Meal Prep 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Prepping and Portioning Meals

Meal Prep 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Prepping and Portioning Meals

Description: Meal prepping is the hottest food trend lately, and frankly, I couldn’t be happier! I’ve been meal prepping for years simply because it’s a great way to save time, money, and reduce waste in the kitchen, so I’m happy to see so many people getting wise to this method. But there are still so many people who haven’t had the meal prep “Aha!” moment, so I wanted to do a quick Meal Prep 101 to help people grasp the concept or get over the intimidation to give it a try.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Meal prepping is simply the act of preparing a meal or recipe, then portioning it out to create grab-and-go meals for later. If you’ve ever packed up your leftovers from dinner to take with you for lunch the next day, then you’ve already mini-meal prepped! Generally though, meal prepping refers to preparing 3-7 days worth of food at a time.
  2. Think of it like packing your lunches for the week all at once instead of packing your lunch each morning. You can use this same technique for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
  3. Foods that work well for meal prepping: cooked grains & pasta, cooked beans, cooked meat, roasted vegetables, hearty fresh vegetables (think celery, carrots, peas, bell peppers, kale, cabbage, radishes, etc.), whole fruit (apples, oranges, stone fruit), nuts & seeds, cheese, sauces and dips (like salad dressings, hummus, salsa, sour cream, etc.)
  4. Foods that don’t usually meal prep well: softer fruits and vegetables (lettuce, berries, and cut fruit), crunchy items like fried food, crackers, or chips
  5. Start SMALL. I can’t emphasize this enough. Start by packing up your leftovers from dinner one night and taking them for lunch the next day. Once you’re comfortable with that and you get to know what types of food you like as leftovers (pay attention to texture changes that might bother you), you can pick one recipe to prep for the week ahead.
  6. I suggest starting with a single recipe meal prep instead of a meal that requires two or three recipes together.
  7. Single recipe meal preps provide your protein, grain, and vegetables all in one recipe, so there is no need to make a side dish.
  8. Once you get a hang of one recipe or meal, you can try two (like lunches and dinners) or try prepping your breakfast ahead. The most important thing is that you prep for the level that works for you. If you try to prep three meals for five days all at once and find that after day three you just won’t eat the same thing anymore, don’t risk wasting the food. Prep only three days. Personally, I like to do just lunches, or sometimes breakfast and lunch, leaving my dinner to be my variety for the day.
  9. An easy way to think about meal prepping is to make a formula out of it. When deciding which foods to meal prep I try to pick out one of the following formulas:
  10. Basic: Protein + Grain + Vegetable
  11. Low Carb: Protein + Vegetable + Vegetable
  12. Vegetarian: Legume + Grain + Vegetable
  13. You can add toppings to any of the formulas above to make it more interesting, like sauces, nuts, seeds, croutons, etc. Or just keep it simple and make life easy!
  14. Containers. Containers of different shapes and sizes. And don’t worry, you can start small here too.