Meal Preppers - your strategies/tips needed

Calliope610

I have my usual "go-to" breakfast (1 cup cottage cheese w/ fruit) that I can easily prep for work-week breakfasts. I am ready to up the ante and prep my work day lunches. I have been roasting several pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts on the weekend and eating chicken throughout the week. I'm not one who needs endless variety; I am happy to eat the same thing for lunch - day in, day out - especially if I know my calorie and macro goals are met.

My goal this week is to prepare 5 lunches of chicken breast (5oz), veggies (1-1.5cup broccoli/cauliflower/carrot medley) and a serving of grain (cous-cous or wild rice). I know that sounds boring, but this is a "test run", just to see if I can manage this.

I guess I'm looking for help with the "logistics". Do you just cook in bulk, then make a lunch every day? Do you pre-pack a week's worth of lunches at once (just grab and go style)? Do you have a fridge full of little "single serve" containers of fruits, veggies, snacks? How do YOU manage your food prep?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Pauly187

Hah...I am the same way. Same thing generally for breakfast, same thing for lunch, and mix it up with dinner. I get everything ready Sunday night and leave it in one container, and measure and pack my turkey, etc. each night. My wife thinks I am crazy but doing the same thing often breeds discipline in me and like you, it takes a lot for me to get sick of something. And if I do, I mix it up a bit. Not that I am an expert. I find if I pack five things in advance, I need a ton of containers (rather than washing my one container each night). I am a total simpleton though. Good luck!

Yivs_87

But do you freeze it? Or you just leave in the fridge? I've always been worried about things going bad and freezing works only on some things unfortunately.

Dreysander

My lunches are super easy - an apple, 2 tbsp peanut butter, a quest bar. None of that needs to be cooked or premade.

ki4eld

I prep it all in bulk, but generally don't cook until it's needed. When I buy meat, we bring it home, cut it, season it, then bag it and label the bag with the recipe name. "Moroccan Pork" tells me this is the meat for that recipe, so I pull the recipe and cook it according to the recipe instructions. The same for every other dish. I also bag some meat without seasoning. We usually do 25-30lbs of meat every two weeks.

Every other week, we do a meat prep when we do our full grocery buys. We spend 1-2 hours doing meat prep, sometimes a little more if we got a particularly good deal or I need to do some pre-cooking like with ground beef or sausage. Then twice a week, we do veggie prep. Usually, Saturday and Tuesday night. If we have it on hand, we chop it up and bag it. We don't leave veggies in the packages in the fridge waiting to die. Bring it in, prep it, bag it. It takes maybe 15 minutes to do veggies for 3-4 days. I cook 3 meals a day, so that's quite a lot of veggies.

If it's all cut and weighed at the same time, you will save a load of time during actual meal prep. It also saves cleanup time, because I'm cleaning up meat gunk once every two weeks, not 4-6 times a week. Once you're to this stage, meal prep takes less time than the oven warming up.

By the by, labeling with the recipe name means hubby (or kids when there were kids here) can do the cooking, if necessary. The recipes are in a book next to the fridge. Pull a bag of meat (we have 2-3 thawed in the fridge) and pull the recipe. Follow instructions. Voila. "I don't know how" is not a valid reason in my house for anything. You have thumbs and the Interwebz. Figure it out!

bethb42

This fall I started getting into meal prepping, and I've really started to enjoy it. For me, I find it easiest to cook a huge batch of something and then portion it out into single serving containers. I like all-in-one meals (burrito bowls, stews, soups, etc.) because I only have to cook one meal and they generally freeze and reheat well.

After a few weeks of trying to portion my meals into my miss-matched Tupperware, I ended up investing in these (http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Preparation-Container-Microwave-Dishwasher/dp/B00QQIXCB4/ref=pd_bia_nav_t_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P9M5M1Z4C5WJDT0SNXS). I've found them very durable. It easier to portion food when all your containers are exactly the same size and weight.

As I cook, I weigh all my ingredients and add them to the recipe builder. Remember to weight all the pots/cookware you use. After you finish cooking, you can find the net weight of all the food (weight pot+food - weight pot = weight food). Then you can divide by how many servings of it you want, and find the weight of each serving. Just portion out that weight into each of the Tupperware. I cook for one and some of my recipes make 10 meals, so I usually freeze about half of my servings.

I like to package the individual meals because I'm a graduate student with next to no time and I'm not a morning person. Before I go to school, I can just grab a Tupperware full of whatever I made and run. I also like cooking huge batches and freezing them, because I can add more variety into my diet. (I know that's less of a problem for you.) It's nice to have a couple of different options, though.

Here's a few of my favorite meals:

Burrito Bowls: http://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/07/taco-chicken-bowls/
Lentil Stew : http://www.budgetbytes.com/2009/12/mexican-lentil-stew/
Chana Saag: http://www.budgetbytes.com/2013/05/chana-saag/

(In case you couldn't tell, I really like budgetbytes! Most of her meals are cheap and relatively healthy)

Feel free to ask me any questions! Good Luck!

KateTii

I cook the food I want to eat and then portion out my serving of meat/veggies/etc. and put each of them into a ziplock bag. One bag per type of food.

It then all gets frozen.

Each day, I will grab out a bag of meat and a bag of veggies. That way I can mix and match what foods i'm eating and get some variety/control.

Sued0nim

I make a couple of big pots at the weekend like a vegetable stew, a chicken cacciatore, a risotto etc ...I will precook rice and pre-grate really mature cheddar then I'll portion it up in Tupperware so 100g rice plus 500g vegetable stew and 10g cheese in separate container or 1 or 2 x chicken thighs and veg/sauce from cacciatore plus 100g rice or 350g squash risotto and a bag of mixed salad leaves and lunch for under 350 cals, heats up in 5 minutes...most days though I'll just weigh it out when I, cooking my breakfast

Greek yogurt and pack of berries for a snack

Multipack of chips and diet sodas in my office drawers and I'm set for the day

I also make things like salmon fishcakes and freeze them ..they defrost quick and make great burgers

Sued0nim

Dreysander wrote: »

My lunches are super easy - an apple, 2 tbsp peanut butter, a quest bar. None of that needs to be cooked or premade.

How is that a meal?

BurnWithBarn2015

Some meals i prep totally ( and freeze them in tubs)

But most of my dinners are stir fried.

Ones or twice a week i spend some hours in the kitchen and wash and cut all my veggies and fruits. Store/bag/freeze dry them.

Cook pasta, rice, grains etc and store and freeze them. This i do in bulk and freeze them per 100 gram portions.

Same for my meats and fish

Through out the week i only have to take my pan out put it on the scale and take the tubs out of the freezer or fridge and throw in the pan i want.
On a high fire i spice them up with any spice i desire and stirfry them very quickly with the meat/fish
and walla in 15 minutes a stir fry dinner. It really dont take me longer than that because everything is already clean and cut etc.

Next to those meals i have some crock pot/stews and pasta dishes. And the schedule is mostly that i make 1 crock pot dish which is 6 meals total.
Eat that one at dinner and the others get frozen per meal for another time.
Ones a week i make a soup....eat that at dinner and the other meals get frozen
Ones a week a pasta dish and eat that one at dinner while the others get frozen.

So a kind of rotating system.
The other 4 nights i stirfry or take one of the frozen meals out that i made before.

same for fruits.
I clean and cut everything. Fruit that are too ripe get eaten quickly in the coming days or get frozen.
And i rotate in that too.

Every left over from dinners will be lunch the nest day.


I found a system that works for me
But for nice (fresh) and good meals you certainly dont have to spend hours in the kitchen every day.

cgisme2014

I live alone so I tend to buy a larger pack of meat/chicken and then cook a batch of food - eat one portion straight away, second portion for next day or one day later then freeze the remainder in plastic 'take away' containers. I weigh it all raw and divide the total by the number of containers to give a meal calorie equivalent.

Recently I bought a couple of pounds of chicken niblets, boiled them and made a curry. However when I came to the prep I kept back a little of the chicken, a couple of mushrooms and a couple of spoons of corn. The boiling of the chicken also provided me with a couple of pints of chicken stock.

I then made soup - like a Chinese egg drop soup with the stock and 'savings' so then I had several bowls of very low calorie soup as all I had to account for was the egg, an ounce or so of cornflour and 2 spring onions(scallions) as any other calories were already accounted for in the main dishes.

Rachel0778

I batch cook on Sundays. I then have Monday-Friday tupperware laid out to portion out my lunches as soon as the item is cooked and cooled to use for the week. I pick fairly easy recipes like stews and crock pot recipes so my total cook time tends to be less than an hour. I honestly find cooking easier than eating out because I know what I'm going to eat for the week and I never have to stand in lines or figure out where I'm going over my lunch break. Plus, since I can make lighter versions of all my favorite foods I can always make what I'm craving and have it fit into my budget. Chicken pesto quinoa primavera-yes please!

Rachel0778

bethb42 wrote: »

This fall I started getting into meal prepping, and I've really started to enjoy it. For me, I find it easiest to cook a huge batch of something and then portion it out into single serving containers. I like all-in-one meals (burrito bowls, stews, soups, etc.) because I only have to cook one meal and they generally freeze and reheat well.

After a few weeks of trying to portion my meals into my miss-matched Tupperware, I ended up investing in these (http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Preparation-Container-Microwave-Dishwasher/dp/B00QQIXCB4/ref=pd_bia_nav_t_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P9M5M1Z4C5WJDT0SNXS). I've found them very durable. It easier to portion food when all your containers are exactly the same size and weight.

As I cook, I weigh all my ingredients and add them to the recipe builder. Remember to weight all the pots/cookware you use. After you finish cooking, you can find the net weight of all the food (weight pot+food - weight pot = weight food). Then you can divide by how many servings of it you want, and find the weight of each serving. Just portion out that weight into each of the Tupperware. I cook for one and some of my recipes make 10 meals, so I usually freeze about half of my servings.

I like to package the individual meals because I'm a graduate student with next to no time and I'm not a morning person. Before I go to school, I can just grab a Tupperware full of whatever I made and run. I also like cooking huge batches and freezing them, because I can add more variety into my diet. (I know that's less of a problem for you.) It's nice to have a couple of different options, though.

Here's a few of my favorite meals:

Burrito Bowls: http://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/07/taco-chicken-bowls/
Lentil Stew : http://www.budgetbytes.com/2009/12/mexican-lentil-stew/
Chana Saag: http://www.budgetbytes.com/2013/05/chana-saag/

(In case you couldn't tell, I really like budgetbytes! Most of her meals are cheap and relatively healthy)

Feel free to ask me any questions! Good Luck!

Thank you for posting that Chana Saag recipe, holy yum!

ilex70

I break down meat and carbs into snack sized bags and then put those into quart size freezer bags.

When I'm ready to eat I pull out whichever protein, measure my oil/fat, and chop up my veggies. I'm not prepping a massive amount of veggies...just enough for one portion. I change up the seasonings/cooking method.

Using a skillet on the stove I can have food cooked in about 10 minutes. Way better than frozen meals most of the time, unless I screw up somehow...lunch today I over salted my meat & veg mix and over baked my tortilla. Dinner was better.

I like some variety but I do repeat some to use stuff up, like I had roasted chicken and asparagus twice this past week, and pot roast 3 times (family meal).