Meal Prepping Guide for Maximum Flavor
A Guide for Taking the Boring out Bulk Cooking
As much as I love cooking daily, even multiple times a day, sometimes that’s not practical for a number of people.
To be sure, Work From Home has enabled more people to cook conveniently at home. However there still do remain niches of people that don’t have the time (or want) to put in the time to cook frequently at home.
Meal planning over the last couple of decades has become very popular, particularly in the fitness community. That’s not the only niche though. Families with 2-working parents and also professionals working long/high stress positions may need to meal plan consistently.
This process usually involves cooking 1x or 2x a week in bulk and then portioning up your food and storing in the fridge/freezer; ready to retherm at a moments notice.
Since we are still in New Years mode a lot of people are back at the gym, counting macros and trying to meal plan.
Whether you meal plan full time or just need to occasionally, I’ve found most meal plans I’ve seen to be extremely boring and monotonous.
After talking with many people are into the meal-planning life they generally respond “well that’s just part of it… it’s gonna be boring but it’s easy and quick”.
Now’s a perfect time for me to drop some tips and rec’s for you to get the most out of your meal planning. Using some efficiency you’d be surprised how a few little tweaks or ideas can make big flavor differences.
Organization
This is a given.
To effectively maximize your time you should have a printed (or digital) grocery list and also an inventory of your pantry/fridge/freezer.
Do your inventory first, then you will know exactly what you need for your bulk grocery stop; having your list highlighted with only the items you need.
I’m not going to go through making an inventory or grocery list; simple google search will turn up plenty of free templates that you can customize.
Mise en Place:
This is the backbone of every skilled line cook that has to put in 100’s of reps per night in a busy restaurant.
Derived from the French, meaning “everything in it’s proper place”. When it’s time to do your bulk cook(s) for the week.
Always ready your recipes through at least 2x. This will save you time and ensure you aren’t halfway through a recipe and are missing ingredients
Gather your ingredients and have them arranged within arms length.
Keep your surfaces, cutting board and knife wiped down while working. A clean kitchen will save time when cleanup comes.
Order of Operations:
You can really maximize your cooking time by having multiple processes going at once.
Basic af Example:
Rice & Ground Meat: Most people will
Cut all your aromatics, knife work, and picking your herbs up front
Then heat your pan to brown meat.
Then browning your meat and removing
then sauteing aromatics, adding herbs to finish
then making your rice.
We can be far more efficient by rearranging the order of operations. As long as you have all your ingredients on hand to begin with
Rice will take 20 mins so we start that first.
While rice is going, get your saute pan on heating. Start cutting your aromatics.
When your pan is ripping hot, brown your ground beef. Finish your aromatics and picking herbs, stirring the ground beef occasionally.
Remove the beef, saute your aromatics add your herbs and you’re done.
This is an extremely basic example but you get the idea. If you do this in bulk, 2-3 times a week you’re looking at saving hours of active cooking time.
FWIW: I try to right all of the Substack recipes here with the order of operations already in place for maximum efficiency. After [redacted] years in professional kitchens it just becomes the way you naturally think.
Flavors & Spices
This is where we tackle the “boring”.
Related to Mise en place: you can’t expect to have flavorful exciting meals with a bare pantry and no spices.
In general, you’re better accumulating smaller packages that you will go through rather than the large “discount” packages that will sit in your pantry for years on end.
Whole spices will keep longer and can be toasted and ground for the week. Pre-ground spices should be used no later than 6 months.
For a full dive into spices:
Blank Canvases:
When thinking of proteins like chicken, ground meats and even hummus… if you treat them as blank canvas you can literally have a different meal every time by having homemade sauces and condiments on hand.
Example of hummus above: can be eaten with vegetables as a snack or light lunch, then topped with lamb kofta, and the next night topped with ground beef/lamb with tomato and eggplant.
Remember the hummus can be frozen and thawed as needed
Example of Steamed Chicken: Served with potato and homemade pesto (can be frozen), next day steamed chicken salad for lunch, then fold in the steamed chicken to a fried rice made from days-old rice.
Flank Steak: Quick seared and served with Romesco sauce and greens. Next day, take chilled leftover flank steak thinly slice and douse in a crying tiger thai sauce, with toasted rice powder, mint/cilantro salad over lettuce.
Laab Moo: One of my fave stir fry’s can be served over rice for dinner, follow by chilled and eaten in lettuce cups the next day for a light lunch full of flavor.
