“Meal prepping,” as it has now come to be known in fitness circles, has always been a huge part of my budget eating strategy. Cooking your meals ahead of time and having them pre-packed in single serve portions just makes life so much easier, and drastically reduces the temptation to eat out. Shop once, cook once, have everything ready to go so you never have to waste time thinking about what your next meal will be. Meal prep does take a little bit of investment on the front end with planning and prepping, but once that’s done you’re free!
Sadly, I’ve gotten away from the meal prepping model lately and I know that I desperately need to get back into the swing of it. So, I’ve decided to start a new weekly series showcasing how I approach weekly meal prep. Meal prep can be a bit daunting for beginners, so I figured it would be helpful to see how I do it and give some weekly meal prep inspo for veterans along the way.
I’ll be using recipes that are already available on Budget Bytes and pairing them with other items to make a well rounded meal. The Sunday Meal Prep examples will just be one meal, like a lunch or a dinner, rather than a three-meal-per-day seven day plan (I don’t like to get that strict–I need some flexibility), but even having one of your daily meals prepped for the week is an enormous help. And once I have several weeks of examples, you can always combine them to do a three meal per day plan of your own.
And lastly, most of my Sunday Meal Prep posts will be for 4-6 servings. I only like to prep 5 days in advance, tops, because things just don’t last much longer than that in the fridge. For recipes that make six servings, I’ll usually stash one or two of the servings in the freezer for later. So if you only prep four servings of something at one time and there are seven days in a week, what do you do for the rest of the days?? Well, you can cook in four day cycles, you can have one “freebie” day, like date night, or you can fill in the extra days with items that you have stashed in the freezer like I mentioned above. It’s a wonderful system and once you get going you’ll feel like you have this adulting thing OWNED. ;)
So let’s get prepping, shall we??
For more information about meal prepping, how it works, and why I do it, check out Meal Prep 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Prepping and Portioning Meals, or check out my entire Budget-Friendly Meal Prep Archive.
Skillet Meatballs and Marinara Meal Prep
I was totally craving good old-fashioned pasta and marinara this week and I happened to have some Italian sausage in my freezer, so I knew exactly what I was going to meal prep. Skillet Meatballs and Marinara! This simple recipe requires very few ingredients and is super satisfying. I added some lightly steamed broccoli to round it out, and a banana for “dessert.”
This Week’s Meal Prep Includes:
Skillet Meatballs and Marinara (6 servings) $7.98
3 Tbsp grated Parmesan $0.31
1 Large crown Broccoli, steamed $2.40
4 Bananas $0.99
Total cost: $11.68
Each meal (with banana) $2.03
Each meal (without banana) $1.78
I only purchased four bananas because I planned on freezing two portions of the pasta and broccoli)
This is typically the type of meal that I would bring for myself for lunch when I still worked in the laboratory. The banana would be eaten as a snack earlier in the day or with my lunch as a sort of dessert.
If you’re buying lunch out every day when you work, you can see the extreme savings here, not to mention the health benefits. If the broccoli is prepared and there in front of you, you’re WAY more likely to eat it. I even used whole wheat pasta this time around to get a little extra fiber. :) Plus, these meals have automatic portion control. #win
Tips:
- Only partially cook the broccoli so that when you reheat your meal, it doesn’t over cook and become mushy. I steamed my broccoli just until it was bright green and the stems barely began to soften.
- It’s always good to reheat your “meal box” in increments, stirring between each increment. I usually start with one minute, stir, and add 30 seconds more at a time until it’s heated through.
- Label and date items that you put in the freezer so you can stay on top of your inventory and eat older items before they get too old. A little masking tape and a sharpie will do the trick and then you can just remove the tape before washing the container.
- These blue top Ziploc containers are my favorite because they can go into the freezer, fridge, microwave, and dishwasher. But, if you don’t like reheating or eating out of plastic, there are several great glass food storage containers on the market as well.
So that’s all I have this week, but since this is a new series, I’d love to hear what information you’d enjoy seeing in the Sunday Meal Prep posts. If you have any questions, ideas, or just want to share your own tips for meal prepping, please leave a comment below. And just remember, if you’ve never left a comment before, your comment will be held in moderation until I can verify that it’s not spam. :)
Until next week!
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Thank you for this inspiration!!!
I just meal preped this today for my lunches! Of course I had to have some right away. The meatballs were so moist and tasty. I subbed tomato sauce for the diced tomatos and it worked out great. I also decided to roast my broccoli for added flavour. So looking forward to having these for lunch this week.
Hi Beth!!
I love your website, and even I have some trouble sometimes for the Ingredients (as I’m living in Germany) your blog has helped me a lot.
Your new series is really cool, since I have asked myself multiple times if some of the recipts are freezable or not. (Going through comments helps a lot!) But maybe you could add this as a new feature in some recipes, if this would freeze well or not?
Keep up the awesome work!
Yes! That would help a lot! And also how long will it store in the fridge.
I’m interested in meal prepping but not very good at planning. I’m definitely interested in a meal prep series. This would help make my work lunches better and cheaper!
I am so excited for this new series! This is right up my alley!
I have recently started meal prepping and I always looked at this site for different meal ideas, but now you have it in the exact format I needed.
Thank you for all your time and effort, can’t wait for next week.
