Meal prepping is the hottest food trend lately, and frankly, I couldn’t be happier! I’ve been meal prepping for years simply because it’s a great way to save time, money, and reduce waste in the kitchen, so I’m happy to see so many people getting wise to this method. But there are still so many people who haven’t had the meal prep “Aha!” moment, so I wanted to do a quick Meal Prep 101 to help people grasp the concept or get over the intimidation to give it a try.
How to Meal Prep
What is Meal Prepping?
Meal prepping is simply the act of preparing a meal or recipe, then portioning it out to create grab-and-go meals for later. If you’ve ever packed up your leftovers from dinner to take with you for lunch the next day, then you’ve already mini-meal prepped! Generally though, meal prepping refers to preparing 3-7 days worth of food at a time.
Think of it like packing your lunches for the week all at once instead of packing your lunch each morning. You can use this same technique for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
Why Meal Prep?
Meal prepping is convenient, efficient, reduces waste, and reduces temptation to eat outside your plan (whether the plan be a diet or a budget). When cooking every single day is out of the question, meal prepping can allow you to still eat home-cooked meals without having to dedicate time each day to preparation.
Who is Meal Prepping For?
Meal prepping is not for everyone. It is good for people who value convenience and efficiency more than variety. With meal prepping you generally eat the same thing for a few days in a row, so if you don’t like leftovers or get bored with food easily, meal prepping is not for you. If having control over what you eat, or maximizing your time or budget is more valuable to you than eating something different every single day, meal prepping is your ticket.
I’ve generally only seen people meal prep for themselves or maybe one other person, as opposed to a whole family. Meal prepping for a whole family would be quite difficult because there are more people to please and would require a million containers.
What Can I Meal Prep?
This is the golden question. As with any leftovers, the palatability of prepped meals varies from person to person.
Foods that work well for meal prepping:
- cooked grains & pasta
- cooked beans
- cooked meat
- roasted vegetables
- hearty fresh vegetables (think celery, carrots, peas, bell peppers, kale, cabbage, radishes, etc.)
- whole fruit (apples, oranges, stone fruit)
- nuts & seeds
- cheese
- sauces and dips (like salad dressings, hummus, salsa, sour cream, etc.)
Foods that don’t usually meal prep well:
- softer fruits and vegetables (lettuce, berries, and cut fruit)
- crunchy items like fried food, crackers, or chips
That being said, there are sometimes ways around this, like packing ingredients individually. I tend to stay away from items that require special care just for convenience sake, but it is possible to prep these things if you don’t mind putting in the extra work.
How Long Do My Meal Preps Stay “Good”?
I get this question on almost every meal prep post I make and unfortunately there is no one hard rule here. As food is stored in the refrigerator it begins a slow decline in quality. In addition to this, the way food is packed or the individual nuances of your refrigerator environment can impact the quality of your refrigerated meals. So often the lifespan or acceptable changes in texture and flavor will be subject to the eater.
Always begin with the refrigeration guidelines set by the FDA, and then evaluate them against your own preferences. In general, I don’t like to prep more than four days worth at a time because I find that by that fifth day the food is usually too limp and lifeless to enjoy. By prepping four days in a row I can prep two times per week and be covered or prep once per week and reach into my stash of freezer leftovers for the remaining days (plus the option for eating out one day).
How To Start Meal Prepping
Start SMALL. I can’t emphasize this enough. Start by packing up your leftovers from dinner one night and taking them for lunch the next day. Once you’re comfortable with that and you get to know what types of food you like as leftovers (pay attention to texture changes that might bother you), you can pick one recipe to prep for the week ahead.
I suggest starting with a single recipe meal prep instead of a meal that requires two or three recipes together. Single recipe meal preps provide your protein, grain, and vegetables all in one recipe, so there is no need to make a side dish.
Once you get a hang of one recipe or meal, you can try two (like lunches and dinners) or try prepping your breakfast ahead. The most important thing is that you prep for the level that works for you. If you try to prep three meals for five days all at once and find that after day three you just won’t eat the same thing anymore, don’t risk wasting the food. Prep only three days. Personally, I like to do just lunches, or sometimes breakfast and lunch, leaving my dinner to be my variety for the day.
My Meal Prep Formulas:
An easy way to think about meal prepping is to make a formula out of it. When deciding which foods to meal prep I try to pick out one of the following formulas:
- Basic: Protein + Grain + Vegetable
- Low Carb: Protein + Vegetable + Vegetable
- Vegetarian: Legume + Grain + Vegetable
You can add toppings to any of the formulas above to make it more interesting, like sauces, nuts, seeds, croutons, etc. Or just keep it simple and make life easy!
What Do I Need?
Containers. Containers of different shapes and sizes. And don’t worry, you can start small here too.
I started by buying one pack of the blue-top reusable plastic Ziploc containers per week. They’re BPA free and can go in the freezer, dishwasher, and microwave, which makes them super convenient, plus they’re very inexpensive and come in several shapes and sizes.
