If you only eat small portions and don’t like spending time in the kitchen if you can avoid it, you can turn this to your advantage. Simply pick a time to cook a larger amount and store individual portions in the fridge or freezer. This works particularly well with soups, sauces and dishes like ratatouille, for example. Once a common practice known as pre-cooking, it now carries the trendier name “meal prep”. This new old trend offers a host of advantages, allowing you to use produce while it’s still fresh from the market and store it until you want to eat it.
Shopping consciously and choosing seasonal produce means you can cook with fresh produce. It also means avoiding processed ready meals. One advantage of meal prep is the certainty of knowing you have delicious, home-made meals waiting for you for the next few days, or even the entire week. But that’s not all: home-made food can often be healthier and tastier, too. Cooking for yourself means you are in control of all the ingredients, that end up on your plate, or in your resealable containers and lunch boxes.
Cook once and enjoy it for several days. Meal prepping is an ideal solution, especially when you arrive home exhausted after a day at work and would otherwise mindlessly choose pasta with ready-made sauce or a frozen pizza. This is one way meal prepping can help to eat more healthy. After all, if you’re more aware of your food and portion size, you’ll notice sooner when you’re full.
So, meal prep helps you to save time and eat more healthily. More than that, though, it allows you to do your bit to fight food waste. If you cook two or three portions in advance, there usually won’t be any half-used ingredients left over. Instead, you might even be able to freeze a little stockpile for those hectic, stressful days.
Meal prep is also more cost-effective. If you buy lunch from a café or get it delivered, you’ll end up paying much more. And, if you order a takeaway or opt for convenience food, you’ll also have to contend with far more packaging. The example of meal prep shows that, by taking even small steps, you can live more sustainably and prevent waste from leftover food and packaging.
It’s easy to cook large amounts of soups and casseroles. They freeze brilliantly, which means you don’t have to eat the same meal all week. Plus, by adding various ingredients and toppings such as croutons, seeds or crème fraîche, you can whip up a few different versions of soups or salads in next to no time. You’ll see the benefit when you come home the following evening and already have a healthy, home-made meal ready and waiting for you. The same goes for your lunch breaks at work.
Isn’t meal prep just a fancy name for an old idea? After all, our parents and grandparents planned meals in advance and cooked ahead. The new aspect of this food trend, which originated in the USA, is the holistic approach to nutrition and sustainability in relation to food. However, meal prepping originated on the fitness scene. It was created as a means of keeping tracking of exactly what a person was eating and in what quantities.
Want to become a meal prepper? Maybe you’re already experienced with meal prep but are looking for the right recipes? Well, how about a red lentil soup? You can find many more recipes in our recipe database. And, to help make meal prep even more fun and get all the peeling, stirring and mixing done in no time at all, check out the MQ series from Braun. Find out more.