covered how to plan your menu and grocery shop for your weekly meal prep session. Below we’ll cover how to be time efficient in your kitchen. If you’re new to meal prep, at first it will feel like it takes forever. Much longer than you likely thought.
We recommend for beginners to block off 2 hours for their first meal prep session to go from start to finished and packed containers. With more practice, you’ll be able to get meal prepping down to 1 hour start to finish for simple recipes.
Be Time Efficient in the Kitchen
Pick two or three options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to eat on repeat throughout the week. This is a huge time and money saver, since you can buy a few ingredients and cook a big batch of a few recipes and portion into containers. This option is a winner to minimize decision fatigue and simplify meal prep.
Cook all proteins
Lean meats like chicken, ground turkey, and steak. You can buy pre-cooked frozen shrimp to save time.
Double your recipe quantity and freeze inventory
Build your freezer inventory. Increase your recipe quantity x2 or x4, portion into serving size freezer bag or containers, and store or later.
For example, you can make 3 lb. of meatballs, double your chili recipe, or double your crockpot shredded chicken and freeze the extras for meals in the upcoming weeks.
Prepare your vegetables
Wash and cut all vegetables. Dice, chop, slice, and have them ready to go.
The purpose of this step is to do mini prep work so throughout the week, it’s easy to throw together meals and snacks.
Steam or cook all vegetables that require cooking
This is really easy. Steam veggies like broccoli and green beans stove top or buy the microwave steam frozen veggie bags.
For vegetables like potatoes, squash, peppers, onions, carrots, and artichokes, you can throw them on a sheet pan to roast or into your air fryer. Spinach can be sautéed in a big pan stovetop.
Cook rice or grains
If you’re planning rice, pasta, or grains with your meals, make a few servings during your prep time and you can either portion it into serving size containers or store in a large container to be used as needed.
Pro Tip: Mix regular cooked rice with riced cauliflower in a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio to increase “rice” volume without overeating on carbohydrates.
Prepare veggie snacks for the week
Chop cucumber, broccoli, green peppers, celery, cauliflower, and baby carrots. Pack veggies into sandwich sized baggies or single portion containers for a quick on the go healthy snack.
Storing you vegetables in easy to grab baggies or containers helps when you’re perusing your refrigerator for a mid-afternoon snack. It also help encourage eating vegetables with your meals if they are ready and available.
Prepare protein snacks
Hardboiled eggs are great protein options to have on hand to use as snacks or added protein in your meals.
Shredded chicken added to dips or hot sauce makes a great high protein spread for veggies or crackers.
Cheese cubes and apple slices or mini charcuterie portions are an easy grab-and-go snack.
Plan Your Kitchen Workflow
Review your menu for the upcoming week and strategize on the cooking.
What needs cooked in the oven, grilled, or boiled for a longer block of time? Prep and get those items cooking first.
While those foods are cooking, what can you prep while you’re waiting?
Chopping veggies, making eggwhite scrambles for breakfasts, or packing meal containers
The more your practice, the more you’ll figure out where and how you can maximize your time
Next Lesson: Deep Clean, Fresh Start
Now that you know how to build your meals, plan your weekly menu, build your shopping list, and shop.
In the next lesson, you’ll learn how to streamline your meal prep cooking session to be as efficient in your kitchen as possible. We’ll give you our best time saving tips to help speed up your prep session.
Click lesson link below to continue.