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All You Need To Know To Meal Prep for a Successful Week!
First of all, take advantage of Kroger Clicklist or Walmart grocery pickup for ease. Also, Amazon is the bomb for not having to leave your house for many ingredients!
2 OPTIONS:
- Prep everything and store it to be ready to cook when you’re ready to eat.
- Prep and cook everything ahead of time so all you have to do is reheat.
Let me start by saying I highly recommend glassware or storing your prepared food. What I love about these is that they are oven safe so can go right in to reheat or in a microwave.
Choosing one day to do the following is, hands down, the most convenient throughout the week. Your work on Sunday (if that’s the day you prep) will mean you have succeeded before your week has even begun!
Portioning:
You can choose to get large enough containers for, perhaps, your dinners where you will be eating as a family, but the smaller containers are great for individual or double portions, so you can take them to work!
Prep everything to cook later!
Veggies & Slow Digesting Carbs:
Starting with your veggies, chop everything you’ll need for each dish into appropriate sizes and amounts and put in containers. You can cook sweet potatoes, beans, quinoa, or almost any other slow digesting carb ahead of time to eat later in the week.
Meat:
Cut your meat and if the recipe calls for seasoning the meat itself, go ahead and do that now. If it calls for seasoning the whole dish, you’ll do that upon cooking. Store your meat in a container. Foodsafety.gov recommends the following: Raw ground meats, all poultry, seafood, and variety meats: Refrigerate 1 to 2 days. Raw roasts, steaks, and chops (beef, veal, lamb, and pork): Refrigerate 3 to 5 days. Cooked meat, poultry, and seafood: Store in the refrigerator 3 to 4 days.
Prepare Meat & Season:
Many dishes may call to season the entire dish. This is another time saving idea is to portion out your seasonings into containers to stack on your other prepared food, so you can just grab and cook.
Cooking Everything Ahead of Time:
You will do everything the same as above except you’ll go ahead and cook each item and store all your cooked meals in the same dish. Be sure to check on things like green beans or quinoa sooner because they won’t take as long to reheat. You could also just remove smaller items to reheat separately. Remember to freeze according to the timeframe listed above and enjoy just reheating your dishes to enjoy when needed! If you get the glass containers I mentioned, you can just stick those right in the oven, no need to dirty another dish to heat!