If you’re guilty of falling for the convenience of stopping by Chipotle at the end of the day instead of cooking dinner yourself, you aren’t alone. Coming up with healthy meals made from the ingredients you have at home can be difficult to accomplish every single day, especially when you’re unprepared. What can I do with tortillas, a single orange, and some leftover Chinese food?
There’s a simple solution to avoid getting trapped in this scenario and it’ll only take 20 minutes. Sit down with a notebook and write out exactly what you need to buy at the grocery store for the week, and then cook it in bulk. This concept is better known as “meal prepping,” and a new wave of Instagram meal preppers have emerged from the woodwork with rainbow arrays of veggies, pasta and side dishes packed perfectly into reusable Tupperware. The downside of this increase in visibility is that meal prepping can seem intimidating, time-consuming or frivolous.
At its very core, meal-prepping is getting things done ahead of time. It’s spending an hour making a large container’s worth of chicken rather than spending 30 minutes every day, Monday through Friday, cooking up smaller portions.
Not a fan of eating the same thing for dinner five days in a row? Not a problem. There are endless options for seasonings and cooking styles to keep meals fresh and delicious. Here are a few paths you could take to kick off your meal prepping journey.
- Fully prepare all of your meals at the beginning of the week
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This could look like making seven jars of overnight oats, seven containers of grilled chicken with veggies and seven servings of pasta. All you’d have to do throughout the week is to grab, microwave and go! This method is a little more time-consuming on the front end but it is a great option if you know you are going to be busy throughout the week.
- Partial meal prepping (marinating, chopping, etc)
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If you’ve decided the menu for the week and purchased the ingredients but prefer to eat your meals freshly cooked as opposed to microwaved, this method is for you. Sunday is the day to marinade, wash, chop, saute, and prepare as many steps of your recipe as you need to prepare to make your daily cooking easier. For example, if you have salmon and roasted veggies on the menu for dinner, you would want to wash, chop and season the veggies, marinate the salmon, and decide on a grain to pair with the dish. Later on in the week all you have to do is turn on the stove and get cooking!
- Meal prepping with a focus on variety
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This method looks something like this. You buy 3 packs of chicken breasts and make 3 different marinades on Sunday to give yourself some convenient options. Now it’s Wednesday and you’re craving, say, Teriyaki – just grab that jar from the fridge and stick it in the oven. Maybe you’re feeling like some barbecue or Italian herb seasoning? Already prepped on Sunday!
Some weeks I have time to cook everything over the weekend and other weeks I don’t have that luxury. Sometimes I only have time to cook one pasta dish, so I’ll make sure it’s a 7 serving dish that I can take on-the-go for the week. The most important thing is to grocery shop purposefully and cut down on prep time by doing things in bulk. You’ll be on your way to becoming a meal-prep expert in no time!