Buzz
Photo: Tetiana Kreminska/Getty ImagesCooking at home has its advantages—it’s often more budget-friendly than dining out or getting takeout, and it can also be a healthier choice. However, cooking can take up quite a bit of time and sometimes feel like a chore, especially after a long day.
Meal prepping can save you time in the kitchen and help cut costs. Here are some straightforward meal prep hacks to make cooking during the week (or anytime) much easier, including some tips our editors swear by.
1. Switch It Up with Store-Bought Sauces
Sam Saunion, senior social media editor at Mytour, believes that the right sauce can elevate any dish. "If I’m stuck eating the same meat all week, like chicken breasts, I switch things up by buying a variety of pre-made sauces and season different portions each day. That way, it doesn’t feel like I’m eating the same thing every day (which I absolutely hate!)." Saunion recommends trying chimichurri, sweet Thai chili, honey garlic, or buffalo sauce to keep things exciting.
2. Maximize Your Air Fryer
If you’ve been limiting your air fryer to making chicken wings, it’s time to broaden your horizons. An air fryer can cook just about anything that you'd normally bake in the oven, but faster and with minimal cleanup, thanks to its all-in-one basket. Try making meatballs, pizza, or explore some air fryer recipes to shake up your weekly meal rotation.
3. Batch Cook Your Meals
"Cooking rice in large quantities is perfect for prepping ahead for the week," shares Mytour's lifestyle editor, Ria Bhagwat. "I especially love making chicken fried rice (which can easily be swapped for tofu or fish, depending on your dietary needs), as it’s so simple to prepare in big batches."
4. Make the Most of Your Slow Cooker
When making larger portions, slow cooker meals are satisfying, simple, and perfect for meal prepping. Just toss your ingredients into the slow cooker and let it do the work. It's one of the best tools in your meal prep kit, especially since it makes a large batch of food, giving you multiple meals to enjoy over the course of the week.
5. Stay Organized with Your Fridge
A well-organized fridge can make cooking easier and more efficient. After bringing your groceries home, take the time to arrange everything neatly on the shelves. This will help you track what you have and prevent any items from going to waste throughout the week.
6. Use a Meal Planning App
While having a well-organized grocery list and a meal schedule can definitely improve your meal prepping, there are also various apps that can make the process easier. These useful meal-planning apps assist you in figuring out what groceries you need and how to create easy recipes for the week, saving you time in the kitchen.
7. Get Your Veggies Ready in Advance
Jenna Helwig, the food director at Mytour, suggests that preparing vegetables ahead of time makes it much quicker to cook fresh meals every day, without ending up with soggy containers of leftovers. She says, "Washing and chopping broccoli, halving Brussels sprouts, and cubing squash saves so much hands-on time throughout the week." She also mentions, "And I still get the flavor of freshly cooked veggies."
8. Make Smarter Grocery Purchases
Grocery shopping can feel overwhelming and pricey, especially when trying to shop for an entire week. Focus on affordable grocery essentials that can be used in a variety of meals. Consider items like jarred goods, beans, frozen fruits and vegetables, and long-lasting fresh produce like bananas, potatoes, and melons that won’t spoil quickly.
9. Make Use of Everyday Household Items
Meal prepping is all about finding ways to make the process more efficient in the kitchen. Consider repurposing common household items to ease your prep work, like using a clean ketchup bottle to store your pancake batter or connecting two zip bags to create a larger storage space when necessary.
10. Relish Simple Sheet Pan Dinners
Sheet pan meals are fantastic for meal prep since all it takes is a protein, some vegetables, and herbs to prepare multiple dinners in around 30 minutes. You can even cook several sheet pans simultaneously on different oven racks, allowing you to prepare up to four times the amount of food.
11. Cook Extra for Leftovers
Leftovers are a simple and effective way to meal prep since you just need to cook a little extra of what you’re already making. Get inventive with your ingredients to keep things interesting each day, like shredding some of the chicken thighs from last night's dinner to add to a salad.
12. Properly Freeze Your Food
Having food stored in the freezer makes it easy to whip up quick meals on hectic nights without needing another grocery run. For the best results, freeze your food in small portions, using freezer-safe containers or storage bags, to maintain its freshness when you're ready to defrost it.
