Wanting to get more organised with food and start meal prepping? These tips can help you make it much easier and less overwhelming.
Have a plan before you start
Creating a plan for the week of how much you will meal prep, what meals you will make, when you will shop, when you will cook, and how you're going to store them can prevent any issues popping up as you go along.
Try out my new weekly meal prep template to help in your planning!
Some things to think about:
What meals will you prep for? Just lunches? Or breakfast and dinner? Snacks as well?
How many days are you prepping for? Are you going to prep the full week? Or prep 3 days worth then prep again midweek?
Are you going to prepare the full recipe so you can grab and go? Or prepare the bulk of it so you can assemble fresh?
What day will you cook all this?
Do you have enough containers to separate into individual meals?
Answering these BEFORE you start will save you a whole lot of trouble later on.
Shopping List
Grocery shopping can be stressful at the best of times, but when you're shopping for meal prep and needing lots of ingredients, it's easy to get overwhelmed.
Write a shopping list of all the ingredients you need.
Then write it again and group it into approximate categories by isle (if you are familiar with them). That way, you know what ingredients can be found in each section of the shop, and minimises you going back and forth and forgetting things,
Cooking Priorities
When it comes to cooking, this may sound obvious, but start on the food that takes the longest to cook!
This way, you aren't waiting longer than you need to.
And try to clean up as you go so the dishes at the end of it aren't too overwhelming.
Storage
If you're able to separate each meal into individual containers, easy.
But if you don't have enough containers to go around, a hack is to weigh out the total weight of all the meal. Then divide that large number into the number of serves. So then when you're dishing up, you know exactly how much to dish.
For example, you make a yummy chicken stir-fry. You put all of the stir-fry into one large container and weight it (make sure to minus the weight of the container).
That totals 2500g. This stir-fry is supposed to serve 5meals, 2500g / 5meals = 500g per meal.
Now, when you're serving up the meal, you weigh out 500g and know you're getting even serves.
Comments