-Jalen
Thank you for this new series! I’m especially excited for freezer-friendly options (and instructions on reheating so that it’s still recognizable). I like the idea of meal prep as a budget and pant-size saver, but I just CAN’T do the same thing for lunch every day in a week, so I’ve never been able to really get into a good habit with it. I love the idea of prepping individual meal sizes that can be frozen and pulled out the night before if that’s what strikes my fancy.
As always, thank you Beth!
And, thanks for the Android release! :)
Yay! I love meal prepping (when I actually get around to doing it!) so I’m looking forward to the inspiration.
By the way, I make your skillet meatball recipe once a week since it’s my toddler’s favorite meal.
I’m going to give meal prep a try. :-)
Super excited about the new series, Beth. The SNAP challenge and weekly grocery shop posts from a few years back really revolutionized the way I shop and prepare my meals every week (thank you!!), and this seems like a really useful next step :)
Perhaps, as others have said, some guidance on how different ingredients can be leveraged to build different meals could be particularly useful? Some samples of recipes that “go together” would be great, even if you’re only focusing on one recipe a week (like, for instance, two cabbage dishes that allow you to use up the full cabbage over the course of one or two weeks). And I always find accompanying grocery lists very helpful.
Thanks again :)
Yes! Been trying to do this myself for some time and it ain’t easy! But it would be SUPER to have a plan to maximize your purchases.
I’m excited about this new series, too, though my biggest problem as a single isn’t the prep, it’s the meal planning — not having so much food on hand that some goes to waste. I’ve finally come to planning two main dishes and a pot of soup plus a couple of side dishes (one is generally a green salad) and rotating through them for lunches and dinners. I often make pizza for one weekend meal. So I try to make things that keep and reheat well, though occasionally I’ll throw in something special for one meal.
I like Mary W’s idea of how many ways can you use something like meatballs. I do that, too. Also, a couple of weeks ago I had a pound of brown lentils. I used about half to make a pot of soup, and halved your recipe for mujaddara. I still had about 3/4 cup left, so I cooked them and made a lentil and potato salad plus a salad with lentils, tomatoes, peppers and vinaigrette. That pound of lentils made meals for nearly two weeks!
I don’t need a lot of variety in my meals and I don’t worry about little variety weekly. A month or so ago there was a series on The Today Show about the Blue Zones and the Nicoyan people in Costa Rica. Every day’s meals are based on rice and beans, corn tortillas and eggs with seasonal fruits and vegetables added. Compared to that I have a lot of variety in my diet. Supposedly this lack of variety is good for gut health and the immune system.
My son is a chef and goes to the gym everyday. He meal preps once a week and doesn’t have to worry about eating something unhealthy when he comes home tired and hungry. I always make the full servings amount of a recipe and portion it out. I keep a laminated piece of paper on my fridge front. As I add food I update the list. When I eat it I just wipe off the dry erase marker and I’m always on top of what’s in the freezer.
I love it!
I am so excited for this series! I have been meal prepping for a couple years now (using your recipes about 99% of the time haha) so I’m excited to get more inspiration! We meal prep for 3 people so we usually double recipes, making enough for 12-16 servings. Also we usually do 2 or 3 meals which ends up feeling like plenty of variety! I usually plan a soup or casserole or other one-pot dish for lunch, and then something that needs more assembly for dinner when we are at home and have use of the kitchen. My most recent trick was to make the filling for your roasted corn quesadillas in advance, then for dinner all we had to do was pop the filling in a tortilla and heat it in the skillet. So delicious!
I’m so excited about this series! I have been following your blog for a long time now–I credit you with teaching me how to cook actual food and not just from prepared frozen items like I used to. I bought your cookbook as a gift to my younger sister when she moved out on her own, and recently after downloading your app, I’ve been telling all my friends they also need it! I’m trying to lose weight, and meal prepping is the best way to do that in my experience. If you already have healthy food ready to go, there’s no temptation to eat out or grab high calories “convenience” foods instead. I’m so excited to see what other meal ideas you post…this one reminded me I have italian sausage in the freezer and I’ll be making meatballs for dinner tonight! Thanks Beth!
Another variation on meal prep is how to multi-purpose cooked items, not just ingredients. (Although multi-purpose ingredients mentioned in an earlier comment is good also.). For example, what else can you do with these meatballs and sauce? Sandwich. Soup. Polenta topping.
This is what I do most often. I call it my de-constructed meal planning :). I cook and freeze beans, brown rice, ground beef, ground lamb (when I can get it on sale), shredded chicken/turkey/beef, broths, marinara sauce, etc. – anything that freezes well and I package in single or 2 meal servings. I can pull together a variety of meals quick-like. I work from a home office so eat all meals at home. If I was taking a meal to work I would need to adjust.
I’ve been working on a local community project in conjuction with our food bank to help people (those that are interested) with meal planning as well as cooking outside the can and box when possible. This recipe is perfect for that! Thanks, Beth and looking forward to more in the series.
I’ve been a loyal follower for ages and you definitely helped me get into meal prep mode!
As a vet of your site, these might be helpful for newbies:
-how to kick the can (I did mine in the IP on high pressure for 32 mins – natural release. amazing! add 3 cups water) & use the beans in different recipes
-freezer friendly pantry staples like diced onions/carrots/celery, etc.
Looking forward to the inspiration. there are so many great recipes that I find “new” ones on the site or get reminded of something I used to make all the time. Maybe pull a few recipes from the archives? I recently remembered honey spice chicken thighs – they used to be a staple at my house and then I stopped making them for whatever reason and I just remembered how good they are :)