Save Time with These 6 Tips

for Meal Prep

You’ve figured out your meal plan, now it’s time to apply these tips for meal prep. You’ve got a handful of meals and snacks to prepare and you don’t want to spend all day doing it. These are my 5 top tips for meal prep which will help you not spending the entire weekend in the kitchen.

1. Cook a common ingredient in different ways. Let’s take chicken, because it’s so versatile. I buy a family pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and divide them up into three different portions. I would dry rub two of those portions with different herbs and spices. Maybe one with curry and the other with chipotle seasonings. The third portion would get a marinade of lemon juice and soy sauce or maybe even a sugar-free Italian salad dressing. Put them all in the oven at the same time and you have enough for you and your family. Pick a different one every day, for every meal, if you desire.
   1. If you are cooking different types of meat or fish at the same time, make sure you keep an eye on cooking times for each.
   2. Leftovers can be frozen and used at a later time if you get bored.
2. Frozen veggies have become my best friend for everything but salads. Again, pick a variety. Defrost and add to your choice of meat. Drizzle with olive oil or coconut oil and sprinkle a dry seasoning over it before heating up.
3. Containers. You’re going to need a bunch of them. Personally, I have seven for each meal, plus snacks. Seven for breakfast, seven for lunch, and seven for dinner. My snacks go in one. For the meals, they’re measured out into my portion sizes because during the week, I just don’t have time to fuss with the food scale. So, since it’s premeasured, I can just grab a container and go, knowing that the portion inside is the proper amount. Yes, it’s a lot of containers, but it works for me.
4. Timing is everything. Get the things that take longer started first. Chicken breasts for example can take about 40 minutes. Get them in the oven first and work on the less time intensive stuff while that’s cooking. By the time it’s done, you should have at least one or two other items on your meal plan done also.
5. Use a meal prep company for at least one of your meals or snacks. If you can afford it, do it! As I mentioned in the meal prep page, I’ve used a couple of companies in the past and they’re a huge time saver. They come to your door shrink-wrapped and frozen and ready to go.
6. Lining your cooking pans will save you some clean up time. For example, lining cooking pans or dishes with aluminum foil before they go into the oven can save you aggravating scrubbing time. If you’re using muffin tins for egg muffins or ground turkey muffins, use paper muffin liners. You don’t want to spend all that time cooking and then have to spend more time than necessary cleaning up.

I’m such a freak about saving time that I would prep as much as possible on meal prep day so that I wouldn’t have to invest time during the week. This even included my post-workout smoothies. I would prepare containers with the almond milk and frozen berries. One container for each day. My protein supplements (protein powder, leucine, and BCAA) would also go into another container. The two would be combined and blended when I needed it.

Finally…

You can take prepping as far as you want. Hopefully these 6 tips for meal prep have given you a head start. A little planning and ingenuity can save you from spending excessive amounts of time in the kitchen. The benefit to prepping is that you leave very little to chance throughout the week because you have already prepared all that you will need. You will have a fridge full of prepped food ready to go, all of your meals ready to pack up and head out the door.

Meal prep companies that I have used:

Icon Meals

MAW Nutrition (is no longer in business)