Meal Prepping is the new Fast food.

Why Should You Meal Prep?

In my case, the reason was to spend less time in the kitchen. Even though I love home-cooked food, there is a limit to kitchen time I can give. To live a holistic life, I wish to reserve time for fitness, work, calling up my family, blog and of course, eat right. Eating right can get easier with a bit of meal prep.

Prerequisites To Meal Prepping

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Start by creating a MEAL PLAN. This is not a modern idea. My mother still does it. My grandmother was doing this. And her mother was doing it too. Planning what you will make during the week and buying accordingly, has several benefits:

• To start with, you save money.
• You can ensure you eat healthily.
• Avoid the anxiety of deciding “what to cook” every day.
• You motivate yourself to start cooking because you have already planned and prepped.

I use an app called “Easy Meal Planner“. But you can plan using a simple mobile note or a piece of paper as well.

What Can Be Part Of The Meal Plan?

Try to have different grains each day and spread out the vegetables or meat that go with it. The grains can be like Semolina (Rava), Flat rice (Poha), Rice, Wheat, Pasta and so on.

I finalize which recipes I want to make for the whole week. You can choose different recipes each week or repeat the same set of 7 days again. I repeat my set week after week with minor changes in the same recipes.

Next, you can work on choosing healthy ingredients for each recipe. Don’t forget to plan out mid meals as well. This is where major diet mistakes happen. A typical day has 4 to 6 meals. For a 4 meal day, decide on breakfast, lunch, evening snack and dinner in advance. You won’t have to depend on what is available in the office if this is already planned.

Do some study about what can be prepped and what not. As a general rule, marinated meat can be stored in the fridge for 2 to 3 days. Cut vegetables can be kept for 3 to 4 days. Cooked meals can be kept for longer. But use your own judgment and some online research when in doubt.

Get Down To Meal Prepping

Once you have your meal plan ready. Get out and get shopping with the grocery list. Set aside a meal prep day. Most people prefer Sundays for doing this. I prefer Mondays because I reserve weekends for workouts.

Methods To Meal Prep:

Batch Cutting
pre-boiling
pre-blending
batch roasting
batch cooking

About Meal Prepping Methods

• Batch Cutting is as simple as it sounds. Keep the cut sizes similar so that you can mix any vegetables with each other.
• Pre-boiling can be done for certain soups, broth or just hard boiling the eggs for the whole week’s breakfast.
• Pre-blending works perfectly for getting the sauces, curry bases and smoothies prepared.
• Batch Roasting can be done if you anticipate that some vegetables will take longer to get cooked. Vegetables with similar cooking time can be roasted together.
• Batch Cooking is the final method and the one which restaurants love. Cook the whole recipe in a big volume and keep having it throughout the week by just reheating.

I hope this article was helpful and gets you curious to home cook more often during the Corona quarantine days.

Please like, comment and subscribe to keep reading on.