Once my budget allowed, I graduated to glass containers. My favorite glass containers so far are the plain, single compartment Pyrex containers (I like the 3-cup rectangle and 4-cup bowl). I do also have some divided glass containers that have separate compartments, but I find their use a little more limited because not all food can fit in the smaller compartments and the compartment dividers aren’t leak proof.
Metal bento box style containers are also great, as long as you’re packing a cold meal and won’t need to reheat it in a microwave.
Fold top sandwich bags or zip top bags can also be helpful when you need to separate ingredients. And, if you like to keep your dressing and dips separate, look for 1-2 oz. size resealable containers (I’ve seen several at grocery stores and on Amazon).
Ready to Get Started?
Check out our Meal Prep Category for lots of meal prep inspo! I create new meal prep ideas fairly regularly, so check back often and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to stay on top of all the new recipes and ideas! Also check out our Vegetarian Meal Prep, Breakfast Meal Prep, and No-Reheat Meal Prep categories!
Share Your Meal Prep Wins
We can all learn from each other, so share your tips, tricks, and meal prep wins in the comments below! I’d love to hear what you do and what you’ve found that works and your creative meal prep hacks!
I love your meal preps! Sometimes I make up my own or use leftovers, but generally I go through your meal prep section first because there’s always something that excites me. My life is busy and this has helped me so much in my journey to be healthy. Thank you!
I have tried the week-long meal prep, but I find that it doesn’t necessarily save that much time, for a couple reasons — I cook for two people (so week-long meal prep means making at least 2, if not 3, pots of things so that we’d have enough food), and my regular dinner recipes usually only take about 20 minutes of active cooking time. I don’t like to sacrifice a couple of hours to cooking and cleaning at once unless I REALLY want to! I also enjoy cooking (the simple version) and find it very relaxing.
So what works best is making the quick and easy dinner every night and portioning leftovers for lunch the next day. If there’s way too many leftovers, that opens me up to make a no-leftovers dinner the next night. I use my rice cooker multi-cooker a LOT (for rice, oatmeal, slow cooking soups, chicken, steam-boiled eggs) because I can toss ingredients in it and leave to work out, or just relax a bit. I also roast things a lot, if I’m going to be around the house.
I love this! It’s a great example of how you really have to find what works for *you* and it’s okay if you don’t go all out like meal prep gurus on Instagram. Haha!
I love meal prepping. I am a single person and I will prep one meal at a time. When something makes 4 servings, then three go in the freezer. Sometimes I eat through the whole thing, but other times I’ll want to cook something new and then I have a couple of choices in the freezer at a time.
My most recent meal preps have been, Marcia’s Spaghetti (Cheeseburger Noodle Casserole), named for my mother, Swiss Steaks, (I pick up rice to go with at the Chinese restaurant in town), Ham and Egg Bake (breakfasts on the go!), and Buffalo Chicken Wraps. For the wraps, I used glass containers with three compartments. I put chicken in one, lettuce in another and blue cheese and ranch dressing in the last. This is a refrigerator, rather than freezer, prep. I heat the chicken in the microwave right on the whole wheat tortilla and add the other toppings before rolling up and eating. Delish!!
I love it!
I was a little leery about prepping the same meal for a full week, but I found that if I picked a recipe that I was excited to try, but knew that my family would turn their nose up (like your sweet potato bowl) I’d get something new and exciting and not get tired of it in that four days.
I used to prep overnight oats for breakfast, but since I’m watching carbs now, I do mason jar omelettes! 2 raw eggs in a mason jar, my choice of cheese, protein, and veg (like cheddar, bacon, and spinach) Microwave at work for 2 minutes. So yummy!
My meal prep is lunches for Huz and Child (there is a cook where I work for faculty and staff). It consists of the dinner from the night before. Essentially I always aim to make a meal that is for 5 people instead of 3. Before we tuck in for dinner, I portion out their lunches first, then we eat dinner. It may not be as efficient as your system to create meals from one recipe for many days, but it does offer a bit more variety day to day. Other things I will prep for the whole week ahead of time on Sunday -these include fruit. I’ve found I can prep a week’s worth of strawberries if I rinse them well, then dunk them into slightly salted water and then dry thoroughly and packed into their containers. I used to dunk the berries into water with a splash of vinegar but that altered the taste over time, but the salt water doesn’t. It helps to preserve them once in the fridge. I also pack a week’s worth of snacks like cheese crackers, ham and cheese roll-up, etc).
i meal prep for two by cooking in bulk on the weekends and then portioning out whatever it is i cook (lots of recipes from here work great for this) into two person servings, then i seal a meal them and throw them in the freezer! my commute averages an hour a half a day, so knowing that we have hearty, healthy and delicious meals waiting to reheat at home makes the drive easier to deal with. thank you again for a great recipe site!!
