The Art of Meal Prepping 

Meal prepping is a concept that is designed to make cooking easier and quicker for those that are super organised and constantly on the go. It saves time and can be useful if you’re trying to control portion sizes and count calories, helping you to eat nutritious meals with no fuss every single day!

Different Types of Meal Prep

There’s not just one way of meal prepping, in fact there are many different ways that you can save time when it comes to cooking.

Make ahead: You can prepare a few meals at one time and place them in the fridge ready to go. This is particularly helpful if you have a busy week ahead and have a few spare hours at the weekend. Depending on the ingredients, meals like this tend to last a few days and just need warming up when you’re ready to eat. The bonus is that it will prevent you from ordering a takeaway full of calories or reaching for unhealthy processed food if you’ve not got any time to cook.

Batches: Another technique is to make a big batch of food so that you can eat leftovers over the next few days. This is great for things such as cottage pie, chilli or stew that can easily be portioned out and kept in the fridge or freezer for when you need it. Batch cooking can also save money as it’s often much cheaper and cost effective to buy bigger portions of sauces and meats.

Prep ingredients: Chopping up, peeling and portioning out all the ingredients that you could need over the week can be a fantastic time saver. Instead of spending the majority of the time when you cook doing this, you just need to spend a few hours one day a week cutting and sorting your vegetables and meat. Then you can simply throw them into a pan when you’re ready to cook. Again, these can be stored in the fridge or freezer for a few days or months ready to use.

Planning Meals

Thinking ahead when you do your food shop can also be a great way of saving time and cutting down on wastage. If you plan meals that use the same ingredients over the week, you will be able to prep all the ingredients in one without needing to think about cooking for the rest of the week. Try to include a couple of your usual meals, as well as some that you’ve not tried before to shake things up a bit. You’ll be surprised at how easy some things are compared to your expectations of how long they will take, and they may be your new favourites!

So, depending on your schedule and your goals, meal prep could be a game changer when it comes to spending less time in the kitchen. Find a method that works for you, spend some time getting your ingredients sorted out for the week, and trust us – you’ll never look back!