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Meal prepping hacks can save you time, money, and keep you on your meal plan for longer. There are a lot of tips and tricks that you pick up along the way so we want to share them with you to assist in your meal prepping endeavors. They’re simple but take time to work into your routine so you’ll get better as you get more experience.

When you first get into meal prepping, it’s common to want to make massive meals that you portion out into an entire week’s worth of breakfast, lunch and dinners. Take it slow at first and discover recipes that you enjoy, want to eat over and over again, and can handle reheating. A big discouragement early on in your meal prepping is throwing out half of what you make because you get bored of it, don’t like it as much as you thought or it goes bad. Work into a routine with a repertoire of great meal prepping recipes.

This is simple but it can make a world of difference when you’re meal prepping a lot of meals, either for yourself or for your family. Keep your fridge organized. Organize your meals, ingredients, and components so that you can keep track of your timeline, meal order, and cooking schedule. This helps avoid food waste which is discouraging in meal prep since it just wastes time and money. The opposite of your goals. Go left to right for the most recently cooked or front to back remembering “First In, First Out”. Don’t bury your older meals with newer meals up front. It’ll get confusing and make it a hassle in the mornings when you’re running out the door to work.

Also, as we always say at Prep Yo Self, label your containers. Once you start stacking meals and meal components in your fridge and freezer you will lose track of what’s what. Keep yourself motivated by staying organized.

This is probably the toughest meal prepping hack to get right. Do your best to stick to recipes that work well for meal prepping. That means that the meal can be portioned out, freezes well, reheats well, and most importantly can be diversified. Some meals require specific storage arrangements while others can easily be stored in a single container. Try out different recipes and you’ll soon discover meals that you enjoy, can cook easily, and are delicious.

This is the most common meal prepping hack, and for good reason. Choose your recipes, make a list of the ingredients that you need and the amounts. This can help you design a meal prepping plan that uses the same ingredients to avoid food waste. This can also help you save money by avoiding unnecessary grocery purchases and by selecting recipes with ingredients that are affordable. Sometimes this means buying seasonal ingredients so pay attention to what you can actually find at your grocery store before picking recipes if you can.

Meal prepping works best with a plan. From the recipes that you choose to the grocery store trip, a schedule can keep you on track and running out of prepped food for the week or making too much. Portioning food out and scheduling which meal is for which day can also help you balance your nutrition and avoid burning out on the same recipes over and over again.

One of the best meal prepping hacks is making sauces that work for many different recipes. A good sauce can transform a meal. If the sauce can be frozen or lasts a long time, this is a great way to improve your meals’ flavors and meal prep cooking time. Tomato sauces go great on a variety of pastas, a simple vinaigrette is a great salad dressing or chicken and roasted veggies sauce. These simple additions to your meal elevates the flavor and speeds up the prep time by removing a component that you have to make every time. Pull a jar from the fridge, pour some on top and you’ve created a whole new dish.

Proteins are easy to mix and match. Think about your vegetable choices and how you can use them for different recipes. This makes grocery shopping easier and cheaper. It also gives you the flexibility to mix up your routine mid week if you find yourself getting bored of a recipe. Try experimenting with recipes and switching out the ingredients in the list for ingredients that you know you have and like.

Preparing your vegetables ahead of the cook can speed up the process later. Especially if you’re planning to cook a meal in the middle of the week. Get your vegetables cleaned, chopped, or anything else that you can do ahead of time so you will be more motivated to actually cook the meal on a Wednesday night after a long day.

This meal prepping hack can save you a lot of time and keep you on your routine when you find yourself too busy or tired to cook an entire feast. Use frozen bagged vegetables and fruits. They will keep for much longer, are generally cheaper, and if you know how to reheat them, taste just as good as fresh fruits and veggies. Bagged broccoli, carrots, pineapples, berries. These are all great choices and can be dropped into a blender for a quick and nutritious smoothie.

Also don’t forget about the offerings at your local grocery store. If they have rotisserie chickens or a deli section, use the premade options. It’s not as cheap or sometimes as healthy but it’s better than breaking your routine and eating out. It can also help you discover new recipes if you’re not comfortable cooking a certain ingredient.

Pressure cookers, crock pots, air fryers, and traditional ovens are all great choices. These appliances are here to make your life easier. They can help make cooking easier, faster and in some cases improve your bulk cooking options.

A great meal prepping hack is to look for “One Pan” or “One Pot” recipes. These recipes tend to be delicious, easy to learn, and most importantly, easy to clean up. Throw some chicken and veggies on a sheet pan with a drizzle of olive oil and 40 minutes later you can dinner for a few days. The best part is that the clean up is minimal. A big part of meal prepping is to be more efficient with your time and finding hacks to decrease the boring steps in the kitchen make cooking more fun.

Mixed smoothies only last for so long before they start to separate and go bad. The blended veggies and fruits go bad so much quicker. The solution is to prepare the smoothie mixes beforehand but don’t blend until you’re ready to drink it. This also helps with portion control.

The last of the meal prepping hacks is a great way to store your premade salads to retain freshness. When you’re adding your salad to your food storage containers, add the dressing first. This way the dressing rests at the bottom and the rest of the ingredients can go on top. This prevents the vegetables and other components from going soggy as quickly and it’s easy to shake it up right before eating for a fresh, tossed salad.

Meal prepping hacks can make a big difference in your enjoyment of the food and greatly increase the efficiency. Both of those are more likely to make you stick with your schedule more often and for longer.

Knowing the tips for freezing meals is important when getting into meal prepping. Cooking meals in large batches and making food for the whole week could lead to a lot of freezing food. It’s a great way to make meals last longer for both food safety and quality. This is also very helpful for saving money as you’ll waste less money throwing old food out. Finding what works best for you and your meal preferences are key and these tips are to help get the best results. Take it easy at first to avoid throwing out a lot of meals a few months from now and this will help pick the right ingredients.

