5 Essential Meal Prep Tips

The key to healthy eating isn’t just cooking – it’s also creating a menu plan and then doing a meal plan.  Once you decide what to eat and you’ve got your ingredients prepped and ready to go, it’s a breeze to whip up your meal prep.

1. Decide what you’re going to make by creating a menu plan

It’s hard to begin the process if you don’t know what you’re going to eat. Start by creating a 5-day meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as snacks or beverages. If you’re cooking for a family, get everyone involved by having them suggest meal ideas. You could also get inspiration from healthy cookbooks or food blogs and follow a new and fun nutrition plan.

2. Get the right tools for meal prep

You don’t need fancy gadgets to become an expert at meal prep, but there are some essential cooking tools that will make the process much easier. These are what we recommend:

• Cutting board
• A good knife
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Spatula
• Frying pan
• Baking sheets

3. Choose a limited amount of ingredients to use each week

Eating a variety of foods is always a good thing, but you don’t need to eat 19 different vegetables during the week. Keep it simple. Select 5 or 6 vegetables to focus on each week. This will help you meal prep easily and will likely reduce your food waste and grocery bills too. Also, be careful to choose good carbohydrates, and try to count your food macros.

4. Get to chopping and cooking – and recruit help if you need it

This is where we really get going in meal prepping. Depending on what’s on your menu plan and the ingredients you’re using, you may need to do the following:

• Wash and dry produce only and chop it right before making your recipe
• Slice, dice and chop everything in preparation for cooking
• Pre-make recipe components so they can be used for assembly

Meal prepping is going to take a couple of hours, but that work will pay off when you get home and you can put dinner on the table quickly. Try to recruit family members because having an extra pair of hands helps get everything done quickly and is a lot more fun.

5. Store everything properly so it lasts

The last thing you want after hours of meal prepping is to open up a container and find old and moldy food you can no longer eat. Store your food properly in the fridge, and in good quality food storage containers, so everything is fresh and ready when you need it.