Weekly meal prep is far less time consuming and daunting than it can appear at first glance.
There are a lot of services, gadgets and techniques that have been made to help people create a week’s worth of meals in very little time at all, and with a little planning and a few tricks up your sleeve, you can make meal prep incredibly easy.
Make Cooking Easy For Yourself
The most popular meals for meal prepping are large pasta and curry dishes perfect for batch cooking, or simple meals that can be prepared in the oven.
A lot of meal prep involves very little time in the kitchen; prepare your protein and vegetables, put them in the oven, add a grain source and you have a complete meal with barely any effort.
A slow cooker is also ideal for this, as you can put all of your ingredients together, go through your day and have several delicious meals waiting for you when you get back.
Don’t Make Everything From Scratch
It is tempting and thoroughly rewarding and delicious to cook everything from scratch, but the secret to cooking is that you do not have to.
Cook simplified versions of recipes, use spice kits, shortcuts and ready-made ingredients to make the process far easier.
For example, if you do not want to mess around with grain at the end of cooking, you can buy packets of rice, quinoa and other grains, which turn a 20-minute job into a two minute one.
Rotisserie chicken, pre-cut vegetables, tinned or frozen veg can all save you time cooking, and that can be enough motivation to continue.
Bigger Is Better
If a meal takes the same amount of time to make four or even six portions of than the time it would take to make two, double your recipes, portion them out and freeze them.
This can save you so much time and may even save you a meal prep session in the future.