How to Meal Prep
Back in 2013, when I originally posted on meal prepping, it was quite the novel concept! The idea hadn't quite taken off on Instagram yet, and people were blown away with how much easier it was to get healthy food on your plate with meal prep.
Now, meal prep is a pretty common tactic folks use to streamline their meals. There are tons of meal prep recipes, menus, and even services that provide entire meals for you for a week. I'm so excited to see so many people jumping on the meal prep bandwagon!
So here, I'm updating my old "How to Meal Prep" content with all the goodies I've learned over the past 5+ years of meal prepping, plus giving you an easy get-started primer if you're new to meal prep. I get that seeing those perfectly organized beautiful meals on Instagram or Pinterest can be mega-intimidating-and I'm here to tell you that meal prep doesn't have to be overwhelming or super time consuming. We're going to make meal prep work for you!
Because some folks are better auditory and visual learners, you'll notice in this post that I pulled all my favorite Meal Prep 101 Tips and Tricks into a short video to get you started. This definitely isn't a deep dive into Meal Prepping, but it will give you enough info to get you going!
First up: Identify Your Meal Pain Points
It might be tempting to dive into meal prepping all your meals, but the truth is, most of us have at least one meal a day that is relatively "easy" to get on the table. Maybe you head into work later, and breakfast is normally pretty easy for you to get going. Maybe you love cooking dinner as a family, so dinner is a joy to prepare! You don't really need meal prep help for those meals.
Instead, focus your meal prep efforts where it'll really count. For me, that's primarily lunches and snacks-I tend to get hyper-focused and forget (or choose not) to eat. Having food prepped and ready makes it super easy for me to get my midday meals in!
You and your family's meal habits will undoubtedly be different. Meal prep should be customized to what's going on in your household! If breakfast is a struggle every morning, meal prep breakfast. If you love going out to lunch with your coworkers, don't worry about prepping lunch. If dinner is almost impossible to get done between shuttling kids to sports practices, then prep your dinner. Use meal prep to make your life easier-YOUR life.
Next Up: Decide How You Want to Meal Prep
The key to making meal prep a regular part of your life is to figure out how to make it work with your schedule, your family's needs, and your budget. There is no one right or wrong way to meal prep. I recommend using your first few weeks of meal prepping as trial-and-error time. What works? What doesn't? The first thing you need to play around with is picking which meal prep "system" works best for you.
Full Meal Prepping
The first kind of meal prepping is what you see soooo many Instagram photos about, and that is prepping full meals. This is where you pack a full meal into a divided container and stash it in the fridge for easy grab-and-go-meals all week long. (By the way, I have a great run-down of my favorite glass divided containers in this post.)
The advantages to going this way are:
- All the work is upfront, so when it's meal time, all you have to do is heat and eat. This is particularly helpful if you have a chaotic schedule that leaves little time for cooking during the work week.
- It's easy to individualize servings-smaller servings for kids, bigger for adults, etc.
- If you are under a healthcare provider's prescribed diet, it simplifies things and makes it easier to ensure you have the required portions.
The disadvantages of full meal prepping are:
- It's easy to get bored because the meals are often exactly the same (there are ways around this, though-like cooking multiple full meals in a week and sharing with family or friends).
- It doesn't allow for the natural fluctuations in our bodies' hunger from day-to-day-it's totally normal to be more hungry one day and less the next.
- Since all the prep work is done ahead of time, meal prep time can be laborious.
Prepping Meal Elements
If full meal prepping doesn't seem up your alley, you might find success with prepping meal elements. This is where you take the items that you frequently use throughout the week-say, cooked chicken breast-and instead of cooking them on the fly each time you need to cook a meal, you bulk cook the elements on your meal prep day, and then have it available for you to build meals from all week long.
The advantages to prepping elements are:
- Tons of flexibility! You can mix, match, and combine elements to create almost endless possibilities.
- A much shorter meal prep time, because you are just cooking individual foods instead of full meals.
- Since nothing is pre-portioned, you can listen to the intuitive hunger cues in your body to determine how much food you should eat-not the size of what's in the container.
- Many prepped elements can be frozen for later use if you end up cooking too much.
The disadvantages are:
- It doesn't completely strip away your cook time-you still gotta get in the kitchen.
- It can be hard to estimate exactly how much food you need, so you might have too much or too little at the end of the week.
A Combo of Both
Again, meal prepping is all about customizing what works for you, and what I've found is that a combo of prepping both full meals and meal elements works beautifully for me!
I like to do a few full meals (like say, my Meal Prep Pad Thai or my Easy Overnight Oats), but then I also supplement it with a few elements that can be used everywhere: roasted sweet potatoes, cooked chicken, cooked grains. It works well for me! That way I always have food ready to grab-and-go, but if I do have a little more time (or if I'm feeling bored), I can cook something quickly with the elements I have ready.
