When you know how to meal prep, your life becomes SO much easier! Stick to this weekly meal prep routine to save time and money.
With just a couple of hours on Sunday, you can set yourself up for healthy, stress-free meals all week long. No more scrambling at 6 p.m. wondering what to make for dinner! I’m sharing my exact step-by-step process, from planning and shopping to cooking and storing, plus my best tips to make meal prep feel doable (and even fun!).
How to Meal Prep
Meal prep is a total game-changer, but if you’re just beginning your meal prep journey, it might be overwhelming trying to figure out where to start.
I put together the ultimate guide on how to meal prep, including putting together your primary list of recipes, an outline for your weekly meal prep routine and more.
Start Small: when you’re getting started with meal prep, I always recommending starting small. Try making one set of meal prep bowls or batch cooking one recipe on a Sunday, then slowly work your way up.
Try Ingredient Prep: When I first started, I’d make one big batch of something and pack it up into containers to enjoy throughout the week, but now, I’ve been able to cut my prep time in half by chopping up veggies, marinating meats, cooking grains, etc. to help my dinners come together quicker during the week. If you’re interested in trying this out, check out this free meal prep plan.
Once you get started, you’ll realize just how many benefits there are to meal prepping. You’ll be saving time, money and stress, and it can even help with losing weight or developing an overall healthier lifestyle.
Weekly Meal Prep Routine
There are 5 basic steps (plus one bonus step!) that I follow when I go to meal prep every week:
- Look at your calendar. See what social plans you have going on during the week and what nights you need to cook.
- Sit down and make your meal plan. Choose recipes that can double as lunches and dinners and plug them into a meal plan (more on my process here). If you won’t have leftovers from dinner for lunch, then you can pick an additional recipe to meal prep for work week lunches.
- Go grocery shopping. Shop your pantry, fridge and freezer while making your list to make sure you’re not buying ingredients you already have. Here are more grocery shopping tips, including how to shop faster and build the right kind of list.
- Prep your ingredients or batch cook. Either prep your ingredients on the weekend (i.e. cook meat, cook and shred chicken, cook rice/quinoa, chop onions, etc.) so that it’s faster to cook your weeknight dinners (here’s my process), or batch cook entire meals ahead of time so all you have to do is reheat the day-of. Ingredient prep is my preference because it only takes an hour vs several, and I even built Dinner Prep Pro, a meal prep app that gives you ingredient prep checklists and meal plans.
- Store your food in the right containers. Here’s a list of my go-to meal prep containers. HINT: you don’t need a million different gadgets. Just some glass meal prep containers, freezer bags and round bowls will often do the trick!
- BONUS: Repurpose your leftovers. There are so many options to turn your old food into something new! Browse these leftover meal ideas for more inspiration.
What foods are good for meal prep?
Ultimately, it all comes down to how you store your food. Most prepped ingredients will last for 5-7 days in the fridge or even longer in the freezer (like marinated meats, cooked proteins and cooked grains).
When you’re choosing your meals, you should also think about how they’re going to be reheated (or if they need to be reheated at all).
Try to choose recipes that can easily be reheated in the microwave or in a skillet. One-pot meals are great for meal prep, too, because you still get the delicious taste and flavour without all the extra dishes!
How long do meal prep meals last in the fridge?
You can typically expect most meal prep recipes to last for 4-5 days. It does depend on the ingredients used though. Here’s a general guide:
- Cooked meats and chicken have about a 5 day shelf life.
- Spinach and lettuce starts to brown after 5-7 days.
- Any sauces or salad dressings (see my 5 homemade salad dressing recipes here) will last for a couple weeks and up to a couple months.
- Cooked grains like white or brown rice, quinoa, farro, lentils, etc. will last in the fridge for 3-5 days (or in the freezer up to 3 months!)
- Any food you freeze (soups, stews, pastas and certain curries freeze best) will typically last up to 3 months – check out my dump dinners here, which are perfect for the freezer.
For more info, check out my blog post: How Long Does Meal Prep Last in the Fridge?
Meal Prep Tools
Once you’ve mastered your own meal prep routine and figured out what you’re going to do, you want to make sure you have the proper gear to store it all!
Here are my go-to meal prep containers:
- Glass square meal prep bowls are stackable and perfect for microwaving your food safely.
- Mason jars are perfect for salad because the lettuce stays separated from sauces.
- These bento box containers are perfect for packing snacks and lunches together!
Meal Prep Recipes
To help you get started on your new meal prep routine, I rounded up some of my favourite meal prep recipes from breakfast to dinner!
Breakfast meal prep ideas
Lunch meal prep ideas
Dinner meal prep ideas
Comments & Reviews
Julia says
those meals are so colorful, and I bet they are delicious as well 😉 I hope one day I’ll be as organized as you are when it comes to food 🙂