Looking to meal prep but not really sure where to start or what the next step is? Today that changes! Here are some of my favorite meal prep tips, advice, and tricks for making your meal prep even easier!
Meal Prep Tips: Scale Your Recipes
Find a recipe! Seems easy enough, right? The problem here is that most of the time you find a recipe it ends up not being enough for meal prep.
To fix this problem you need to figure out how many servings the recipe makes and how many servings you need. If the recipe makes 3 servings and you need 9, you’ll want to triple the recipe.
For example, if it calls for 1 pound of chicken, use 3 pounds. I know this is simple but you’d be surprised how often I get asked if it’s OK to double or triple a recipe and YES it is…most of the time.
The only thing that will change when meal prepping is cooking time since there’s more to cook so keep an eye on it.
Meal Prep Tips: Kitchen Stuff
Invest in the largest pans, baking dishes, stock pot, and slow cooker you can find. They don’t cost that much more, are usually way better quality, and you can still make smaller servings if you choose to.
I’ve had all of these for YEARS and they still look pretty new (you can find them all on my channel):
The Protein Chef is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Meal Prep Tips: Flavor
Spices & Seasonings. Both are extremely low calorie, if any at all, and both can drastically improve a boring meal. If you’re in a rush and stuck with a bland meal prep or you’re grabbing stuff on the go, like tuna, you can easily throw something like a Mrs. Dash seasoning on it to give it some life.
If it’s going to suck, why not make it suck a little bit less? Plus spices and seasonings are super cheap, you can keep them in your car, and they last awhile!
Meal Prep Tips: Hot or Cold
Cold meals are delicious! This one is more to make you think outside the box. Just because you don’t have a way to heat something up doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it.
In my experience, the majority of the time the cold version of the meal will give you a whole new experience. The taste is just as good too, in a different way.
Have you ever had cold pizza? I know there’s times where I prefer it. Another one I love cold is my Tater Tot Chicken. Basically, don’t close the book before you’ve read one page…give things a try!
Meal Prep Tips: Storage
Meal prep containers. First, toss your cheap containers that are probably missing lids and get some that actually work! They really don’t cost that much at all, you can throw them in the dishwasher, they’re microwave safe, and they stack in the fridge.
I’ve had these ones for a couple years now and they’ve held up great. I’m sure there’s a ton of other brands out there like this one but I’ve been happy with these.
Meal Prep Tips: Discipline
Portion control. There’s multiple ways to do this but the fastest way is simply just to grab your containers, some that are all the same size, and distribute your whole meal prep recipe until each container looks like it’s the same size.
Sure some containers may be off by a few calories but if you’re eating the whole recipe, everything will even itself out anyways!
Is it the most accurate? No, but it’s efficient and at the end of the day (or week I should say) you’re eating the same amount of calories. I almost always portion out my meals this way.
If you want some more advanced techniques on portioning, you can check out our How To Portion Out Your Recipes and Create Serving Sizes article here.
There you go, a few little tips to hopefully help you guys out. Let me know some of your favorite meal prep tips below that I didn’t cover here.