Make Your Prep List
Once you have figured out what (breakfast? lunch? dinner? snacks?) and how (full meals? elements? combo?) you can start to formulate your first prep list! Browse your favorite blogs (ahem, ahem) and check Pinterest for ideas that fit within your plan. If you're anything like me, you're probably super excited and ready to dive in with a list of 40 different preps. STOP RIGHT THERE. I don't want you to get overwhelmed.
Starting off, I recommend picking one item to help with each of your pain point meals. For me, this usually means picking one item for breakfast (Healthy Meal Prep Breakfast Sandwiches), one for lunches (Meal Prep Steak Fajita Bowls), and one for snacks (Hard Boiled Eggs). Does this cover all my food in the week? Heck no. But it does give me a nice buffer to fall back on when days get busy. And most importantly, my meal prep time doesn't take over my entire weekend. Dipping your toes in the meal prep waters is way more sustainable than diving head-first into the deep end.
Go ahead and write out those items you want to prep and make your grocery shopping list. Again, KEEP YOUR LIST SHORT, friends!
Pick Your Grocery Shopping and Prep Days
Now that you've got your prep list, it's time to go shopping and pick your prep day. I usually recommend doing them on two separate dates-shopping on Saturday and prepping on Sunday, for example, but if you're doing a small prep (WHICH YOU ARE, RIGHT?) you can probably get away with doing them both in the same day.
Once your preps get a bit more robust, I recommend splitting up the shopping and prepping days-it's just a recipe for exhaustion to try to do them on the same day! You can also get around this with grocery delivery or grocery pickup. Curbside pickup has made my prep days SO much easier!
I recommend scheduling your prep day when you have little else going on. Actually pull out your calendar and circle the date! It's a date with yourself and your health-don't stand yourself up.
Ready, Set, Prep!
When prep day comes, put on some comfy clothes and some good tunes, and then set yourself a timer. Yes, a timer! Again, the key to meal prep being sustainable is for it to not take over your life. So before you prep each time, I highly recommend sitting with yourself for a few minutes and asking this question, "How much am I willing to devote to this today?" Some days, the answer might be three hours-COOL, go at it! Other days, it might be 30 minutes. Also cool! Even 30 minutes will save you so much time during the week (I can make hard boiled eggs, healthy overnight oats, and a few mason jar salads in 30 minutes!).
Whatever answer you get from yourself, set your timer and work that long. When the timer goes off, finish the task at hand, clean up, and move on with your day. Trust me, this has been the key to keeping meal prep sustainable in my life for the past 5+ years-giving myself the flexibility to do as much or as little as I want on a prep day.
If meal prep constantly feels like a burden, you can also consider splitting up your preps into multiple mini sessions throughout the week. Maybe you make a salad for lunch and just slice some extra veggies and put them into jars for mason jar salads. Maybe you put sweet potato chunks in the oven to roast while you're cooking dinner one night. Meal prep can be done in one big session, but it can also be done in spurts throughout the week. Again, experiment and figure out what works for your family and your schedule (and remember that this might shift from week to week!).
Streamline Your Meal Prepping
Once you've got your timer going, make the most of your time by streamlining your prepping! To make the most out of my time, I try to start with the things that have an element of inactive work, like making bread or cooking hard boiled eggs. I can move on to other tasks while the water is coming to a boil and the dough is rising.
I also try to chop all my veggies at once-this saves a ton of time! If I need one onion for each of two recipes, I'll just chop two onions from the get-go. I also try to combine tasks so I don't have to wash or get out new kitchen utensils-I can use the same cutting board and knife to cut lettuce for mason jar salads as I can for cutting veggies for snacking.
Store Your Preps and USE THEM
I like to store my preps pretty exclusively in glass containers. Make sure to label them with both the contents (this is especially important if other people are going to eat your preps) and a "best by" date on them. I just do this with either masking tape and a Sharpie, or write directly on glass with a Sharpie. It wipes right off with a cotton ball dipped in a little rubbing alcohol!
And then USE THOSE PREPS! A lot of people seem to have this mindset to "stockpile" food preps for a busy day, but then end up realizing their food has gone bad in the fridge 7-10 days later. You made that food to eat, so eat it! Even if your day isn't particularly busy, go for it. You can always prep more food, but you can never get back food that's gone bad. Eat your preps, friends!
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This is fantastic! What a wonderful resource. Love all of your meal and snack ideas 🙂 Do the veggies stay fresh over a whole week? I think this kind of prep would help me SO much! Thank you for this excellent post! Love your blog! xo
The veggies dry out a little bit, but they are still definitely edible and crunchy at the end of the week. Dip 'em hummus and they're great! 🙂
I add a little water to my containers of cut-up carrots and celery to keep them from drying out. Keeps then tasty all week!! And -- although it's an added expense -- my latest favorite things are the individually portioned cups of hummus from Costco! I just grab a handful of veggies from my container, toss in a little pack of hummus, and I'm on my way!