Finding The Freezer Space

You’ve probably bought or frozen your own fair share of meals already so you have a good understanding of how much you can fit in your freezer. This tip for freezing meals becomes especially important as you start cooking in larger amounts to meal prep through the weeks and months. It’s frustrating to realize that much of what you have cooked can’t fit and you’ll have to either eat it, give it away or throw it out. Before you start planning your meals, check your freezer space and remember to not absolutely fill  your freezer as it’s not good for freezing food and it’s difficult to find your meals later. Stay organized and give yourself space to move stuff around.

Alongside making sure you have the space for all of your frozen food, make sure you have the right containers ready for the types of food you are making and will also fit in your freezer. Freezer bags are a great choice since they’re cheap, can be flattened if it’s soup, reheating is easy, and you can squeeze all of the air out more easily than in a rigid container. Air tight containers are also incredibly important. One to avoid freezer burn but also to avoid your foods taking on the flavors of the other foods in your freezer. It seems weird to think about but food will absorb the flavors of other foods nearby when they’re left for days or weeks.

Remember to label your frozen meals with a name and date. Frozen foods should typically be consumed within 3 months, depending on what it is. Labeling your food will avoid so many questions and potentially harmful meals down the road. It’s easy to forget what you made and when and it’s better to be prepared than questioning. 

Reheating Foods

Never put hot food directly in your freezer for multiple reasons. Hot food can heat up the food around it in the freezer and this can lead to contamination or just a lower quality frozen meal. Portion out foods for faster cooling which can also help with freezing meal size portions which also makes reheating easier too.

Never take glass or Pyrex food containers directly from the freezer to the oven. The temperature difference can crack or shatter the glass. This is a great way to ruin the container, the meal and potentially your oven so take this tip for freezing meals to heart. Let the container sit out at room temperature or run lukewarm water over the container to warm it up at first. Thawing the food can also help retain the quality when reheating. Just like with cooking, if you have to melt the outside first, it’ll be burnt by the time you cook the insides. (Except with frozen soups, you can get away with a lot with frozen soups.)

When reheating foods, remember that you have to bring all foods back up to a safe internal temp. 

Tips For Freezing Meals

Freezing foods can be tricky if you’re not helping yourself out with recipe choices. Some recipes simply do better frozen and reheated than others. Let’s start with what not to freeze.

Do Not Freeze – Food with a lot of moisture or have a texture that is important to the experience

• Yogurt: Yogurt has a lot of moisture and a creamy texture. Freezing yogurt will split it and create a very unpleasant experience.
• Watery produce: Think zucchini, cucumbers, oranges, herbs and raw tomatoes for good examples. These fruits and vegetables rely on the water that they contain to impart flavor and a desirable eating experience. Freezing these will break up the flesh, leak, overall ruin the dish.
• Leafy greens: Just like with produce, leafy greens have a lot of moisture so freezing them will dry them out as well as remove that freshness that is desired.
• Cheese: Cheese has a lot of moisture in it. You wouldn’t necessarily think so but dried out cheese is gross and flavorless. If you’ve even left a block of cheese in the fridge for too long you’ll know what this looks like and the freezer just does it quicker.
• Uncooked mushrooms & potatoes: If you’re going to meal prep with mushrooms and potatoes make sure to choose a recipe that uses cooked or dried mushrooms and potatoes. It’s better to do this in a controlled way as the freezer will just squeeze the juice out and leave the vegetables sitting in their own liquid.
• Previously frozen meals: avoid adding thawed chicken to a meal that will be frozen before it’s cooked. If you’re thoroughly cooking the entire dish it will be fine. Or keep them separate and add the cooked chicken at the end.

Tips for freezing foods you should freeze

• Proteins: Shredded proteins like pulled pork, shredded chicken or cut up steak all freeze well. The size is generally uniform, smaller and the texture that they have won’t be ruined in the freezer. Big pieces of protein won’t reheat as well and usually cost a lot of money so you’ll end up wasting the money and the food. 
• Fruits and veggies: cook or dry your fruits and veggies before freezing. Also freeze these separately from the other parts of the meal. You want to preserve that subtle flavor and mixing it with other foods can just lead to every bite tasting the same. Also consider adding fresh fruits or veggies to a frozen meal for a better result.
• Carbohydrates: Many people freeze bread to make it last longer and dry carbs freeze very well. Try to avoid freezing pasta noodles in a soup or sauce as the pasta noodles will fall apart. If you know you’re freezing the meal you can also undercook your pasta before freezing so reheating finishes the cooking time.
• Sauces: Sauces can take a long time to make and are great for meal prepping since you can throw fresh veggies a protein into a sauce and have a delicious meal that takes less than 15 minutes. Sauces also don’t rely on texture and can be frozen in any container to fit the space you have in your freezer.
• Soups: Soups freeze very well. For similar reasons as the sauces. There are more textures in soups and certain ingredients will lose some rigidity and texture (like potatoes) but for the most part most soups reheat perfectly deliciously.

Recipes That Freeze Well

Try some of our recipes that freeze and reheat well for quick, nutritious and delicious meals throughout your busy week.

• Protein Options: 
• Balsamic Baked Chicken
• Instant Pot Beef Ragu
• Instant Pot Pork Carnitas
• Insta Pot BBQ Chicken
• Meatloaf Patties

• Breakfast Options:
• Sausage Egg Muffins
• Cranberry Oatmeal Muffin Bars
• French Toast Muffins
• Pumpkin Cranberry Oat Bar

• Soup Options: 
• Turkey Toscana Soup
• One Pot Mexican Chicken Soup
• Chicken and Vegetable Soup