SPEEDING UP MEAL PREP
5 TIPS FOR SPENDING LESS TIME IN THE KITCHEN
Preparing food for the week doesn’t have to be painful or take up your whole weekend in order to qualify as “meal prep.” As much as I love cooking, I don’t particularly love spending half of my day on Sundays in the kitchen. And now that the weather is getting nicer, I’m less motivated to spend Sundays inside when I can be out enjoying the sunshine with friends.
Over the years of evolving my personal meal prep strategies and working in a commercial prep kitchen, I’ve figured out a thing or two about being efficient. Read on for some helpful tips for making the most of your time in the kitchen as a way to streamline your meal prep.
1 | MAKE A PLAN
Like most anything else, creating a plan of attack will keep you focused and on task and will save you A LOT of time and thinking in the long run. First, decide what you’re making for the week ahead. One way to keep it simple is by choosing recipes that are focused on 2-3 proteins and use similar ingredients.
SAMPLE MENU:
Breakfast 1 - Overnight oats (here’s our favorite recipes using Greek yogurt)
Breakfast 2 - Breakfast bake (substitute ground turkey for chicken sausage in this recipe)
Lunch 1 - BBQ turkey hash (our most popular recipe)
Lunch 2 - Crockpot shredded chicken salad (arguably our easiest recipe)
Dinner 1 - Chicken caesar wrap + roasted veggies
Dinner 2 - BBQ chicken stuffed sweet potato + roasted veggies
Dinner 3 - Taco bowl or salad with ground turkey, rice/cauli rice + toppings
Once you’ve gathered your recipes, use them to create your grocery list. This will not only eliminate a lot of thinking at the grocery store, but also once you get in the kitchen. When creating your grocery list, create your list by section in the order that you typically shop the store so you’re not back-tracking throughout the store 100 times. Using the sample menu above, your grocery list may look something like this:
Once you’ve figured out your menu and grocery list for the week, it’s time to hash out your cooking plan. This includes your plan of attack and who’s doing what. Are you batch prepping proteins and veggies or are you creating entire meals? Whether you cook by yourself or with someone else, assigning each person a job will keep everyone out of one another's ways and will keep the train moving. I’ve found it best to divide and conquer. Have one person chop veggies while the other person is preparing proteins. And decide ahead of time the order of how you’re going to cook things to avoid congestion on the stove or in the oven.
Using the sample menu above, your cooking plan may look something like this:
PERSON 1
Rinse and trim chicken breast and put in the crockpot
Put rice in rice cooker or start rice on stove
Brown ground turkey in pan
Assemble breakfast bake - in over third
Assemble overnight oats into containers
PERSON 2
Wash and chop sweet potatoes - in oven first
Wash and chop other veggies to be roasted - in oven second
Wash and chop any other veggies to be cooked/sauteéd in a pan
Chop/prep any veggies not being cooked (ex: romaine, salad veggies)
Portion food into batch prep containers or individual meals as it becomes available
2 | CLEAN AS YOU GO
I’ve lived in spaces with less than ideal kitchens: from little counter space to little oven space (I once lived in an apartment that had a 2-burner range and a mini oven so small that I had to turn a standard-size cookie sheet sideways in order for it to fit!). However, these situations forced me to get crafty and is how I learned the value in cleaning as you cook. Other than keeping things organized, there's nothing worse than finishing a few hours of intense cooking only to still have to wash ALL the dishes and clean the whole kitchen.
If you cook with someone else, have one person be on dish duty while the other continues to cook. If you cook by yourself, do the dishes whenever you transition from one task to the next. That way when you’re done, you can be done. You can relax on the couch or go for a walk or get on with the rest of your day and not spend another hour cleaning up your mess.
3 | CHOP AHEAD OF TIME
Chopping all of your veggies ahead of time will make your cooking time much faster. If you can make time as soon as you get home from the grocery store, try to get into the habit of washing your veggies and cutting them before you even put them away in the fridge.
I find this especially helpful for cooking sweet potatoes. At our house, we eat close to 10 lbs. of sweet potatoes each week, so as soon as I get home from the grocery store I wash them and chop them all up and put them in a big tupperware in the fridge. When it’s time to rock and roll on our meal prep, they’re usually the first thing to go in the oven since they’re basically ready to cook. All I have to do is spray them with some cooking oil spray, add seasoning and pop them in the oven.
Having containers of chopped veggies in the fridge is not only a huge time-saver on meal prep day, but can be helpful to have on hand during the week.
4 | BATCH YOUR RECIPES
If you followed step one and created a plan, you should know exactly what you're cooking come meal prep day. Instead of approaching each recipe as an individual task, think about batching your recipes together. Chances are some ingredients will overlap and you may need ground turkey or roasted sweet potatoes for more than one recipe.
This is also helpful for preparing proteins. If you're using chicken or ground meat for more than one recipe, think about trimming and cooking it all together. If you have a crockpot or an instant pot, they’re great for preparing large quantities of meat with minimal effort. Cooking similar ingredients all at the same time and then separating them amongst individual recipes is much more efficient than cooking several different recipes.
5 | KEEP IT SIMPLE
Meal prep can be a beast if you let it, but it doesn’t have to be. Some of my favorite meals and recipes are the ones that have few ingredients with few steps. Keep it interesting by using fresh herbs or different seasonings and condiments.
If you feel inclined to cook more extravagant recipes, think about saving those meals for a dedicated day of the week, like Friday or Sunday, when you can spend a little more time in the kitchen.
Check out these other KLN meal prep resources:
Our Everyday Macros Cookbook which helps you easily plan your week ahead of time and simplifies the cooking process through step by step batch prepping. There are over 20 recipes included and each recipe includes, all macronutrient information and a MFP journal entry for precise tracking. Grab the condensed, free version or the full version.
Meal Prep from our Coaches where each of our coaches share their personal meal prep strategies
Crock-pot shredded chicken for our easiest meal prep recipe
Creating easy-to track meal for ways to keep your meals simple