I have to ask - do you keep the smoothies in the freezer or fridge? I generally make smoothies the night before and leave 'em in the fridge, and even within 12 hours they get kind of liquid-y. Or maybe I am too picky. 😉 I love the new design, btw!
In the fridge! And it depends on the ingredients. Just as long I don't include greens or thickeners (like chia or flax) it's always fine for me.
Another option, that I do for my green smoothies, is to chop up all of the ingredients eg. (cucumber, spinach and pineapple) and put them in individual bags in the freezer. That way, when I need to make one I just empty a bag into the blender and add cocount water.
This was a great post - time for me to get more organised!
I prep my smoothies for the week ahead of time too. I use bottles from Kombucha that I bought and drank and peeled off the label. I make sure to leave some room at the top, then put them in the freezer. Let them freeze overnight before putting the top on. In the morning, I put one in a hot water bath to defrost while I do other morning tasks and get ready.
Love your prepping ideas, Cassie! I'll definitely be trying some of those. Thanks for sharing!
In my house, food is a challenging thing... Thus, meal planning can be a little challenging.
I'm a recovering picky eater who's trying to expand her palate to include healthy things (like vegetables) but that process is still filled with a lot of anxiety. My partner is an unapologetic picky eater who has no desire to change his habits, he's a meat and potatoes kind of guy and thinks that things that are green are gross (with the notable exception of mint ice cream). Our roommate will eat anything you put in front of him, but you have to constantly remind him to eat the food because he doesn't want to be a bother.
My partner has a few dishes that he likes to cook on his days off that stock the fridge with something to eat... Lasagna, roast beef hash, and scalloped potatoes. Beyond that... There is no meal plan.
Wow! That's amazing! The most I ever do is that I've started making two servings of dinner each night and packing one right away for the next day's lunch. I don't know if my brain is capable of being this organized. Your things look really yummy too.
I am loving all the meal prep ideas out there lately! I'm a huge Sunday food-prepper.
For breakfast I love oatmeal bakes, egg sandwiches to pop out of the freezer, hard boiled eggs and homemade bars. For lunch I also love salads in jar or SOUP. Love soup. Also, leftovers! For snacks I usually just have fruit, popcorn or yogurt. I also chop all my veggies/do any long prepwork for dinner recipes on Sunday.
It makes the week so much easier!
Man! You're so organized! I'm impressed.
I wash and cut up all the veggies on Sundays after I grocery shop. That's pretty much the extent of my prep. 🙂
Cassie! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this idea! I am on my way out, right now, to Walmart to see if I can locate some cheap jars. The salad in the a jar idea is pure brilliance. My plan, this afternoon, was to get some things together for lunches and dinners this week, and this food prep blog has completely inspired me! Thank you!
Yep. Can't say I've ever done any food prepping! My breakfasts and lunches are pretty simple, though, so I haven't really felt the need. I will eat oatmeal or granola for breakfast, and leftovers from the night before for lunch.
I do want to add more salads to my lunches, though. Easy way to get in more greens!
I have made a giant bowl of salad for the week, and made a main dish or two to have leftovers, but I've never done that much comprehensive food preparation,and I can't wait to start! I think it will make a huge difference in getting through the week with unplanned indulgences due to laziness (confession!!) and when I start working again it will be one of the best ways to transition back to full time work after over 18 months off.
Thanks for this post!
WOW! You are an inspiration to food preppers everywhere! Are you at home to consume this food all week? I love your very orderly group photo of the finished product. Thank you for sharing! Have a great day!
Yup! Sure am at home eating all this (and my husband takes it to work with him). 🙂
Love this! I would love to see a photo of this every week... it would really give me some great ideas!
Totally agree. A photo and a list of what the foods are! 😀 Maybe it can give you bumps in traffic when you link to older blog posts? Just like you did with the overnight oats link here. Ach, I don't need to tell you that, you totally knew what you were doing there... 🙂
Thanks for this wonderful post!
That salad-in-a-jar idea is brilliant! Would you consider writing a post with a couple of easy variations (not too many ingredients)? I would love it, since I'm always in search of healthy packed lunch ideas that I can throw in my purse in 5 minutes or less 🙂 and I'm sure I'm not the only one!
Yes! I would LOVE to know more about the salad-in-a-jar idea, too!
Cars jars.net has a lot of salad in jars ideas ☺️
Sure! I'd definitely think about writing a post about it. 🙂
What size are the jars you use for the salad-in-a-jar? What a wonderful idea. I am on day 7 of the 24 day challenge. All the tips I can get are helpful.
