Because of the wide diversity of meal-prepping methods, dishes and meals, one of the most important questions to answer before you start your meal prep routine is your ultimate goals.
Your goals ultimately will shape your shopping habits, your recipes, your meal plan and your routine around it, and different meal-prepping techniques suit different goals better.
For example, if the goal is fitness then the aim is calorie and nutrient control, meaning that the priority is in the planning, whilst if the goal is to save time, then it is about making the most of your cooking sessions.
One goal that has become increasingly relevant for many people who have recently started looking into meal prepping is to save money, and besides the inherent monetary benefits of having food available and efficiently cooking them in bulk, there are plenty of ways to save money with a good prep.
If you aim to cut down on your food bills and eat delicious food at the same time, here are some top tips for saving the most with your prep.
Choose Filling And Nutritious Ingredients
There are two schools of thought when it comes to affordable meal prep. The first is to batch cook to reduce your shopping bills and the second is to buy ingredients that will keep you fuller for longer.
Wholegrain rice, pasta and other grains do not cost much more in bulk than their less nutritious brethren, taste nicer and will keep you fuller for longer, and fill out your protein with a lot of different vegetables such as spinach, onions and tomatoes.
These will help fill you up at meal times and avoid the temptation to snack, which can cost far more than you realise.
Keep A Balance Between Big Batches And New Flavours
Effective meal prepping is about making portions large enough to save money, but also allowing yourself a variety of different meals and tastes.
After all, most people will get sick of the same flavours after a while, and this is typically the moment when quite a few people either significantly downscale their meal-prepping efforts or quit entirely.
There are of course solutions to this. If you are cooking in bulk and have the freezer space, make more than one type of meal at a time, which gives you a selection to choose from that only increases as you prep more.
As well as this, keeping your preps simple and swapping between different mixes of grains, vegetables, protein and spices can also help maintain that motivation.
Try having a mix of dishes you know you like and new meal prep ideas that you think you’ll love.
Shop Late
Near the end of the day, most supermarkets will drastically lower the cost of a lot of their fresh fruits, vegetables and meats, so if you can fit it into your schedule, shop late the night before your prep day and save a lot of money.
Ultimately, your portions are going straight in the freezer in either bags or containers so there will be no difference besides how much money you save.