You mean I have to do this every night until I die?
February 9, 2022 1:22 AM   Subscribe

Can anyone recommend a meal prep book or plan that has worked for your family? I want to use a tried and true system that will minimise the amount of time I spend preparing food each week, so I can do all of my cooking for the evening meals at once.

Basically what I’m after is a series of recipes that I can shop for in one visit, spend a few hours in the kitchen on the weekend making it all, and then use a slow cooker, or have a tray bake, casserole or whatever to turn out enough meals for the week in the same session that simply have to be reheated to be eaten later that week.

Bonus points if I can do things like buy one whole chicken and use it in multiple meals or use one bag or apples, carrots etc in several recipes. Ideally I’d be given recipes and quantities to buy. Does this kind of thing exist?
posted by Jubey to Food & Drink (13 answers total) 47 users marked this as a favorite
 
It might help to know if you’re cooking for one or for a big family.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:00 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Hi, long-term Sunday meal prepper chiming in. There are hundreds of cook/plan books out there that break this down into straightforward steps for you. I think you need to narrow down what type of foods you're looking for, because that's generally what differentiates them. I mean, I've been vegan for almost 30 years and times have changed so much that googling "vegan meal prep cookbook" returns an ungodly number of hits, each according to the meals (breakfast? lunch? dinner? snacks?) and/or types of meals (salads? Indian? low fat?) of interest.

The fundamentals don't require much imagination: how much fridge, freezer, pantry space do you have available, and how much time do you want to put into the preparation steps? That latter category is both the once weekly prep steps for the weeks' worth of food, and also the prep that goes into making a meal from what you've prepped. The "tried and true" part comes down to there being a straightforward way to prep for each of these approaches, because the variables (almost entirely) are just related to the space you have available (which also ties into how much variety you need during the week, and how much time you're willing to spend on your big prep day). I spend about three hours each Sunday on this, which can feel like a lot but my word it helps me so much during the week.

So, for instance, I only prep dinners and lunches. Lunches are almost always a salad and sandwich. Prep for that is: process and dry a weeks' worth of greens that get stored (dry!) in the fridge; make a jar of dressing; chop veg, cook beans and store in their own containers; make hummous for sandwich. At lunchtime, I put the leaves and veg and beans in a bowl, dress, toss, and make a quick toast-hummous-greens sandwich. I don't dress the salad all at once on Sunday because the leaves are gross by Tuesday.

Dinner, though: I cook 5 dinner servings on Sunday night. I have a set of meal prep containers for mains (which have two compartments, and are all over your preferred online retialer of choice) and basic Tupperware (for soups or sides). For dinner, I just pull out the container(s), reheat, and dine. This week it's a caribbean tomato-coconut soup (in a Tupperware), steamed sweet potatoes and roasted maple-tamari tempeh with braised chard with lemon and garlic (in the big two compartment container) and Zero assembly prep.

There really is a version of the prepping approach for every niche. You'll see a lot of variation on the them that are oriented around freezer meals and/or family-scale volumes, weight maintenance or weight loss, and everything else you can imagine, but the tools are pretty much identical across all of these. Once you get the hang of this as a routine, you probably won't be leaning so much on a specific cookbook.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:52 AM on February 9, 2022 [17 favorites]


Try the InstantPot communities for main meal recipes, and buy plenty of bagged greens or whatever fresh veg you like to boost nutrition.

Decision fatigue is real and it needs to be minimized along with all of the physical shopping, prep, and cleanup tasks you'll be doing.

Also it sounds like you're wrangling all this work, mental and physical, by yourself. Not good especially if you are already wrangling paid work. See how much of it you can offload to other family members.

Finally, there is no shame in buying prepared foods. Back in my tech job days I bought frozen pre-cooked low carb meals and they saved my ass. Price can be a concern, though.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:04 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Something that might help narrow things down - try doing a search for "freezer meals batch cooking", or just "freezer meals".

There are a ton of web sites with recipes for meals where you just dump all the ingredients into a slow cooker and turn it on - but before you do that, you can portion the ingredients into a freezer-safe bag and freeze them all in the bag together, which in turn makes it easier to prepare a few such bags on a weekend in advance, and then all you need to do is pull one out of the freezer the night before to thaw in the fridge a bit.

If you add "batch cooking" to the search, you are more likely to find web sites with people who've worked out more multi-day plans for this kind of cooking - where someone's worked out that you cook off eight pounds of ground beef at one go, and one pound each gets stuffed into its own freezer bag - and then half those bags get hoisin sauce and the other half get salsa and presto, you've got Chinese stewed beef in some bags and taco beef in others. Or whatever.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:04 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


I have fallen in love with a book that gives me recipes, a shopping list (important for me), what to prep ahead, and how to assemble each evening. And we've tried about 1/2 the recipes. My family has loved 75%, liked 20% and ate but probably wouldn't make again 5%.

Cook Once, Eat All Week

I don't always prep ahead, which ends up fine. The reduction in decisions, the clear plan, and knowing all the ingredients are in the house has made a world of difference for me. It also means that anyone can make dinner without a huge explanation or fuss.

