Meal Prep

What is Meal Prep?

Meal Prep stands for “meal preparation” and means something like “cooking ahead,” which is what the principle suggests. It’s about picking one day a week to cook for the whole week. Most of the time, this is a day off when you have nothing else to do. That’s really all there is to it, but it’s extremely effective and has many benefits that you certainly don’t think about at first.

Meal Prep step by step

So that you don’t forget anything, let’s go step by step in the direction of your Meal Prep weekly plan. In fact, this simple principle is not so easy to master and understand and you need to pay attention to a few things. But have no fear. With a good planning and the knowledge that we will give you, you too should not have any problems. Just like a Meal Prep recipe, we’ll start at the very beginning and by the end, Meal Prepping will be done.

Shopping list and purchase

So, let’s start at the very beginning. The beginning of a Meal Prep weekly plan is usually the weekend, as that is when most people have the time that is lacking during the week. At the very beginning, create a shopping list. Just ask yourself: what do you need to prepare your meals for the entire week? Write everything down and go either to a supermarket or even to weekly markets or butchers that have the freshest foods to offer and are only open once a week anyway. If you don’t know what you’d like to eat or could prepare, here are some good cookbooks.

The actual Meal Prep

On Meal Prep day, you’ll now spend most of your time in the kitchen. It usually takes you about 2-3 hours to do all the cooking, but there are some people who tell you it took them 8 hours. This probably also depends on the level of detail, but it is still more relaxing than cooking every day of the week, as we will explain further below. You do the preparation just like you always do, but with Meal Prep, your food doesn’t end up on a plate, but in cans, bags, etc. to keep your food fresh. After your meals have cooled, you then freeze them or at least put them in the fridge.

Meal Prep Boxes

Now comes the part that is less labor intensive and brings you relaxation. After your workday, you arrive home, without detours to fast food restaurants, and grab your Meal Prep boxes from your fridge. Optimally, you have packed your food in portions and now put your meal in the oven. While the still-juicy food is warming up in the oven, you have time to shower and then enjoy your meal as if you just cooked it. Enjoy your meal!

Save time, money, calories and stress!

The headline doesn’t promise too much. With the help of Meal Prep, you can achieve all of this at once. It’s not for nothing that there are a lot of athletes and food bloggers jumping on the trend bandwagon now that there’s an awesome name for the old principle of pre-cooking, and discovering how much a Meal Prep plan simplifies their lives. In fact, even grandma already made use of this principle, and the whole thing isn’t really that novel. Nevertheless, it is as useful today as it was in the past because of the following benefits.

Calorie reduction with Meal Prep

By making a plan at the beginning of the week and seeing exactly at a glance what you are eating, you become much more aware of what nutrients you are actually taking in. Sometimes you feel like you’re eating healthy, but you always see the same number on the scale and your figure just doesn’t slim down. Often we are not even aware that our diet is not as flawless as we think. Meal Prep gives you a better overview of your diet and is therefore also very popular in the context of diets such as the Ketogenic Diet.
Furthermore, you’ll never reach for fast food again. Well… let’s say you won’t reach for unhealthy fast food anymore. From now on, your fast food restaurant is your refrigerator, from which you can get a dish in no time, which is much healthier than other fast food chains. You will no longer have the temptation to stop somewhere and buy burgers, pizza or pasta, and you will only give your body what you planned at the beginning of the Meal Prep week.

Stress Free

Like every day, you arrive home from work, college or school and you’re super hungry, but cooking something delicious would take at least another hour. You want something right away, of course, but you also don’t want to eat another burger or something similar. So what if you already had something cooked in your fridge thanks to Meal Prep? Luckily, you’re smart and you’ve done this. So, the only thing you need to do: heat up the pre-cooked food and then shove it into your mouth with relish. The whole thing saves you a lot of nerves you would otherwise spend. Another good idea: set the timer on the breadmaker in the morning and let the aroma of freshly baked bread greet you at the front door in the afternoon.

Save money and the environment

No more visits to the fast-food restaurant next door also means you save money. But that’s not the only reason your wallet will be fuller. By planning at the beginning of the week and becoming more self-aware of the amount of food you eat, you’ll also throw away less leftovers. At least, that’s the idea. So not only are you doing something good for your wallet with a Meal Prep plan, you’re also doing something good for the environment.

