Do you find cooking every night a stressful, boring task? If you seem to spend more time slaving over the stove than on what matters to you, you might be interested in learning how to meal prep for the week! Setting aside a few hours at the weekend to get meals ready for the week ahead can greatly cut down on the time you spend in the kitchen on weekdays, as well as shaving precious pennies off your food shopping bill.
What is meal prepping?
Meal prepping is the process of preparing all or most of the ingredients for your meals ahead of time so that when it comes time to cook, the hard work is already done. Fresh ingredients are either stored separately in sealed containers or mixed in the right quantities ready to be thrown into a pan or the oven. They can be frozen, too, to prolong the life of the meals.
Many people who meal prep will get their preparation out of the way at the weekend to make weekday dinners easier. As well as taking the stress out of cooking, meal prepping is a fantastic way to save cash by helping you stick to a food budget and ruling out last-minute takeaways because you don’t feel like cooking.
How to meal prep for the week
1. Create a list of recipes
Having a list of go-to recipes will make meal prepping so much easier. Write down 15 – 20 meals that you enjoy, and once you’ve chosen your meals, find recipes (either in cookbooks, or online) and keep note of them. Writing out your recipes in a planner or notebook is an easy way to find them again in the future – or if you find them on the internet, you could bookmark them.
Get the family involved by asking them to share a few meal ideas they’d like to eat and add these to your master list. If you’re stuck for inspiration, sites like BBC Good Food have hundreds of meal prep ideas.
2. Choose which meals you’d like to eat
At the end of the week, pull up your list of recipes and pick meals for each day of the week. You don’t have to meal prep breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you don’t want to – many people tend to just prep their lunch and/or dinner and keep quick breakfast ingredients to hand.
Top tip: Try to pick meals with similar base ingredients – this will keep your shopping list short and food costs down.
3. Write up a detailed shopping list
Open each recipe and write the ingredients down in a shopping list. After you know what you need, look in your kitchen and take note of what you already have – crossing off anything you don’t need to buy. Don’t forget to check your herbs and spices!
When you go shopping, try to pick up produce with longer expiration dates to ensure your ingredients don’t go off before you get round to using them.
4. Prepare your meal prep containers
As you get used to meal prepping, you’ll learn to know which containers work best for your needs, but when it comes to knowing how to meal prep for the week, there are some container staples that every bulk cook needs. These are a few of our favourites:
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Plastic, tight-lidded containers, perfect for storing meal prep ingredients.
· Stackable · Washable · Reusable · Freezer safe · Microwave safe |
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Large, disposable containers perfect for storing batch cooks for the whole family.
· Easy clean-up · Large capacity · Not microwave safe |
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Long-lasting clear plastic containers with keep fresh seals.
· Washable and reusable · Secure lid with clips · Durable plastic |
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Plastic sealable bags, perfect for freezing stocks and soups.
· Easy to seal · Freezer safe
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Pick up these and more in store – check our Find a Store page to find your closest Poundstretcher location.
5. Get prepping
Now comes the actual preparation stage! Create piles of the ingredients you will need for each dish, and chop, slice, and cut each ingredient as needed. It makes sense to prepare multiples of ingredients at the same time; for example, if 4 recipes need a diced onion each, dice all 4 at the same time and divide between each meal.
Once your ingredients are prepped, place them into their relevant containers and seal them up, storing either in the fridge or freezer. If your recipe calls for cupboard staples like pasta or rice, you can pre-measure these too and store in bags or boxes so they can be grabbed when needed.
If you want to, you can go the whole hog by cooking and freezing some meals so that they are ready to be defrosted and cooked easily - this works perfectly for stews and soups.
Enjoy a more relaxed approach to cooking
Once you’ve gotten used to meal prepping and you have all the right containers, you can get used to enjoying your evenings without worrying about spending hours on cooking. Weekly meal prep might seem like a chore at first, but once it’s part of your routine, it is a great idea for anyone who has a busy home life, wants to save money, or has an interest in healthier eating.