The basic meal prep formul around here is grain or starch, protein, vegetable. It’s basic, but offers so many variations and combinations! Since I’m usually prepping lunches for both myself and my husband, I make 5 of each of 2 different meals, so we can eat something different every other day. Or prep 4 meals each, and count on having leftovers from one dinner. Frozen vegetables are easy to just toss in, and so is chicken sausage because they don’t need to be precooked, jut heated though when you are ready to eat your meal! Silicone cupcake liners are good for separating things inside of containers too!
Great post, Beth! I HATE cooking, but meal prepping and your easy recipes have saved my life! If I don’t meal prep once a week, I wind up eating cereal for dinner. I try to make it as easy on myself as possible– this week, for instance, I made your maple dijion chicken thighs (my favorite recipe!) and paired it with Trader Joe’s kale/broccoli salad kit + frozen roasted potatoes. Fast, easy, and cheap.
I have a really hard time with breakfast, however. I’m allergic to dairy and can’t tolerate eggs so it’s tough finding things to eat. Would love to see some more breakfast prep ideas, beyond oats!
I’ll make a note of that and try to brainstorm some things! :)
This may sound crazy, but have you considered eating non-breakfast things for breakfast?
I eat salad, soup or even tacos for breakfast fairly regularly. So many people eat breakfast for dinner regularly, why not dinner foods for “breakfast”?
Also, I recommend pancakes – they heat up really well in the toaster and can be topped with all sorts of things if you need something simpler than syrup. I usually do some PB & jelly on top since I eat at my desk.
Wonderful suggestions! And I also have to admit, that I often eat non-breakfast food for breakfast. Haha!
Thanks for all that you do! Posts like this explaining techniques and strategies are equally as useful as the recipes themselves!
So many BB recipes are great for leftovers, but your sweet potato/tahini grain bowl recipe is my favorite meal prep lunch inspiration. I use the basic “formula” to come up with different combinations to keep it interesting, based on what’s in season and what I have on hand. Grain + roasted veg + protein + cold toppings (something crunchy!) + sauce. I pack up the heated/non-heated ingredients separately, and I think the hot/cold combo also helps it feel more “fancy” and not like I just grabbed something out of the fridge :) But for anyone who doesn’t have access to a microwave at lunch time, it also works just eating it cold.
Also, seconding the comment above, glass Snapware is awesome!
GREAT article!!! I’ve taken leftovers for lunch for many years and while I’ve always done my weekly shopping with take along lunches in mind, only started planning leftovers a couple of years ago. Since I only fix stuff I really like, eating it for a couple or 4 lunches in a row isn’t an issue–at restaurants we frequent, I rarely order off of my short list of favorites, and most of our home cooked meals rely on a seasonal rotation of favorite recipes. Some lunches still involve cold pizza and a quick green salad–1 slice at a time leftovers from a large pizza last me at least several days. How many of us eat the same sandwich days in a row–I know my dad did for years–and most of us eat the same thing for breakfast whether we eat at home or hit a fast food drive through on the way to work. Few of us keep more than 2 boxes of cold cereal around, and when I buy an avocado, it’s 4 days of avocado toast for breakfast (yum). Keep them coming, Beth–you have inspired me for a couple of years, now.
I like prepping the oats for my oatmeal (along with dry extras such as sugar, bran, etc) in smaller mason jars, so all I have to do is measure out the liquid and cook in the morning. Nice to be able to dump and go in the morning.
I love your meal preps! I do a kind of meal prep for my family of three and this usually looks like a double batch of a dinner that is eaten fresh and then the other one is frozen. Or the leftovers are dishes up in individual portions (I just use bowls and plastic wrap). The individual dishing of leftovers makes the biggest difference in them actually getting eaten!! At least in our house.
Dollar Tree has a 4-pack of 4-ounce plastic leak-proof containers that I’m finding very handy for sauces, dips, yogurt, or really any snack. I also love the glass snapware Pyrex has now since they are leak proof and I don’t worry about them in the microwave.
Overnight oats are a super easy meal prep that makes mornings go smoothly. Sometimes I at them cold, but I usually combine the oats and milk the night before just so it cooks faster in the microwave. (This also avoids the microwave mess you can get by cooking in the microwave for too long/in a too-small container!) Then top with frozen blueberries. Not the fanciest, but it’s filling, easy, and a good start to the day.
My biggest tip is to do frozen food meal prep. I prep normal 4-6 portion dishes and freeze them as individual servings. Each weekend, I cook one regular dish (such as a lasagna) and package it up. Because i already have ~25 portions of other food in my freezer, I never have to eat the same thing twice in one week. It takes a while to build up the stash but I now have plenty to choose from.
I have been meal prepping breakfast oatmeal for a few years now, and it’s the best! I save money and eat less sugar than using the packets, and I have a ton of flavor combos I rotate through. When I get tired of warm oatmeal, I make cold overnight oats instead!