More time for you

The main reason for Meal Prep is to save time. There’s a lot of debate about whether you’re really spending less time in the kitchen. But with Meal Prep you make sure that you are only in the kitchen once a week, which is already much more pleasant. It’s better to cook once for a long time than to cook a little bit every day. Plus, at the same time, it means you only have to clean up your kitchen once. Is it true or am I right?

5 Meal Prep Tips

As announced at the beginning, there are a lot of things to keep in mind. But don’t worry Once you know the tricks of Meal Prep, then it won’t be a problem for you to follow through with your Meal Prep plan. The only important thing is that you know it beforehand. Hindsight is always wiser, but you can also avoid the potential chaos beforehand by being smart about it.

1. Different dish, different shelf life

As nice as keeping it fresh sounds, sometimes you can’t keep a dish for several days without it losing freshness. Especially with dishes that contain fish, spinach or seafood, be careful. You don’t want to throw something away at the end of the week. Therefore, eat dishes that spoil quickly at the beginning of your Meal Prep week.
Another option is to freeze the dish directly in the freezer. For that, you’ll have to put it back in the fridge the day before you want to eat it, and then you can still enjoy fish with spinach and seafood on Thursday or Friday. How can you tell which dish has a longer or shorter shelf life? As a rule of thumb, dishes with fresh and uncooked foods tend to have a short shelf life and dishes with cooked and fried foods tend to last longer.

2. Kill two birds with one stone

As a true Meal Prep pro, you should also always have versatile products at home. It’s just worth it when you can have peas, for example, both for a hot meal but also with your layered salad. Other versatile Meal Prep products include the following: Rice, couscous, oatmeal, pasta, onions, garlic, nuts, quinoa, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, good oils, spices. To save a little more time, you can and should throw ingredients you use in several dishes directly into one pot at once or cook them directly together. That is, instead of cooking rice twice, you can prepare everything directly together in the crockpot, or you can chop tomatoes just once instead of several times for each dish.

3. Be careful when freezing

Even when freezing, there are some products that tend not to be suitable for it. Meal Prep pros know that products with high water content should stay in the fridge and avoid the freezer. These said products with high water content include, for example, milk or fruits and vegetables. Logically, the state of aggregation puts a crimp in your enjoyment of the products, but now this certainly won’t happen to you.

4. Where to put all the Meal Prep boxes?

Now once you have all the boxes, cans and containers full and a mountain of food has accumulated in them, we are faced with the question: where to put it? In most cases, there is enough space in the fridge, but not everyone has a large refrigerator. So how to store everything? It should be clear that you should use stackable containers and in them also use all the space. If even then there is not enough space, consider if there is another place where it is cool. How about in the basement, for example? Meal prep containers are also a good solution. These storage containers were designed specifically for this trend and are built so that there are multiple tiers in them. This way, you can store multiple meals in a single box.

5. Avoid squishy

If you’re going to be doing Meal Prep all week, “mushy” dishes tend to be less suitable. Unfortunately, this includes pasta. Products that lose their flavor and are difficult to reheat are also logically unsuitable. Also with salads you have a high risk that this is very mushy at once. Here it is important to layer correctly. Especially with salads you should make sure that the dressing is at the bottom, then the ingredients that are not mushy follow and finally fresh fruit, lettuce and vegetables are layered.

Practice makes perfect!

With all the things you have to keep in mind, your head is probably already buzzing and you may already be looking away from giving Meal Prep a try. But think again about all the benefits you’ll achieve. Start small at first. Maybe you’ll pre-cook something for fewer days first and only do half a Meal Prep week, so to speak. Also, you can stick to two surefire meals at first and then try something new every now and then. That way, after a few weeks, you’ll have a real feel for it and can then enjoy a varied and healthy meal every day. Over time, your shopping will also become more efficient. If you slowly know how much and what you eat every week, there will be nothing left in the fridge that has to be thrown away and you will never have to go to the supermarket again because you forgot something.

First shopping list

To give you a jump start, here’s another list of products that always go when it comes to Meal Prep and are the all-time Meal Prep ideas, so to speak. If you have a mental block, we’re happy to help out. We have several recipes for you on our site. Have fun trying them out and let us know how suitable the recipes are. Also, give us some new ideas and share them with the community. We can all still learn. After all, you never stop learning. What exactly does your first Meal Prep shopping list look like?

These things always go: