Day Challenge Is The Essential Guide To Meal Prep For Beginners
As a society we're getting busier and busier, rushing between work, family and relationship commitments, a social life, and everything else we try to squeeze in-between. If you're new to meal prepping, you might find yourself a bit overwhelmed. Cooked pasta should be tossed with a tablespoon of oil before storing it in the refrigerator—it will also last for 3 to 4 days. A quick search on Amazon for meal prep containers will return just under 2,000 results.
You can strategically plan your recipes so that you utilize the oven and stove top in the most efficient way possible to save you even more time. Although these guidelines will yield you seamless, prepper-to-perfection meals, keep in mind this isn't the only way to meal prep.
The first thing you should do is pick a day to prepare all your meals. This Pad Thai is easy to make and will definitely have you looking forward to your meals during the week, no take-out necessary. Aim to do your big weekly shop on Saturday or early Sunday, so you have time to prep your ingredients before the work week begins.
You'll cut down on waste and cost, and this forces you to get creative with your meal prep and what you have on hand. Glass containers can be heated, used and washed mutiple times without showing wear and tear. If you're not a huge fan of spending time in the kitchen, listen to your favorite podcast or playlist while cooking up a storm to make the process more enjoyable.
You can choose either to put everything or some, it all depends on how much you need to spend for weekly meal prep. Meal prepping makes calorie counting exponentially easier. Follow Alyssa Gagarin , founder of Meal Prep Chef for inspiration, tips and recipes like these here.
For the meal prep in the photo that I posted, I roasted two whole chickens ( ate some for dinner that night ) and made mini meatballs out of lean ground beef (also baked). You can pre-package specific meals to save time, or put the food into separate containers and build your own meal as you go.
This is a good guideline for people new to meal prepping and new recipes and ideas for the more experienced. I typically plan on making meals for 3-4 days during my meal prep sessions, depending upon the protein I'm using. One of the things that could be discouraging is not knowing some of the most popular terms for meal prepping.
My 20 Starter Meals & Make-Ahead Recipes is on it's way to you. Consider making a big pot of soup or chili on Sunday and eating the leftovers for lunch or dinner that week. Bestselling meal prep author Toby Amidor shows you how to master meal prep with easy recipes and weekly meal plans in Smart Meal Prep for Beginners.
This is also why I don't recommend cooking for the whole week at once. Whether you're prepping meals for an entire week or just a few days ahead, the way you store your meals is just as important as cooking the food. Next, freeze, refrigerate or store your portioned meals.
I always meal prep for 4 days, not 5 or 7. And there's a good reason for that - most foods simply don't taste very good if they stay in the fridge too long, no matter what you might have seen on other websites. It's much easier to freeze extras like meat for use another week than it is to let salad greens or other produce go to waste if you don't eat a whole containers Meal Prep for Beginners worth.