How to Prep for Just About Any Meal

I’ve never worked in the restaurant industry so I have no idea how a restaurant is actually able to prepare and serve a menu’s worth of different dishes to meet different customers desires, all within a short amount of wait time. If I had to guess though, I’d imagine they prepare a lot of staples in advance kind of like what I do in my house.  We eat well in our house.  And more often than not, cooking any specific meal takes less than 20 minutes.  Our secret?  When I come home from the supermarket our produce is washed, prepped and put into Tupperware before it sees the inside of my fridge. Once or twice a week we cook large batches of plain foods like chicken breast, ground meat, potatoes, or rice – all that can be seasoned just prior to re-heating and eating.  In addition, we buy foods that require little prepping to begin with.

Here are some of the staples you’ll find ready to go in our house:

1. Shredded chicken breast (we steam it in the instant pot, before shredding)
2. Meatballs baked and then stored in the fridge or frozen
3. Hard boiled eggs
4. Salt and peppered sautéed ground beef, turkey or other minced meat
5. Cooked brown rice and/or (sometimes) quinoa
6. Boiled potatoes
7. Washed and shredded lettuce and/or greens
8. Washed and chopped celery, cucumbers, carrots, sweet peas and chopped bell peppers, & onions
9. Boiled and sliced beets
10. Washed cherry tomatoes
11. Washed & prepared berries and melons
12. Shredded or crumbled cheeses (sometimes we prepare it ourselves sometimes we buy it prepared)

We also often have no-prep needed easy foods available as well:

1. Canned tuna and/or salmon
2. Mason jars full of raw seeds and nuts
3. Classico pasta sauces (the white sauces are surprisingly macro-friendly)
4. Dried fruit like dates, figs, mango slices (we look for no sugar added – Costco is often good for this)
5. Frozen vegetables
6. Plain Greek Yogurt

And sometimes we’ll buy prepared items like:

1. Kohlrabi, squash or zucchini ‘noodles’
2. Mango and/or pineapple slices

With these few items prepared in advance you can make just about any meal in a matter of minutes.

For breakfast you have countless options. Here are some examples:

• Fried eggs with meatballs.
• Omelet with chicken breast, bell peppers and onions.
• Scrambled eggs with ground beef and top with shredded cheese.
• Berries & seeds over a bowl of plain Greek yogurt – drizzle with syrup if desired.
• And for any of these meals you can fry up some of those boiled potatoes for hashed browns for added carbohydrates, or chop an avocado for healthy fat.

Lunch or dinner options:

• Rice with chicken breast or other prepared meat – literally just heat and eat.
• Ground beef over potatoes – again just heat and eat.
• Salad the buffet is already there. You just have to mix it according to your cravings – top it with chicken breast or canned fish, and shredded cheese or seeds.
• Vegetable noodles, or cooked quinoa topped with Classico sauce and prepared protein of choice. Serve with salad or veggies and dip.
• Stirfry – just flash-fry some of your prepared veggies & that chicken breast. Top with sauce of your choice. Eat over rice if desired.

When it’s time to prepare a meal, we have a good portion of it already made and waiting to be served.  There’s always a salad buffet.  For dinner most evenings, we cook a protein – often something as easy as baking fish or chicken or BBQing some steak. Cook more of that protein than you’ll eat for dinner and you have prepped meat for the next days’ breakfast (see my steak, prawn & egg breakfast above)! We may sauté some fresh chopped mushrooms with those already chopped onions, some asparagus, or steam some broccoli and if we’re lazy, we’ll simply boil frozen vegetables, which is something else we almost always have on hand. Often, we just need to reheat potatoes or rice to go with it.  It’s not hard to eat well, and it doesn’t have to add hours of work to your day.  You just have to plan and prepare for it in advance.  Making food prepping a habit is one of the best was you can make eating well easy.

Start small. Next time you buy a cucumber, don’t come home and put it in the fridge, intending to cut a single slice at a time as you need it. Wash it. Chop it up. Put it in Tupperware.  When you get cherry tomatoes, wash them before you put them away.  Do this with some, or all of your produce. Sure it adds a bit of work time to your shop days, but it saves you time throughout the week – and likely will mean you eat more fresh foods and waste less produce.  Do it and see how easy it is to add a side salad to any of your meals throughout the week. Watch how often you reach for the healthy snack (because now it’s so easy) over the unhealthy ones – without even thinking about it.

It all starts with good habits.