Most recipes feed 3 of us for 2 nights. It's gluten-free, but doesn't have to be. She gives substitutions if you're on a specific diet. Sometimes, I do want more veggies so I buy an extra bag salad or chopped veggies to throw in.
posted by banjonaut at 4:25 AM on February 9, 2022 [7 favorites]


We use Once A Month Meals for this. The pre-set meal plans are designed for Costco-style shopping so we can use a giant bag of potatoes, 15 pounds of apples, and Costco sized amounts of meat without waste. We usually start with a few predefined meal plans and then drop things we don't want and add things we want to have again. The site kicks out a shopping list (separated by cook-to-freeze and day-of ingredients), prep plans, and cooking day instructions. It tells you how to prep and what kind of containers to freeze stuff in. There are instant pot, slow cooker, oven, grill, and casserole type dishes.

There are likely other similar cheaper or free plans but we're used to this one. We can only do this because we can afford to buy a month's worth of food at Costco in one shot and we have a deep freezer which will be barriers to many and were for us for a long time. It is really nice to spend minutes on dinner prep most evenings.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 6:41 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


There are some big-family meal planners out there. I haven't tried this but Made It Ate It Loved It does a meal plan where you get recipes and a grocery list all together as a link to a store (too bad it's walmurt, but still). She also has an Insta where she constantly shows videos of her 4 children and all their friends devouring her cooking so I assume it probably tastes pretty great.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:43 AM on February 9, 2022


I have enjoyed using mealime. There are a lot (like a lot a lot) of websites out their that offer this service just google "meal planning service" and you will most likely find the perfect set up for your situation. As you haven't really said if you're a family, single or wanting healthy meals etc here are two I have the following bookmarked to try out but haven't tried them yet. Emeals, which looks good and I really want to try, as it send the order straight to the grocery stores too to make shopping easier, I just don't use those stores. Once a month meals might also be something you might find useful, though it does involve one big cooking session you then have a lot of prepared food for the month.
posted by wwax at 6:44 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


During the height of the pandemic, a friend sent me a freebie for three sets of two meals with a meal delivery kit. I had always thought they were stupid, and never understood the point, but after doing several weeks with one brand, I got curious about another — and they all offer big discounts for first-time subscribers for a matter of weeks, and by the time you're done trying three or four of them, the first brand is offering you a discount for X number of weeks to come back. I did that for about six months, took another six months off (during the warm) months, and then have started doing it again now that it's winter.

On the whole, I've found the meals reasonably healthy and, in the end, middle of the road restaurant-like in outcome. Depending on who you're ordering from and why , it will teach you about subtle elements of cooking. To my surprise (chagrin), I loved Martha Stewart, and hated Blue Apron. They all have their own personality. Anyway, with all the discounts, they cost between $40-60/week for 6 meals. I could never afford, or keep up with, the range of ingredients, and I've found the 30-40 minute process of following a recipe and to fixing the perfect amount of kit-provided food to be highly meditative, much like gardening. Especially during these pandemic times, that part of my day is one of my happiest. If you (or someone else: first come, first serve) want to try a kit, me-mail me, I have freebies to give away.
posted by Violet Blue at 9:41 AM on February 9, 2022


My go-to cookbooks for "big meal" planning are One Pan Wonders from America's Test Kitchen and Sunday Casseroles by Betsy Rosbottom.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:07 AM on February 9, 2022


Cook Smarts is a possible resource that meets some of your needs - it's a Meal Planning/Recipe service that sends you a weekly set of recipes (similar to a meal prep box like Blue Apron or Sun Basket, but they don't send you the food, so it's a lot cheaper) We did it at our house for a few years when we were working outside the home and found it to be a solid support for busy times.

The really helpful features include the shopping list that automatically generates a list for all the recipes you select for the week, then a simple click box to remove items from the list (like if you already have olive oil, or frozen peas, you can de-select it and it won't show on the shopping list).

It also supports dependencies like make extra rice one day because it'll be in the soup for another day, and does a good job handling quantities (you might use half a bell pepper in one recipe for fried rice and the other half in a salad later in the week).

You get access to their back catalog of recipes/meals too, so that's nice. If your household is fine with leftovers, my recommendation would be to select a larger portion (they default to recipes for 2, 4, 6, or 8 servings) and plan on having leftovers.

Each week there are options for prepping in advance and certainly much of the entire week's plan could be done in advance. I'm a pretty comfortable home cook but my partner is not, but we both got a lot out of the service.
posted by leastlikelycowgirl at 2:39 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


Sprouted Kitchen Cooking Club is a subscription service that gives you four recipes (three dinners, one dessert-ish thing) to make a week. They're plant-forward but not entirely plant-based, and it compiles a shopping list and meal plan schedule for you.
posted by airplant at 8:31 PM on February 9, 2022


I would definitely recommend an instant pot.

I think that diced onion, carrot and celery can be used in basically any savoury dish. Frozen peas are incredibly versatile.

Today we had a chicken caciatore going in the instant pot, a Bolognese simmering on the stove, and rice cooking in the rice cooker.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 12:56 AM on February 14, 2022


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