Meal prepping and food prepping: two ways to save time during busy weeks
With many of us in back-to-school mode and looking ahead to our busy schedules, we may start to wonder about how to save some time in the kitchen during our busy weekdays without sacrificing nutrients and the foods that make us feel our best.
So let’s chat about two of my favorite ways to help save time in the kitchen during the busy school and work weeks - Meal Prepping and Food Prepping.
While these two methods are similar, they’re not quite the same. One may be more ideal than the other for your family, and since I love to bring you options, we’re going to talk about both.
So let's get into it and start with meal prepping.
Meal prepping is probably the one that most of you are familiar with already. Maybe you've even tried meal prepping before or you've probably at least seen somebody else doing it.
Meal prepping means that not only have you thought ahead for all of your meals for the upcoming week, but you’ve grocery shopped for and cooked them all as well. And then, you can even go as far as portioning them out into different containers, easy to bring to work if you need to, and easy to warm up at night for dinners. They’ve been fully prepared, portioned, ready to heat up done for you for the whole week.
The great thing about meal prepping is that you don't actually have to do any cooking, or very little cooking, during the week. It’s already there waiting for you, ready to grab out of your refrigerator and put it in the oven or warm it up in the microwave really quickly… easy peasy!!
This type of planning does take a little bit more prep work and a little bit more commitment to what you're going to be eating. There's not a ton of flexibility here. But sometimes that can be really nice and appreciated because it also means that you don't have to think about anything during the week. So when you're busy and you're running around, going from activity to activity, and the kids are asking what's for dinner and you don't even have the capacity to think about it or come up with something on the fly… You don't have to if your meals have already been prepped and they're sitting in the fridge waiting for you when you get home. All you have to do is heat them up and you're good to go.
And meal prep doesn't just go for dinner either. You can do it for as many meals as you like!!
So that means you can also meal prep breakfast - which can really be a game changer.
You can have a whole lot more options in the morning for you and your family when you have some food already prepped and on hand so that you don't have to be at the whim of whatever's easy on a busy morning. If you've ever thought to yourself “I wish I had the time for more than just this cup of coffee” having a few pre-made meals available can send everyone off for their busy day full and happy.
Breakfast is honestly my personal favorite meal to meal prep because mornings are hectic in our house as well. And usually the last thing I want to do in a busy morning is spend a lot of precious time cooking a bunch of stuff. Having things everyone loves already cooked for me saves so much time!
Okay, now that we’ve covered meal prep, let's move on to talking about the other option… Food Prep.
I don't know if “food prep” is an official term, but…that’s what I call it. Food prep to me means that you are literally just prepping different food items and not necessarily full meals.
Let me explain what that looks like… food prep would be doing things like peeling and slicing carrots, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and generally prepping all kinds of produce, cooking or marinating some proteins, making sauces or some salad dressings, maybe even cooking up some grains like rice or quinoa. Basically, “food prepping” is taking care of the peeling, washing, chopping, and sometimes even the cooking (or par cooking) of some different ingredients and pieces of meals and having those things ready in your refrigerator, ready to grab and throw together to create meals quicker and easier and on the fly without having to do all the work at once.
When it comes time to throw a meal together, this approach gives you a lot more flexibility when it comes to meal times if you're the kind of person who doesn't necessarily want to commit to eating a certain meal on a certain day. Maybe you’re they type of person who doesn’t want to have to commit to eating your chicken curry dish on Thursday. Maybe you’re a more spontaneous, creative person that kind of wants to have more flexibility and doesn't necessarily want to be tied into the type of meal prep where your meals are set in stone for you and now you're kind of stuck. Food Prepping can be a really great option because it takes a big chunk of that time of the slicing and peeling and chopping out of the equation when it comes to getting dinner on the table or even throwing together healthy snacks. But it's not put together so much in a way that now you're stuck with just one plan.
So what are the best kinds of foods to prep ahead of time?
There are quite a few options that last really well in the fridge, and don’t mind being prepped before they’re ready to be used.
hard boiled eggs
sweet potatoes
butternut squash
carrots
cucumbers
broccoli
celery
bell peppers
onions
brussels sprouts
cabbage
cauliflower
cucumber
kale
radishes
melons
pineapple
strawberries
grapes
oranges
cherry tomatoes
snap peas
quinoa
brown rice
proteins (chicken, beef, pork, tofu, etc)
cheese (dicing, shredding, etc)
just to name a few 💛
Having a few extras of these prepped will also make us much more likely to reach for them for a quick snack! Pair veggies with hummus or yogurt dip mixed with everything bagel seasoning, and serve fruits with nut butter or honey yogurt dip.
And I do want to say something really important here….
Food prep, or even meal prep, does not have to happen on a Sunday… or on any specific day of the week. It can happen whenever you have the time.
So if the day that you have the most time to yourself is on a Tuesday, midday after you've just done a big grocery shopping trip and the kids are in school and you have an extra half hour while you're putting the groceries away… knock out that prep work then! Take the time to peel the carrots and slice up those veggies and whatever else it is that you need to do and knock it out then in there.
You don't have to wait for a certain day of the week to get it done. If it's harder for you to do when you have a house full of kids or you’d rather be out on the weekend adventuring with your family than stuck in the kitchen prepping next week’s meals, then find a better time that works for you. A productive Wednesday afternoon while the kids are at soccer practice counts just as much as a #mealprepsunday.
I get a lot of my food prep done when I'm cooking dinner. If I’ve got the big bag of carrots out for dinner and I’m already peeling and slicing things, I’ll just go ahead and do a bunch of them because I'm already in prep mode! I don't have to stop what I'm doing to make time for it.
I'll just do a couple more and then put the extras in a container and now I have sliced carrots in my fridge for the rest of the week for all of us to munch on. I can tell my kids just go grab some whenever they want - super simple.
To quickly recap:
Meal prep = completely planning out, shopping for, preparing, storing and (optionally) portioning out all of your meals for the week… all in typically two to four-ish hours in one day.
Pro: Your meals are completely planned and done, saving you tons of cooking time during the week, and saving YOU having to come up with ideas because your meals are already taken care of.
Con: Commitment - not a lot of options to change your mind mid-week if you decide you no longer want to eat what you’ve planned.
Food prep = preparing ingredients that can become meals later. Taking care of the extra peeling, chopping, and prepping time out of the equation for you and making creating meals a little bit easier.
Pro: Lots of flexibility! You can throw together whatever you feel like in the moment.
Con: Requires a little more cooking time during the week.
Feel free to combine these ideas and experiment however you like to find what works best for your family.
I hope these ideas save you a little bit of time in the kitchen while still preparing plenty of healthy meals for your family.
