Pamela Ellgen - Mastering Meal Prep: Easy Recipes and Time-Saving Tips to Prepare a Week of Delicious Make-Ahead Meals in just One Hour

Table of Contents

My goal is for meal prep to make your life less complicated, make cooking more fun, and make meals that are both healthy and delicious! I define meal prep as planning a menu, preparing ingredients, and cooking strategically to yield simple, healthy, and delicious food thats ready to enjoy straight from the refrigerator or with only a few minutes of active cooking time or up to an hour in the oven. Each chapter in Mastering Meal Prep has a theme and a (super-cheesy) title. Each one is designed to stand alone and offers a unique menu, shopping list, recipes, and prep day schedule for one week. This means you dont have to flip back and forth between chapters to find the essential recipes. Each chapter also features a handful of foundation recipes. These typically consist of one or two proteins, along with a starch, vegetables, and sauces.

The foundation recipes can be prepared within a one-hour time frame and serve as the building blocks for meals throughout the week. Some weeks also include a few additional prep day tasks, such as chopping vegetables or assembling a casserole. You can follow the suggested menus I offer for using those ingredients, or you can come up with your own combinations. All of the main meal recipes combined yield at least 20 servings, which provide lunch and dinner for two people for five days. Its up to you when you want to enjoy each meal, and many are freezer-friendly, so you can save any unused portions for later if you go out to eat or make other plans. The meal prep day can happen any day of the week, but I find it works best on the last day of my weekend, which is Sunday.

Thats when I prepare all of the foundation recipes. I then enjoy the first main meal of the week that night. The recipes in this book are designed to maximize your time so that you can cook one ingredient and use it several different ways. Most weeks feature one large portion of protein that is strategically deployed to a few different meals. For example, a whole roast chicken is served as pulled chicken tacos and in a hearty chicken pot pie. Starches and cooked vegetables are used similarly, artfully filling multiple recipes.

Each recipe includes the cooking time required for that day. The additional cooking time will have been completed on the meal prep day. For example, if a recipe calls for cooked brown rice, the time required to cook it is not included in the recipe. Instead, it is included in the one hour of advanced preparation. Make sure to read each chapter thoroughly before you shop and get started prepping. That way you wont be tethered to the cookbook every second of the preparation.

SAVVY SHORTCUTS Each chapter offers a few shortcuts for purchasing prepared products to make prep day easier. Although I wanted to provide all of the recipes so you could make everything from scratch, that doesnt mean you should. When time or patience is in short supply, skip the extra chopping and mixing and take the easy route, especially if you have brands of prepared foods you know you can count on. What is a portion size? For one person, 400 calories might be a meal. For another, that is a snack. In my family, were very active and frequently run, surf, practice yoga, and lift weights.

Hence, I eat around 600 calories at lunch and dinner, and my husband, Rich, eats even more. But, everyones needs are different. I considered this carefully when planning the portion sizes in this book and opted for smaller portion sizes that can easily be multiplied for athletes and those with very active lifestyles. Recipes in this book yield four or more servings of approximately 350 to 600 calories each for lunches and dinners and about 200 to 300 in the breakfast chapter. Of course, you will want to tailor each recipe to meet your needs. If thats not enough foodor if you need to prepare meals for more peoplesimply double the recipe.

If the recipes offer more food than you need, you can cut the recipe in half, or better yet, store the leftovers. I provide storage tips for any recipe that can easily be frozen and defrosted. Also, meat shrinks by about 25 percent during cooking. Hence, the raw weight will be roughly 4 ounces per serving of lean protein but will yield about 3 ounces per portion (occasionally less in some recipes with multiple sources of protein). For example, in Shredded Chicken Tacos with Pickled Onions (), the recipe calls for 14 ounces of shredded cooked chicken. If you do not have a scale, simply estimate the portion size using a deck of cards as a visual cue for one portion.

Of course, many pieces of meat do not lend themselves well to being smooshed into a measuring cup, so use a simple kitchen scale if you have one. Look for these icons that identify if a recipe is free from gluten, dairy, eggs, and nuts. Also noted are recipes that are vegan or vegetarian. However, all recipes are easily adaptable to a gluten-free or dairy-free diet and Ive recommended substitutions in the ingredient list where appropriate. In addition, Ive provided notes to make recipes gluten free, dairy free, egg free, nut free, and plant based, when possible. I am a minimalist when it comes to equipment.

For years, I rolled out my pie crusts without a rolling pin, opting for a pint glass instead (I dont recommend that!). So, when it comes to equipment, I only ask you to buy the things you really cant live without. Rimmed baking sheet. Also known as a half sheet pan, the rimmed baking sheet will be used to cook many of the foundation recipes in this book. Invest in one or two sturdy pans and the largest size that will fit in your oven. Youre going to need all of that real estate to get the most out of your prep work.

Medium and large stock pot. I used two 4-quart pots and occasionally one 8-quart pot while preparing the recipes in this book. Whenever food was being cooked on the stovetop, I used no more than three pots or pans at a time because it can get crowded quickly, especially when youre using large skillets. Invest in heavy-bottom pots with glass lids. Small and large oven-safe skillets. I used one 8-inch skillet, one 16-inch skillet, and one 14-inch cast iron pan for preparing the recipes in this book.