Learn how to meal prep for the week in just one hour thanks to ingredient prep—it’s a great time-saving method that works for busy people.
Ingredient prepping will let you combine the food in numerous ways to create a whole bunch of different meals. Really, this makes dinner for busy people a breeze.
Why you’ll love this guide
- Massive time savings: Prepping ingredients in just one hour will free up more of your valuable time!
- Stress-free meals: You won’t have to worry about what to make for dinner again.
- Budget-friendly: Ingredient prepping helps control your grocery spending by using what you prep.
Meal prep vs. food prep
You might be surprised to learn you only need about an hour to food prep for the week ahead. Just 60 minutes on the weekend can set you up for success, making it so much easier to stick to cooking healthy, homemade meals.
So, what’s the real difference between meal prep and food prep?
Meal prep means cooking full meals in advance so they’re ready to heat and eat. Check out my top meal prep ideas and my guide on how to meal prep for busy people for inspiration.
Food prep, on the other hand, is all about getting ingredients and sauces ready. It might also include cooking some meat or a batch of rice or quinoa ahead of time. Read my Food Storage post to learn how to make your ingredients last longer.
How to Get Started with Food Prep?
Begin by downloading my 7-day meal plan and watching the YouTube video embedded in this post. The video walks you through the food prep process step-by-step so you can follow along in real time.
Next, grab the food prep checklist to keep you on track as you watch. With your ingredients prepped and ready, you’ll be all set to make every recipe in the 7-day meal plan. No midweek scrambling required.
DOWNLOAD YOUR 7-DAY MEAL PLAN HERE.
Why you should give food prep a try
The best part of food prep is how it breaks your cooking tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. This makes the whole process feel less overwhelming and far more sustainable.
It’s truly the best of both worlds: you don’t have to spend an entire afternoon cooking everything in advance and creating a huge mess, but you also avoid the stress of cooking from scratch every single night.
When you’ve prepped ahead on the weekend, you’re more likely to follow through with weeknight cooking. You know dinner won’t take long, and you won’t want to waste the ingredients you’ve already prepped.
Dinner Prep Pro customers love using the included prep instructions with their weekly meal plans because it saves time, money, and energy. As one of our users, Melanie, says, “Put on your favourite music and you will be amazed at how much you can have ready in an hour!”
What are the best foods to meal prep?
- Proteins such as chicken, steak, legumes, tofu, boiled eggs, bacon, etc.
- Grains such as rice, quinoa, oats, pasta, etc.
- Vegetables that you can chop up ahead of time such as onions, garlic, ginger, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, etc.
- Sauces, dressings and dips such as a stir fry sauce recipe, salad dressing, special sauce for burgers, etc.
- Spice blends made from spices in your spice drawer
- Grating cheeses or other little kitchen shortcuts
How to ingredient prep
Use the instructions below to prep ingredients for five weekday meals, from Monday to Friday. You can follow along step-by-step in my video tutorial, where I show you exactly how I get everything ready. The matching recipes are all in your free meal plan PDF download.
If you’d like to start ingredient prepping for other dishes, check out my post on How to Create a Meal Prep Plan. It walks you through building a custom prep checklist so you can stay organised and make the most of your time in the kitchen.
Free 7-day meal plan
Download your PDF 7-day meal plan that accompanies the video in this post. It comes complete with breakfast, lunch and dinner for the entire week. Watch the video to learn how you can prep your ingredients ahead for the week, then make the recipes fresh each night in just 15 minutes using your PDF meal plan. Click here to download your free meal plan.
Here are the recipes you’ll be prepping ahead for:
Ingredient prep checklist
Follow this prep ahead checklist in order to make dinners come together fast during the weeknight.
Step 1: Grains
- Cook 1 cup of rice with 2 cups of water for the Bibimbap-Inspired Beef Stir Fry.
Step 2: Proteins
- Cook 1 lb. of chicken breasts in a large pot of boiling water for the Chicken & Kale Caesar Wraps, then shred the cooked chicken.
- Cook 1 lb. of ground beef for the Pizza Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms.
- Mix 1 tbsp. of Italian seasoning with 1 cup of flour in a large bowl, then coat 1 lb/ of chicken tenders in the mixture for the Olive Garden Chicken Scampi. Store in a container and cook fresh the night of.
- Slice the beef thinly for the Bibimbap-inspired stir fry and toss with 2 tsp. of baking soda.
Step 3: Cheeses
- Grate 2 cups of mozzarella cheese for the Pizza Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms.
- Grate 1 cup of parmesan cheese (1/2 cup for the Olive Garden Chicken Scampi and 1/2 cup for the Chicken Kale Caesar Wraps).
Step 4: Sauces
- Mix together 1 cup of light mayo, 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, 2 tbsp. of lemon juice, 1 tbsp. of Worcestershire, 1 tbsp. of Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp. of minced capers, 3 cloves of minced garlic and 1/2 tsp. each of salt & pepper for the Chicken & Kale Caesar Wraps dressing.
- Microwave half a block (about 4 oz.) of cream cheese, then stir in 4 minced jalapenos and 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese to make the filling for the Hasselback Jalapeno Popper Chicken.
Step 5: Vegetables
- Remove the mushroom stems and scrape out 8 portobello mushrooms for the Pizza Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms.
- Dice 1 green pepper and 1 small red onion for the Pizza Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms and store both in the same container.
- Slice 1 red pepper, 1 yellow pepper, 1 green pepper and 1 red onion for the Olive Garden Chicken Scampi.
- Slice 1 cup of shiitake mushrooms, and cut 1 carrot and 1 zucchini into matchsticks for the Bibimbap-Inspired Beef Stir Fry.
- Thinly slice 1 red onion and wash/chop kale for the Chicken & Kale Caesar Wraps.
Step 6: Put it all in the fridge and relax!
Want more prep instructions like this? Check out this free Prep Once, Eat All Week Meal Prep Plan.
Comments & Reviews
Laura says
Do you have a system for deciding what to eat when? I find a lot of veggies for example will go slimy if they are chopped to far in advance. Thanks!