4 Meal Prep Hacks Everyone Should Know

4 Meal Prep Hacks Everyone Should Know : Preparing your meals ahead of time will help you to stick to your nutrition goals and ensure that you eat more fresh, home-cooked food. Cooking fresh food every day can be challenging, especially if you have a large family.

This can lead to stress, which can affect your mood around your loved ones. Prepping your meals ahead of time will help you to stay in control of your food prep each week and allow you to manage your time with greater ease.

Spending one afternoon a week preparing all of your meals for the week ahead will save you a lot of time each week. Putting this time in at first might seem daunting but with a few simple hacks, you can make sure that you become more efficient with your meal prep saving you time, money and hassle moving forward. Having your freezers full of delicious, home-cooked meals will allow you to enjoy more peace of mind knowing that, no matter how busy you are, you and your family will always have healthy food to eat.

Let’s take a look at four simple meal prep hacks that can help you to take control of your weekly meals and your food budget.

Create A Meal Schedule

Having a clearly laid out plan of what you are going to eat each week is key to effective meal prep. Write down exactly what meals you need to prepare each week so that there is no confusion when you get into the kitchen. While you should start out small if you are new to meal-prep, the ultimate goal is to prepare three meals per day for seven days when you are doing your prep, so you will need to be organised.

Write A Complete Grocery List

Once you have decided what you are going to eat, you will need to write out a complete grocery list. Check each recipe and make sure that you have enough of everything. Don’t assume that you have enough spices, condiments and other common household ingredients in your cabinets. Double-check everything to ensure that you are fully prepared and that there are no last-minute dashes to the supermarket required.

Pre-Prep Before Storage

When you bring your groceries home, be sure to wash and chop all of your fresh produce for use later in the week. Store different types of fresh vegetables and fruit in their own individual sealed containers to keep them fresh after they have been chopped. With all of your fresh produce washed, chopped and stored, you will have most of the hard work already done.

Cook Extra At Dinnertime

Cooking more significant portions than necessary is a great way to cut down on the number of meals that you need to prepare each week. Leftovers from dinner can be turned into lunch the following day as the same meal again or something different. For example, if you are cooking a roast veggie salad for dinner, you can make extra and heat it up to have the same again for lunch the next day, or you can turn it into a delicious sandwich and add some hummus for extra flavour.

Work Smarter Not Harder When You Are Meal Prepping

Buying fruit and veg that can be used in a range of different dishes is an easy way to simplify your shopping list. Pre-chopping all of your food when you get home from the supermarket will mean you need to spend less time in the kitchen later in the week. Working smarter in the kitchen, instead of harder, will enable you to be more efficient with your meal prep, save time and make sure that you have tasty, wholesome, home-cooked food to enjoy for the rest of the week, regardless of how busy your days get.