How to Meal Prep for a Week
Meal prepping is one of the most brilliant ways to save both time and money. Thanks to strategic planning, you can shave off valuable hours from cooking, all thanks to preparing meals ahead. Beyond that, you’re guaranteed to save money since meal prepping forces you to take just one or two grocery trips every week.
So how does this magical meal prepping look like and how to rock in it like it’s your second nature? Here are a few important tips to help you get going.
1. Find the best prepping method
The whole point of meal prep is to cook and/or prepare meals ahead so you can save more time during your workdays. This means you’ll cook more during weekends and use the prepared food on workdays.
The first step to meal prepping is to find the best prep method that works for your needs. There are 3 major prepping styles that might work for you:
- Making whole meals ahead: to cook your dinner incredibly fast during workdays, one way to go is to cook the whole meal ahead and then reheat it. Soups and casseroles are especially convenient for this prep style.
- Freezing meals: another popular prepping style is to cook a bigger batch of food, portion it and divide the portions over the coming week, then freeze the portions and just use the frozen food whenever you want to use the meals.
- Preparing ingredients: if you prepare fresh food, you can prepare your meals by prepping ingredients. For example, you can peel, chop and cut your veggies and store them in airtight containers to keep them fresh. This way you can cook fresh meals every night without spending time on preparing the ingredients.
2. Plan the preparations
After you’ve figured out which meal prepping way is the best for you, the next step is creating a solid game plan and create your menu.
This is the most abstract step since planning is all about your personal lifestyle and preferences, but there’s one universal rule to follow: keep things as simple as possible.
Since you’ll cook and/or prep your week’s meals in one day, don’t go overly enthusiastic. Cooking a huge batch of food at once can be tiring, so it’s best to keep your meals as simple as possible. Don’t go around experimenting with new meals, instead rely on well-known recipes that have never let you down. The easiest the recipes are and the quicker the preparations take, the better it is.
Keeping that in mind, create a menu and write down a shopping list that will keep you organized at the grocery store.
3. Shop smart
When you’re done with the grocery list, it’s time for the most fun part – shopping!
However, before you head to the store, there’s one last step of planning to do: finding discounts and best offers. Smart meal prepping also involves stocking up your pantry with goods and, if possible, buying products in bulk, so meal prepping is even easier next time. For example, if you already have a pantry filled with brown rice or pasta, you don’t even need to think twice when creating your next weekly menu – you already have the basics.
To find the best offers and discounts for all of your products, you can take a look at online catalogues, where you’ll find the newest leaflets from your favourite grocery stores like Shoprite and Game. Taking a quick peek at discounts and offers can also assist you in creating your meal plan since you might realise you can buy certain products far cheaper than hoped for, making those products a clear go-to choice.
Brochures and leaflets are your best friends when it comes to meal prepping. Use them wisely!
4. Prep and storage smart
Now’s the time to get cooking! Firstly, keep in mind how long different ingredients cook: if you plan to cook some meats, it’s wise to preheat the oven and start cooking the meat before you work on something else. While the meat cooks, you can easily prepare vegetables and end up finishing all the preparations at the same time.
After everything’s cooked and prepared, it’s time to store the meals. Use airtight containers to keep veggies fresh and keep in mind the storage life: vegetables can easily stay fresh even for a week while meals that contain meat should be consumed within a few days.
As a reminder, use labels on the containers to mark down the dates so you’re always on top of things and know exactly when it’s necessary to finish up the meals.
As you see, meal prepping is not overly complicated. These few steps can get you started, but it’s pretty likely you’ll develop your own unique prepping systems and planning styles. Just keep things simple and you’ll rock meal prepping like a true prep-boss soon!