I use pint jars for side salads and quart size for main dishes. 🙂
Hey Cassie, normally I read your blog in Google Reader, today I decided to click over so I could enjoy the post AND your new design, but it's really not looking great in my browser -- the text font size is huge, the pictures are kind of small, and there are a lot of random blank spaces, as well as a weird overlap between some elements. I can resize the window and it all moves around and the pictures get huge for example, but then it's too big to look at properly. I'm using Chrome Version 25.0.1364.160, on a Mac running OS X 10.8.2, if that's any use to you... I thought the feedback might be helpful, but in the interim I will probably still be reading in Google so I'm not worried :p
Ok I just discovered that there is no button appearing to submit this comment with... I'll have a look around and see what I can find! If you're reading this, I got there in the end... :p
Hmmmm! That's super strange Rosie, because I'm using pretty much the exact same set up as you and am not having those problems. The feedback is definitely helpful! Would you mind sending me a screenshot to backtoherroots@gmail.com if you have a spare second? It might help me diagnose what's going on. Thanks for letting me know!
I should do this.
I *could* this.
I think first things first I need to buy some good containers for food storage like it looks like you have. I do have a lot of good wide mouth mason jars, but they don't work for everything.
I bought a set of plastic ones at Ikea but they melt. MELT!! Ugh.
This may be a dumb question, but this is JUST for lunch and breakfast, right? My husband and I meal plan dinners for the week and I make enough for a family of 6 each night (2 servings for him, 1 for me, 2 lunch servings for him, 1 lunch for me!). I'm starting to wonder if it might be cheaper/more cost effective to do a normal dinner serving and do some lunch prep like this. Thoughts?
Yup, just lunches, breakfasts and snacks. We meal plan dinners too, and we often have leftovers, but we use them on leftover night for dinner or for lunch if we're not interested in any of the food prep stuff. I have no clue if it's more cost effective. We are not at all skilled at squeezing money out of our grocery budget. We spend a lot of money on food. 🙂 And I'm okay with that.
This is a great post! I usually do some prep on the weekend as well. I cook a batch of grains, clean veggies and make a pot of soup.
But I'm curious. How long does the salad in a jar and the fruit and yogurt parfaits stay fresh? I would love to do something similar for my kids lunches -- but not sure how far ahead I could make it before it would be yucky.
oh.... and smoothies too? How long? A day or two?
We'll wait a whole week before eating the salads, parfaits or smoothies, but we haven't ever got past that to test it. And it's just a nice and fresh as the day I put it in the jar. 🙂
I notice you use plastic bottles for your smoothie. Is this what keeps them fresh for the week?
Nope, not plastic. They are glass bottles with plastic lids. I'm not sure if that has any difference or not.
Any suggestions on where I can purchase those glass bottles you use to make smoothies? I enjoy having one every morning and if i could make a weeks at a time, well, it would save me a lot of time. 🙂
I use freezable canning jars w/ plastic lids for smoothies and freeze them. They thaw quick enough and then they stay good until I am ready to eat them. 8 oz jars for side smoothies, 12 oz jars for full portion. I subscribe to once a month meals to do bulk cooking days. They have great recipes, too!
Don't the smoothies separate?
Depending on what's in them, usually not. But when they do, a quick shake mixes them back up. 🙂
what is in your cherry chocolate smoothie?
I have tried to make smoothies for 2-3 days but they always turn out gross. The first one is YUM then the second one is just kinda gross and the third one is just nasty. I put protein powder in, do you think that is what makes them gross after a few days?
Great blog on meal prep! My kitchen looks the same after meal prepping! 🙂 But those dishes are worth having your whole week mapped out!
Protein powder does tend to go yucky in smoothies pretty quickly. I'd try adding it right before drinking and then shake, shake, shaking really well!
On sunday, we get our groceries (list and meal plan done) and I usually make some kind of snack for the week (banana muffins, date balls, granola bars). We usually stick to our meal plan, and make enough to have leftovers for lunch the next day (even though I work at home, it is so much easier - decision wise - to have a ready made lunch). This just leaves breakfasts, and my husband always has cereal and almond milk, while I generally have a piece of fruit and Greek yoghurt/whatever snack I made. I'm one of those people who likes knowing what I am going to eat, so prepping/planning works very well for me!
love this!!!! thanks for the shoutout!!!
Yeesh, Pyrex is just the best isn't it? All that food looks delicious! I'm thinking about purchasing a food processor just so I can finally make those darn peanut butter cookie date balls that call my name whenever I happen upon your blog.
I do some food prep on the weekend, but I actually love to prepare my meals during the week. There's something therapeutic to me about taking some time each day to chop my veggies.