A Practical Get-Started Guide to Meal Prep
From a sensible, no-fuss kind of girl
There are 11.2 million Instagram posts hashtagged #mealprep.
11.2 million.
If you’re just getting started with meal prep, the mountains of advice, information, and perfectly-posed, colorful food photos can feel overwhelming — like everyone else has access to a secret plan that no one is sharing.
The good news is, even if all of those Instagrammers did have a secret plan, you wouldn’t need it: you can make meal prep whatever you need it to be, and I’ll show you how to get started.
Start small
Meal prepping doesn’t have to mean a lifestyle overhaul.
Think about your meals each day. If you prepped for just one meal a day, which one would make you feel the most “free”?
- Breakfast: You wake up, you grab your prepared meal, and you head out the door. Bing-bang-boom.
- Lunch: You never worry about where to go on your break, or rushing to get back to work in time. You know you have tasty, filling food in the refrigerator in the break room.
- Dinner: You’re tired after a long day, and it’s a relief to come home to a prepared meal. No back-and-forth about what you feel like eating, what to cook, or where to order your take-out.
Choose the scenario that makes you go “ahh.” The idea here is to reduce your stress and increase your free time!
Make it simple
If you’re not used to cooking, don’t go all-out this week. This isn’t the time to try your mother’s famous Coq au Vin. Not next week, either. Take baby steps.
Here are a few of my favorite easy lunch and dinner preps, including vegetarian and meat options. You might like a couple of ideas on that list, or maybe they’ll inspire you.
For your first week of prep, choose two simple recipes. Recipes with names like “sheet pan,” “one-pot,” or “one-skillet” are good starters for the kitchen-averse. Selecting two recipes allows you to alternate each day, so you’re not eating the same lunch five days in a row. Once you move on to prepping lunches and dinners (if you choose to go that route), you can prepare 3–5 recipes and rotate through them throughout the week for even more variety.
The idea here is to reduce overwhelm when you start out by limiting the amount of emotional and physical energy you need to use during your meal prep!
Something else to consider as you begin is: what’s in your kitchen? It’s probably obvious that if you don’t own a slow-cooker, you probably shouldn’t choose a slow-cooker recipe. But less obvious might be: should I make chili if I only own a skillet and not a big ol’ pot? (Probably not.)
It’s totally cool if your kitchenware is basic! If what you’ve got is a stovetop and a skillet, chose recipes that work for you. Same if you have an oven and a baking pan. Use what you’ve got. Once you’ve explored meal prep for a couple of weeks and you decide it’s working for you, then you’ll probably want to invest in a few simple items to make your kitchen more flexible.
Choose foods you like to eat
Simply, pick food that sounds good to you.
Don’t prep something you feel neutral-to-negative about. You either won’t eat it at all, or it won’t make you happy to eat it if you do. Pick food you like to eat.
I enjoy the foods on my list of simple meal preps. I make them often because I know I will be happy to eat them. I look forward to pulling them out of the refrigerator, so I know they won’t go to waste.
Consider what “makes a meal” for you. I always make sure that each of my meals has vegetables. Otherwise, I just don’t feel like I’ve eaten a complete meal. I also know a few folks who feel like a meal needs to have meat — if that’s you, choose recipes that include meat or that you can add meat to (for instance, it’s easy to add browned ground beef to an otherwise-vegetarian chili).
Make a grocery list
Once you’ve chosen your two recipes, make a grocery list.
As you check your recipes for ingredients, look in your refrigerator and pantry. Do you have oregano? Is that ketchup in the fridge still good?
Pro-tip: I like to organize my list by category. I find it makes the shopping experience more relaxed and efficient. So I put all of the dairy items in the same area on my page, all of the baking together, all of the dry goods in one spot, and so on.
Buy containers
You might already have some containers at home. They don’t need to match or look pretty — you’re eating your meals, not posting them to Instagram!
If you don’t have containers already, or if you don’t have enough, then add them to your shopping list. You can dive into glass right away (healthy, sturdy, lasts forever) or dip your toes with plastic first.
I use these lightweight Ziploc containers, but I love glass ones and I’ll eventually ditch my cheap plastic ones for something like this instead. Glass containers are sturdy and better for the environment, but for my lifestyle right now, in which I bring two meals and a variety of snacks along with me to school each day, glass containers would literally weigh me down.
Both plastic and glass have their benefits, so the choice is up to you!
Start with one recipe, then do the next.
Okay, so you’ve chosen your recipes, you’ve done your shopping, and you’re ready to start cooking.
As you get started, I recommend completing one recipe start-to-finish before moving onto the next one.
This isn’t ultimately the most efficient way, but as a beginner, it will help you avoid overwhelm and will actually also help you get done faster. Eventually, you’ll learn to balance multiple recipes at once (you’ll have one going on the stovetop and one in the oven, for instance). But for now, simplicity is your friend.
Portion it out.
Lay out your containers and divide your recipe into meals. What a “portion” size is will vary from person to person, and you’ll know best how much you need in each container in order to feel healthy and happy about your meal.
Before you put the lid on, let the food cool for a bit. If you cover it up while it’s warm, the condensation will collect and change the texture of your food. I like to let the food cool in the containers instead of in the pot, skillet, pan, or what have you because they generally will cool faster in smaller portions.
Bask in the delicious glory of your prepared meal.
Thank your former self for treating your current self to a delicious meal.
Relax and take a good breath, because you didn’t have to scramble to put together a breakfast, or run to the 7/11 for a crummy cold sandwich, or scroll through GrubHub menus and pay a delivery fee.
Mmmmm. That’s the delicious feeling of being prepared.
