How to Prep a Meal Like a Gourmet Chef

You can find a thousand articles online on how to choose a healthy diet. The reverse is the case when it comes to implementing these ideas. It would be a waste time if you know all the healthy eating tips but do not know how to prep a meal – which is the execution process.

I am not saying its your fault though. We all know how difficult it is to stick to a health feeding routine for you and your family especially with very tight schedules. It would be easier to grab a snack or fast food even with all their dangers. This is the reason why it is important to learn how to prep a meal – it saves your time and ensures that you eat healthy.

What is Meal Prepping?

Meal prepping is the process of preparing your meals or dishes ahead of time.

This style of cooking is becoming increasingly popular amongst people who are very keen in saving more time.

Having a preprepared meal comes with a lot of advantages. It allows you to reduce your portion size and hence reach your nutrition goals faster. Since you already have preprepared, it also saves you the temptation of having to rush to unhealthy options especially when you are tired.

It also leads to you making more healthy choices of food over the long run since you would have to determine what you would eat ahead of time.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to spend the entire weekend preparing meals that would last for the whole week. There are more productive ways to go when searching on how to prep a meal.

Most Popular Ways on How to Prep a Meal

• Make ahead meals: You can decide to cook full meals ahead of time. This meals can be refrigerated and microwaved when it is time to eat them. I recommend this especially for dinners.
• Batch cooking: Here you take a large batch specific recipe and split it into smaller portions. You freeze them and warm whenever you want to eat that particular dish. It can last a couple of months when done right, especially the freezing.
• Portioned Individual Meals: You prepare meals individually that can be easily grabbed on a go. They are quick meals that can be refrigerated and eaten for a few days.
• Ready-to-cook ingredients: The ingredients needed for a specific meal are prepared before hand. That way when it is time to cook, you would spend less time chopping and preparing ingredients.

How Do You Start?

All this might sound like a way for you to improve your productivity but if you aren’t careful, it can become overwhelming. The first step in meal prepping is not to start with new recipes but with recipes you are familiar with. With time, it would be easier to move on to more complicated recipes.

Tips on How To Prep a Meal

1. Select A Day

It is important that you choose a specific day to prepare your meals. Most preferably, during the weekend or when you have no work.

Majority of individuals choose Sundays, but you should choose a day that you are most comfortable with. Always start small. Prep meals that you can eat in a few days before moving on to the week long meals.

2. Pick The Right Variety Of Meals

As well as knowing how to prep a variety of meals, it is important you know much meals to cook. You wouldn’t want to cook more than you need.

• Focus on which meals you want to cook according to what fits your lifestyle.
• You have to know the amount of breakfast, lunch and dinner you would need during the week so you don’t have leftovers. (Check your calendar, there are times you might go on dates or brunch. Don’t forget to account for those too).
• Avoid picking only one recipe. Choose a variety of recipes that you could enjoy for the rest of the week. When there is no variety, meal time would no longer be fun.
• Your meals should be rich in vegetables, protein foods, contain complex carbs and essential nutrients.

3. Buying The Appropriate Storage Container

You cannot use just any type of container when prepping your meals. There are specific types that would make your meals fresh and last longer.

Some amazing containers you can try out:

• Containers that are leak proof and have compartments: If you have several ingredients that you might need last minute for a particular dish, you can try this out.
• Freezer safe containers: Some containers lose their durability after long periods in a freezer. Buy a freezer safe container to reduce freezer burn. A good recommendation is mason jars.
• BPA containers: They are better for your health and highly convenient.
• Airtight containers: They are perfect for keeping ingredients fresh. Good examples are reusable silicone baggies and stainless steel containers.

Tips on Cutting Down Cooking Time During Meal Prepping

A large majority of people do not have a lot of spare time. So knowing how to prep a meal saves you from spending hours in the kitchen and cut down on cooking time.

The following steps would save you more time while cooking:

1. Your Schedule Should Be Consistent

You would be more efficient when you stick to a regular schedule as it would gradually become a habit. A good routine is formed when you know exactly when you should go shopping and what and where to buy it from.

You can decide to do your shopping on Friday evenings and prep the meals that would last you the rest of the week during the weekend.

An advantage to having a routine is that it makes it easier for you to make decision and thus free up mental space for other things.

2. Make A Shopping List

Grocery shopping is one aspect of cooking that takes a lot of time.

One way to reduce time and increase productivity is by writing a grocery list. Improve your time saving by organizing them according to the departments you would find the goods.

You can save more to by using grocery delivery services and doing physical shopping once a week.

3. Combine Your Recipes Properly

You would be more effective if your combine your recipes properly. When prepping a meal, try as much as possible to use recipes that are cooked in different ways.

When you choose recipes that would use only one appliance, you would be limited to cooking one food at a time and would end up consuming more time than you would like.

When preparing meals that you would eat in batches, you can choose one that uses and oven and two needs a stove. That easy you can cook several dishes at once.

4. Organize Your Prep Time

To organize your prep time, you should start by cooking the meal that would take the longest time. Once the longest recipe in an underway, you can focus on the rest.

Cold dishes like salad can be prepared last while the other meals are cooking.

To increase your speed, you can use automatic tools like a rice a cooker.

How to Store and Reheat Food Properly

• Use proper temperatures: the safest temp for your meals are : refrigerator is kept at 40°F (5°C) or below and your freezer at 0°F (-18°C) or below.
• Cool foods faster: fresh and perishable foods should be refrigerated within two hours of purchase.
• Store your foods properly: cook things like poultry and fish within two days and red meat within 5 days. When storing them, place them at the bottom of the freezer.
• Cook at right temperature: cook your meals till it reaches a temp of 165°F (75°C) – this is the temp where most bacteria die.
• Reheat food once: the more times you cool and reheat food, the higher your chance of food poisoning.
• Eat food right: Refrigerated foods should be eaten between 3-5 days and frozen foods between 3-6 months.

The process of meal prepping doesn’t have to be difficult. Follow the above steps in this article and you can spend less time in the kitchen and channel it to other tasks.

Meal prepping encourages you to eat more nutritious healthy meal instead of unhealthy fast food options. All you need to do is to pick the method/routine that works best for you.