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Meal Prepping is simple and can be quick, if you have a clear plan of action before you start.
When you meal prep all of your food for the week, make sure you have a plan for what you are going to eat that week. After your shopping trip is over and you are back home ready to get started, follow these simple steps below to make your meal prep quick and most importantly…stress free.
13 Pro Tips For Preparing Meals In Advance
Preheat the oven and turn on the music! Both are equally important as without a preheated oven your food will take longer to cook and without music, you won’t enjoy the process as much.
Take out any boards, dishes or bowls you need to cut and store your prepped food in for cooking. I use these great cutting boards and stainless steel bowls I found on Amazon.
Get all your ingredients ready and lined up in order of what you want to tackle first.
Next, take out all the fruit and veg you’d like to use, clean it thoroughly and dice it any way you may need/want. Then simply set aside to be used for later when cooking or pack it away if thats it. My go to storage for food going into the fridge are these amazing containers that came in a very handy 32 set in various sizes.
Clean all your prepping surfaces down and start preparing your meats.
Keep the chicken to the very last to prep, as anything it touches will need to be cleaned down thoroughly.
Once all is ready and prepared to cook, start with the food that needs to go into the oven. While that is cooking, you can do other things.
If you are going to cook rice, get that going now too. Pro TIP: Invest in a rice cooker as those things make it so much easier and just like the food that’s in the oven, the rice cooker just happily cooks away in the background while you can concentrate on other things. This one from Aroma is one of the very best for less than $30!
Next, cook the meat that is not oven baked (diced/minced beef, fried chicken, etc.) and any veg that is to be cooked on the stove.
Once all that’s done, make your way to the dry foods, such as oats for your breakfast for example. Portion those out into your jars or Tupperware and have them ready to grab and go in the mornings. I use 8oz Mason Jars which you can find here.
Just before everything comes together and is ready, start to lay out all of your Tupperware and weighing scales for the cooked food. I use these simple reusable black BPA Free, freezer and microwave safe stackable storage containers! They come in various sizes and shapes, so pick the ones that suit you best of course.
Portion out your meals and store them anyway you like (fridge, freezer, etc.).
Congratulations. You have completed your first meal prep and your kitchen probably looks like a complete mess now…haha…but nothing a quick clean up can’t fix. Here is my very last tip for you which you have probably already figured out by now…
13. Make sure to clean up after yourself while you are cooking and prepping your food. Do not let everything you used to prep your meals pile up and wait till the very end to do the clean up...or all the good work you have done will be overshadowed by the negative feeling you will have when looking at the mountain of pots and pans you have to clean!
Summary
Yes, I know… some of these points were very obvious, but I wanted to cover even the simplest thing such as turning on the oven, as some people might be new to cooking in the first place…
If you need some help with how you can manage doing all of this on a budget, check out my article on 9 Helpful Tips For Eating Healthy While On A Budget.
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