9 Meal Prep Hacks

Tired of prepping salads and eating chicken, but don’t know what else to make? Here are the best meal prep hacks to help you make delicious meals that support your health goals, but won’t have you in the kitchen all weekend long.

The Best Meal Prep Hacks

If you’re overwhelmed with the idea of preparing perfectly lined-up meal prep containers, don’t worry, there are many ways to make amazing meals without spending hours in the kitchen. Here are some meal prep hacks to help you make macro-friendly meals.

1. Focus on one meal.

Instead of attempting to meal prep for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, focus on the meal you find the most challenging. If you tend to skip breakfast, meal prep something you can grab and go in the morning. If you’re spending all of your money on high-calorie lunches at work, prep some healthy lunches on the weekend. If weeknights are too busy to cook, pre-make some dinner ingredients for quick assembly.

This approach can help to streamline the process and reduce the feeling of overwhelm that often comes along with meal prep. Plus, you can identify the specific pain points and issues that impact your healthy eating habits and address them individually, one at a time.

2. Choose recipes with minimal ingredients.

While eating a gourmet dish at every meal would be nice, preparing them is incredibly expensive, time-consuming, and exhausting. By choosing to prep meals with up to 6 ingredients with items you already have in the fridge and pantry, you can save time and money.

That said, choosing recipes with minimal ingredients doesn’t mean you need to succumb to minimal flavor. By strategically pairing protein, carbohydrates, fiber, and healthy fats with herbs, spices, seasonings, and sauces, you can create balanced meals that are nutritious and delicious.

3. Make one-pan or pot meals.

In addition to using minimal ingredients, one-pan and one-pot recipes are a great meal prep hack as they reduce prep and cleanup time. A good sheet pan recipe or one-pot meal can easily create a half dozen prepped meals for the week without a sink of dirty dishes.

For example, by combining some chicken or tofu with diced potatoes and veggies and a drizzle of olive oil, like my Greek chicken tray bake or sheet pan tofu and veggies, you can create high-protein, high-fiber, and filling meals that will get you in and out of the kitchen with only 20 minutes of work.

4. Double the recipe.

The best meal prep hack is to make a double batch. Whether you’re making stir-fry, soup, or stew, doubling or tripling the recipe can help to make more portions and maximize your time in the kitchen. While chopping an extra onion or browning extra chicken breasts may take a little more time in the moment, overall, you’ll save time shopping, prepping, and cleaning.

While you can certainly eat all of these meals throughout the week, you can also eat half and store the excess in the freezer for weeks in the coming months when you truly don’t have time to cook.

5. Use pre-made marinades and dressings.

Using pre-made marinades, dressings, and sauces can help reduce meal prep cooking time and add flavor to simple meals. While some pre-made products are highly processed foods, many are minimally processed and made of whole foods.

For instance, you can turn humble chicken or turkey and rice into a variety of different meals by using fajita seasoning to make chicken fajita meal prep bowls, or Buffalo sauce to make Buffalo chicken meal prep bowls, or teriyaki sauce to make teriyaki ground turkey meal prep bowls. When buying pre-made sauces, marinades, and dressings, just be sure to read the ingredients so you can choose the best option available.

6. Buy pre-chopped veggies.

Buying prepared fresh or frozen veggies can help reduce prep time from washing, peeling, chopping, and slicing. From cubed sweet potatoes to shredded carrots to frozen stir-fry veggies, prepared vegetables are a great meal prep hack that increases convenience without forgoing nutritional value.

7. Cook meat in the slow cooker.

A slow cooker is a great way to cook meat with minimal effort. You can add chicken breasts, a pork shoulder, or a chuck roast into a slow cooker with some seasoning, turn it on for four and eight hours, and come back to beautifully tender and flavorful meat.

Slow cooking is best for cuts with connective tissue and fat that break down over time. These cuts of meat can easily be turned into balanced meals by pairing them with a source of complex carbohydrate, like rice, pasta, tortillas, or potatoes, and vegetables.

8. Freeze in individual portions.

When meal prepping, it’s best to portion cooked meals into individual containers instead of one large container. Not only does this offer better portion control, which is particularly helpful if you’re calorie or macro counting, but you can thaw and reheat exactly what you need and leave the rest for a later date.

While most cooked meals tend to freeze well, soups, stews, and casseroles keep particularly well, and freezing them in individual portions makes it easier to have variety in your meals, as you can choose different options throughout the week.

9. Make no-cook meals.

Making no-cook meals is one of the best meal prep hacks there is. Instead of bringing out the pots and pots, you can create well-balanced meals with maximum flavor and minimal effort. They are also a great choice for warmer weather days when you don’t feel like turning on the stove or oven.

For example, Greek yogurt parfaits are a great meal prep breakfast; a bagged salad with a can of tuna and dressing, or crackers, cheese, hummus, and veggies, or a sandwich with deli meat, mayonnaise, and veggies make great healthy meal prep lunches, and tortillas with rotisserie chicken, avocado, and salsa make a quick meal prep dinner.

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