4 Essential Tips to Make Meal Prepping Easy

Meal prepping may be a New Year’s resolution you have set for yourself suddenly that seems more daunting than expected. Here are some easy tips to make meal prepping easier than ever,  so you can continue way past the new year!

New Year, New You! It’s time to keep up your health game in one of the quickest and most convenient ways; meal prepping! There’s a myriad of benefits to prepping your meals in advance, with the biggest and most obvious benefit being it can save you loads of time throughout the week! But, meal prepping in advance can also help in portion controlling your meals, and allows you to focus on what to put in your containers so you can get the absolute most out of them! 

Any meal prep consists of carbs, protein and vegetables, and we know what you’re thinking; rice, chicken and broccoli as the obvious choice of meal prep, right? Taking a look at a majority of those meal prep videos from the internet, we usually think of these three as the main ingredients for any meal prep, and while it is certainly healthy and easy to make, the idea of having it on repeat throughout the week well, kind of sounds boring. While it is the most conventional known meal prep kit because it’s quick and easy to make, it can also make prepping your meals a bit monotonous and lacking in variety which can limit the amount of nutrients that your body needs, but we’re here to give you some easy tips and healthy substitutions to make your meal prepping game more exciting with each week!  

1. Switch Up Ingredients & Find Easy Recipe
   Keep your meal prepping sessions exciting by subbing out and trying out different iterations of carbs, proteins and veggies, and spice it up with different flavors! You can alter your meal plan according to what you’re trying to achieve and make healthy and nutritious substitutions that allow you to get your necessary intake of nutrients while still abiding by your dietary needs. For example, instead of brown rice for your carbs and if you’re wanting to limit or modify your carb intake while meal prepping, you can go for a low carb substitute like riced cauliflower, or a high fiber and protein like chickpea rice so that you can get in some extra protein on top of whatever other protein you may have added to your meal prep. Focusing on the right foods to optimize your dishes and using agreeable and easy recipes, like a stir fry for low carb and a boost of protein, or change up the flavor of your chicken with this great gluten free chicken picata recipe! There are a lot of different ways to mix up your meal preps so that you’re not eating the same thing every day. Small changes go a long way! 
2. Mason Jar Salads
   Have you heard of mason jar salads? They’re all the rage right now because it’s a simple meal to make and it serves an additional purpose to repurposing any mason jars so it’s a great way to reduce waste as well! Not only does it reduce waste, but they’re also easy to store in your pantries for meal prepping purposes. This cost-effective and waste-free method allows you to put in anything you like for your salads and keeps them fresh and ready to serve once you want to eat them!
   You can prep your mason jar with all dry ingredients like or pre-cooked (if you’re adding anything pre-cooked, make sure you give it some time to cool off first so it doesn’t create any steam or moisture in your jars because this could potentially affect your other ingredients) in the beginning of the week so that they’re ready to enjoy when you need them! Considering you’re using leafy greens in this meal prep, layering is crucial to ensure the integrity of the greens, so any dressings, mayos and any other wet ingredients can be kept at the bottom and then your proteins like beans or lentils, and at the top, your greens! Top with nuts of your choosing or dried fruits for an extra kick of flavour, if you like!
3. Save More Time By Separating With Tin/Parchment Paper
   We stan an efficient meal plan! So another super tip for your meal prep in saving time is sectioning when baking! If you’re mass baking for your meal prep and want to save on numerous rounds of baking your items individually, you can use tin foil or parchment paper on your baking tray to create sections so that you can do an en masse baking session of all your essentials for your meal prep plans! This not only saves you time, but also saves energy from having to do a variety of baking/cooking rounds, and is also a great way to make sure that the flavours you’re going for in your meal plan aren’t all jumbled up or too similar, this way, you can still have a variety of different flavours to make your meals more exciting! By sectioning your baking, this also saves you a ton of space in the oven too, so you could use this chance to make more in one session and doubling up on some of your favourites that down the line, saves you a lot of time and stress!
4. Organize Your Equipment in Advance!
   It may not sound like a lot, but trust us when we say that organization is key when it comes to meal prepping. Organizing your fridge to have everything you’re prepping in the most convenient places saves you time in scrounging for it when you need it later on, and having a designated area in your pantry or fridge for your meal prep containers means routine. Before you go grocery shopping for all the things you need, make sure that you clean out the fridge, or at least put any saved meals to the front of the fridge if you have any leftovers so that you can finish what you’d made previously.
   You can colour coordinate your containers by the week (blue for week 1, green for week 2 and so on), or label them “week 1” or “week 2”, so you know how long you’ve had the meal saved for and what to eat first! There’s a lot of organization that must be done when it comes to making the meal, but also making the space as efficient as possible! Knowing where everything is and how long you can preserve your meals throughout the week can not only save you loads of time but also provide you with a better sense of ease, especially if you’re first starting out with meal preps. A little organization in your kitchen definitely helps in the long run!

We hope these helpful tips allow you to keep up with your meal prep so you can live your best life not just within the New Year but all throughout! Maintaining a cooking and meal prep schedule is definitely a feat, but with enough practice and effort, you can become a master of meal prep and enjoy doing it too!