Isn't pre-cooking much more time-consuming and complicated? Aren't weekly meal prep plans impractical and no longer allow for flexibility?
In addition to work, university or family, finding time for meal preparation and making everyday life less stressful is not that easy. Meal plans for the next week can be really helpful and you don't have to constantly worry about what to cook for your lunch break.
A plan like this doesn't have to be complicated and doesn't take up too much of your free time.
Find out how you can approach meal prep if you have no experience and which mistakes you should avoid at all costs in our tips.
The right approach to meal prepping - our tips for easy weekly planning
If you're new to meal prepping, you may find it difficult to plan meals properly at first, saving you time and money. To help you get started, we have put together some tips to make it easier for you to create your own weekly meal prep plan.
Try out the planning and find your own systemIf you've never cooked meals in advance or made a plan for the next few days, you may find it stressful to work with whole weekly plans and plan your day ahead. Instead of sticking to rigid plans and planning meals for an entire week, you should find your own rhythm and adapt the planning to your time and preferences.
In this blog article, you can find out how meal prepping is often done and how different it can be. (Link article There are these types of meal prep)
As the term meal prep suggests, the focus is on planning and preparation. If you plan all the steps sensibly and give yourself enough time, you can prepare your food in a relaxed manner and enjoy a varied diet again.
It is therefore worth trying out different types of meal prep and cooking ahead for the next day or the whole week so that you can find your own system and work out what fits best into your everyday life.
Before you go shopping - check your supplies
Before you even pick out meal prep recipes and start planning, you should definitely check your supplies first. Are there any foods that will spoil soon or are particularly sensitive? Do you have a lot of one ingredient at home? Do you often have leftovers from a meal that you would otherwise have to throw away?
Instead of constantly buying new food, you can use what you already have in simple recipes and not only save time and money, but also have more space in your fridge or freezer. The remaining ingredients that you don't have at home can be added to the shopping list and you avoid buying too much.
Note down the planned dishes in detail
Perhaps there are recipes that you prepare particularly often and you think about what you want to pack in your lunch boxes for the next few days. Instead of just thinking about the meals roughly in your head, you should write them down in detail in your calendar, on your phone or in your weekly plan.
At the supermarket at the latest, you will be grateful for a shopping list with specific quantities and won't forget any important ingredients.
If you've been meal prepping for a while, you can also keep track of which meals you particularly like and which foods are essential for quick meals. Once you have identified parallels, you can make your weekly meal prep plan much more efficient and, for example, prepare vegetables or rice for several dishes at once.
Pay attention to the shelf life of individual ingredients
If you create a weekly plan for the next few days and plan different dishes, you should definitely bear in mind during preparation that not all ingredients can be stored for as long as you like.
Dishes that consist primarily of dairy products such as milk or yogurt should be eaten the next day, while chicken, eggs or most vegetables can be kept for several days.
The shelf life of individual foods should therefore be taken into account when planning and preparing. Find out which foods are particularly suitable for meal prep and what you should always have at home here. (Link article - Pre-cooking food - these foods are particularly suitable for meal prep)
Cooking in large quantities
If there are foods that you particularly like and eat often, you can prepare them in larger quantities and use them for several recipes
.For example, you can pre-cook a large amount of rice for two days and chop the vegetables for the whole week at once so that you don't have to do it for each individual dish later. If you don't want to cook all meals at once, you can also simply freeze the pre-chopped vegetables and pre-cooked rice or couscous or store them in the fridge and then reheat them.
The next day, you'll be more than grateful for the work you've already done and save yourself a lot of effort.
Variety the same ingredients
If you prepare some ingredients in larger quantities, you can eat them on different days. Won't people just eat the same dishes and won't that be boring?
If you are looking for meal prep recipes, they sound really good at first and the photo with the delicious dishes looks appealing. However, it is rarely mentioned that preparing different ingredients is very time-consuming and causes an unnecessary amount of work.
Instead of trying out the most creative dishes every day, it is therefore best to use the same ingredients from time to time.
If you plan rice or pasta for two days and have the same vegetables or meat several times a week, this is anything but boring. With spices, herbs and sauces, you can vary simple ingredients and prepare dishes that are not only varied, but also really tasty.
For example, you can prepare an Asian-style rice and vegetable dish one day and combine rice with chicken or tofu and curry on another day.
As you can see, simple spices make your food completely different and your diet is more than varied.
Label the meal prep boxes
If you do your meal prep in stages and prepare individual ingredients, which you then store in the fridge, you can quickly lose track of everything.
In order not to overlook anything and to store pre-cooked meals sensibly, it can be very practical to label the lunch boxes or food storage containers with sticky labels. You can then store the meal prep boxes correctly in the fridge or freezer and don't have to spend ages looking for the right boxes.
Involve your family
Weekly planning in families is not always so easy when the preferences of each family member need to be taken into account and children's everyday lives are different to those of their parents.
Preparing a meal for everyone is time-consuming and very tiring in the long run. It is therefore worth involving your child when creating weekly meal prep plans and cooking recipes that contain ingredients that everyone likes.
You can also supplement simple meals with snacks or raw vegetables to cater to individual preferences.
Preparing lunch for the following week is not necessarily stressful and can be spread out over several days. Instead of doing everything at once and stuffing the fridge, you can do it in stages.
Meal prep is anything but a fast trend that will soon be replaced. In fact, it not only saves us time, but also teaches us a healthy approach to food and keeps us in control of our diet
All you need for successful meal prep is sufficient planning of the work steps and enough time to complete them. You can find out which mistakes you should definitely avoid here
Once you've found your own system and have practiced cooking ahead, there's not much that can go wrong and your everyday life will be a lot more relaxed.