These are just a few examples. All of the sauces I’ve mentioned are already here in the Substack archives. You can start making a few and then you’ve got them on hand to spice up for your meal planning. 🙌
Bulk Cooking Tips
A lot of things can go wrong in bulk cooking. Too many to cover here but for brevity sake here’s a few.
Foods that freeze well: Soups, Braises, Curries, Stews, Lentils, Cooked Rice, Cooked Legumes, Casseroles, Raw Meat (avoid multiple defrost-freezes)
Foods that dont freeze well: Pasta’s, Cream sauces, Custards, high water content vegetables (like lettuce, cucumber, tomato), Fried Foods, anything with Gelatin
IQF Seafood: You’re best off getting individual portions of seafood that have been flash frozen. Ahi Tuna, Salmon, Trout, Flounder & Mahi all are good for this. As are shrimp. Halibut and Cod can be iffy.
Chicken Breast: Steaming is by far the most gentle and versatile way to cook and largely hands off. Much more enjoyable when reheated or used cold in salads. Avoid roasting and ffs please stop putting chicken breast in crock pots for 2 hours at a time 😩 . Thighs are much more forgiving so not addressing here.
Ground meats: You’re probably overcooking them. Best strategy is to get a ripping hot pan, add your fat then ground meat. Don’t over crowd and don’t stir or move the ground meat for at least 3-4 mins. Let the meat sear undisturbed. Now lower, or turn off the heat. Stir the ground meat vigorously and the residual heat of the pan will cook the meat through without drying it out.
Recommended Cookwares
I consider all of these cookwares/appliances invaluable for meal prepping.
Rice Cooker: If you’re meal prepping a lot this is one countertop appliance that will save you a lot of time and fuss. The only brand that’s worth it is Zojirushi. The 5cup or 10cup are great for making larger batches of rice which you can then store. Worth every penny, Japanese perfected, buy one and you’ll never have to buy another.
Pressure Cooker: I believe pressure cookers should be mandatory in every kitchen, whether you meal plan or not. I wrote a substack with an intro to pressure cookers.
TLDR: For a lot of soups, braises, stews, esp dried legumes, curries, bone broths the pressure cooker is a time saving having that many times delivers optimal flavors.
I prefer stove top pressure cookers because they will keep a slightly higher pressure than the electrics. And you’ll also save counter space. Counter space is precious!
If you are bulk cooking it’s worth getting a larger pressure cooker than I’d normally recommend, again, because you’re wanting larger batches.
Fissler is the gold standard. German made. Been using them forever in all my professional kitchens. Their 10qt model is currently 40% (not sure for how long).
As with the rice cooker above, you won’t need to buy another.
Large Dutch Oven/Rondeau: Dutch ovens will generally give you more surface area for browning which is why I like to have them in tandem with a pressure cooker. You can even use as a faux-saute pan if you’re really tight on space but you want get the evaporation effect like you have with a proper saute pan.
All-Clad is classic and I’ve been using them forever. A few years ago I came upon American made Heritage Steel which has a really ergonomic handle that I prefer now. Rivals the quality of All-Clad also.
Use code “OCTOPOD” to receive 10% off your any pots and pans. The discount also applies to any current sales/deals running!
Steamer Basket: If you’ve been here long you know I’m a huge proponent of steaming. Especially seafood and poultry. You getter more tender, juicy, better texture and flavor versus roasting or God-forbid oven baking.
This is even more important when you’re reheating foods as when you are meal planning
A steamer basket will fit in the bottom of your dutch oven easily and you can bulk steam chicken breast and also vegetables.
Microwave: I’m going to mention this because on Twitter, specifically, there’s a hysteria about avoiding microwaves. After doing a fair amount of research and going through many documented studies and results… there is no conclusive or persuasive evidence that microwaves are carcinogenic.
There is also “0” evidence of nutrient degradation. On the contrary, some are enhanced.
Am I saying use a microwave to prep every meal? No of course not. Same as I wouldn’t say that about any one-single cooking method. I believe it’s a useful tool that can save time.
Make your own decisions. I would avoid plastic in microwaves (plastics in general with cooking; which ironically the plastic air fryer zealots don’t seem to be bothered about 😂 )
You can get glass storage containers online easily and are great for microwave use.
Notice: Air fryers, Crock Pots and other countertop appliances aren’t necessary if you have the above list (IMO).
This should give you some great ideas and strategies to maximize your flavors, meal enjoyment and time.
Drop any questions below and share this free post to help others eat better 🙌