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Part 2 of 3 - My Top 15 Meal Prep Tips: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Family Meal Prep
Part 2 of 3
I’m back sharing more meal prep tips on the blog today. This is the second part in my three part series of “My Top 15 Meal Prep Tips for Beginners”. The next 5 tips are going to help you save time and show you how to plan efficiently for your meal prep day.
And if you need some recipe inspiration to get you started, check out my FREE 7 DAY MEAL PLAN to help jumpstart your planning and prepping. Subscribe and have the plan sent straight to your inbox.
So let’s dig into tips 6 through 10!
Tip #6 - Save time with pre-cut, frozen and canned veggies/beans
Now, normally I can’t justify the added expense of purchasing pre-cut fresh veggies but when you’re going to be making a bunch of meals at once, the time you save by purchasing them is totally worth it to me!
For example: with the cold weather coming, that means I’m meal prepping a lot more soups. A majority of the soups’ bases use your typical mirepoix combination of carrots, onions and celery. If I can purchase a couple bags of pre-cut mirepoix from the freezer section or find it in the fresh veggie area - then to me that’s totally worth it! It will save me a lot of time if I’m not dicing up a whole bag each of carrots, onions and celery.
Do yourself a favor and be sure to use pre-cut, frozen and canned ingredients whenever possible!
Tip #7 - Shop in bulk
Buying in bulk is a money-saving AND time-saving tip!
When I shop to stock my pantry, I make sure to look for the best deals on my most commonly used ingredients like: cans of different beans, diced tomatoes, corn, green beans, pumpkin, squash, quinoa, farro, oats, etc.
If I buy in bulk, I will save money by purchasing larger quantities all at once while also saving time when it comes to shopping for meal prep ingredients as well as when I actually do the meal prepping.
If you’re not sure where to start with building a pantry, sit down and think about what ingredients you buy the most. What canned goods are you grabbing every week? What ingredients have a long shelf life and can stay in your pantry for extended amounts of time?
All of these questions will help you start to zero in on what will be great additions to your pantry!
Tip #8 - Batch cook
I love this tip! Batch cooking is your friend and once you start, you won’t wanna stop!
Batch cooking simply means you make a large portion of something to be spread out over different meals and/or repurpose it for different meals.
This could be as simple as cooking a whole chicken and using the meat for chicken chili, chicken salad and chicken tacos!
Or cooking up some black beans, kidney beans and sweet potatoes to be used as burrito filling AND on a taco salad.
The possibilities are endless! Get creative and you’ll never get bored!
Tip #9 - Plan for leftovers and use them
Planning for leftovers is a lot like batch cooking. You’re just making a larger portion size than you need for one meal so you have less cooking to do over the course of the week.
One pot meals are great for leftovers since it’s easy to make extra and oftentimes the leftovers taste better the next day!
My family is a big fan of making a large pot of soup for dinner and using the leftovers for lunch the following days. Casseroles are also great dishes to use for leftovers since they make a lot and are easy to double if necessary.
Tip #10 - Invest in useful containers for all that yummy food
This might seem like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised by how many of my clients don’t have the right containers for their meal prep!
You’re going to want different sizes and maybe even a bento style box for those lunches you’re prepping for work.
* Please note - Glass containers will give you the most bang for your buck long-term, as well as, allow you to avoid all the chemicals that come from reheating food in plastic containers. You can usually find good deals at TJ Maxx, Marshalls and similar stores!
Alright, there are the next 5 meal prep tips to help you with meal prepping. I hope you found them helpful! I encourage you to Pin or bookmark this post so you can refer back to it as you start your meal prep journey. Also, check out Part 1 and Part 3 of this post where I break down the other 10 tips.
Happy Meal Prepping!
Wishing you health and wellness,
Ashley