You probably have heard that planning meals and making them ahead can help you stick with a healthy eating plan, but did you know it also can help you save time and money? That’s right! When you learn to do meal prep like a pro, you’ll breeze through the process and save more time during the week. You’ll also have enough extra meals stored to provide a week or two off from cooking. Making meals ahead so all you have to do is heat and serve is far cheaper and healthier than drive-through food and often tastier.
Planning ahead stops the “What’s for Dinner?” quandary.
One of the most difficult steps in cooking healthy meals is deciding what to cook. The second part of deciding what to cook for supper is having all the ingredients necessary. When you plan meals, you automatically eliminate those two problems. If you cook all your meals in one day and have them ready to heat and serve, it also eliminates the “I don’t feel like cooking” excuse. It’s far easier than going to a drive-through for dinner and faster than waiting for delivery.
Prep veggies and fruit as soon as you come home from the grocery.
Prep your veggies and fruit right away instead of sticking those fresh veggies in the fridge or trying to store whole melons. Take a few minutes to wash and prep veggies and fruit. You’ll have them ready for cooking later in the week or ready for snacking anytime. Everyone will eat cubed melon faster than they would a whole melon. That’s because people can eat a few pieces easily. Snacking on fruit or veggies between meals is a good thing. Having them ready in the fridge makes you a pro.
Cooking up batches of food can supplement other weekly meals.
Whether you’re making entire meals and freezing extras for later weeks or just making a triple batch of soup, you’ll cut out cooking time. Include a protein source with each meal. You can purchase in bulk and freeze what you don’t use for the week. Cook grains in bulk for breakfast and store them in Mason jars in the fridge. Remember, not all vegetables and fruit have to be fresh. Frozen fruit and vegetables are good, and so are canned fruits and veggies packed in their own juice or water and no additives or sugar.
- Have the right storage containers. Freezer containers for full meals make you look like a professional who created a heat-and-serve meal. A food processor and reusable plastic freezer bags are also excellent tools.
- If you freeze cooked veggies, chicken, or other food, freeze it first on trays covered with parchment paper. Once it’s frozen, put it into plastic bags. Freezing it on trays keeps it from sticking together in a frozen ball and lets you take out individual servings when needed.
- Use the oven to cook several things at once. Use rice cookers, slow cookers, and air fryers while you cook on the stovetop and in the oven. Much of the time devoted to cooking meals is the actual cooking.
- You can cut down on dishes using the same pan for several dishes. Just wipe the pan clean, or let the previous contents flavor the next. If you sauté onions for one dish, use that same pan and let the flavor enhance the next.
For more information, contact us today at Travel Trim