Cooking every day can feel like a chore and is the reason many people spend so much on takeaway food. That is why a lot of people choose to prepare meals for the week so that all that is needed is to heat the food up. Here are some top tips for meal prepping.
Plan your meals for the week a few days before grocery shopping
A great place to start if you are looking to meal prep for your family is to give yourself enough time to create a plan of what you will make, and a list of all the ingredients that you need. This way when it comes to going to the shop you will already know exactly what you need, and all you need to remember to do is take your shopping list with you. If you are lacking motivation or inspiration as to what you could make for some of your meals, why not look at some online recipes like this healthy tabbouleh salad recipe?
Choose a method of cooking that is right for you
Batch cooking is a large part of meal prepping, and everyone prefers to do this in their own way. Some people will spend an entire weekend cooking a month’s worth of food and freezing it. While this can be a very efficient way to create, and store meals, often if you are cooking for an entire family, a month is a little overkill. Instead, if you can pick an afternoon or a day that you have free (maybe include it into your grocery shopping day) then you should have more than enough time to cook several meals to span across a week, even for a family.
Spread your meals over a few days
Instead of cooking a different meal for each day, why not consider spreading them over two, three, or even four days? This will not only save you time when batch cooking, but also on food waste, leftovers, and the cost of ingredients. An example of this could be if you made two different soups, they are not only easy to store, either in the fridge or freezer, but you could also alternate each day and easily spread them across the entire week without feeling bored of having the same meal two days in a row.
Invest in large cookware
Something that will make your life a lot easier when it comes to meal prepping, is if you invest in large pots and pans. You will quickly find trying to squeeze everything into small and medium-sized cookware is time-consuming and often frustrating.
Get the right storage containers
The most common way for people to store their pre-prepared meals is in storage containers. There are many brands and styles of storage containers out there, and it is important to do your research on what style containers will best suit you. Think about how many you need, how easy they are to stack and store, how you will wash them, who will eat out of them (there are glass storage containers that should not be given to children), and your budget will also need to be taken into account.
Why not try meal prepping for your family this week? Just be sure to take these tips into account.
