How To Make Meal Prep Easier

Whether you are a busy parent that has children to feed, or you are so tied up with work and other commitments that you don’t have time to eat properly, you may find cooking nearly impossible. Trying to eat healthily sometimes doesn’t work well when you have little time to prepare anything. It can mean that you rely on foods that might not be as healthy as you wish them to be. However, there are some tips to help you plan and prepare your meals in advance.

Planning The first thing you need to do before you start to prepare your meals is to plan what those meals will be. It can be slightly easier if you are catering for yourself, but if you have a family to cater for as well, then this can get complicated. It is best to start with the meals you know everyone likes because you know that they will be eagerly enjoyed, and you can prepare them quickly. Apart from the favorite meals, you want to keep the others fairly simple. If you try to prepare something too elaborate, it could be very time-consuming and take the whole day.

Shopping

Once you know what meals you will be preparing, you can start to buy the ingredients that you need. Because you will be shopping for a few days worth of food, you can take advantage of multi-buy deals that offer a lower price. You might even see an offer that makes you change your plan slightly, so don’t be too rigid about sticking to the plan at this stage. If you are going to be freezing these meals, then you want to avoid buying anything that is already frozen as you should not then refreeze it afterward. Try to use fresh ingredients as this part of the reason for the exercise.

Preparation

If you can, you should set aside one day to prepare all the meals in advance. While this might seem extreme, you can set aside any day you need to do the prep; this will save lots of time when you don’t have a spare moment later. For the meals themselves, you should be preparing a batch and splitting it up into portions for your family or you. You should also consider keeping the side dishes separate in case you don’t fancy rice with your fish that day. When you have prepared and cooked all of the meals, you can separate them into food bags and place them in your freezer.

Ensuring all your kitchen appliances are in good working order is essential, particularly in the kitchen. If it seems as though your freezer may need replacing, make sure you do your research to get an appropriate replacement. Researching Whirlpool freezers is a good place to start. Of course, you need to ensure that you have space in your freezer to accommodate all of the meals or this will be a waste of effort. It is important to label them and put the date you made it in the bag just in case you forget, or one gets left in the freezer for weeks.

By thinking ahead and preparing your food in this way, you are creating more time for yourself and reducing the stress of mealtimes.

Thanks to Fatima