Current Events > Does meal prepping actually save time

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is spending a lot of time cooking multiple meals at once really worth it? It seems like you end up waiting forever for things to thaw out, and the food often tastes better when cooked fresh and eaten right away. I'm curious, does meal prepping actually save time?

Of course it saves time, if youre cooking the right things.

I don't think you're supposed to freeze it, you're supposed to refrigerate it and then reheat it in the microwave on a medium setting for around 4 minutes.

It primarily saves money and supports a proper routine diet. Time saved/wasted is kind of like moving water around in a pool.

Yes, you cook once or twice instead of 7 or 14 times a week

yes. you wash the frying pan only once a week.

Yes, and no. Like, it's hard to save time, if you calculate it daily, by prepping your own meals.

But, if you spend a bit of tiem on Sunday afternoon doing it, , if you're not doing shit else anyway...

yeah, cus if you prep a bunch of meals at once you only need to take all the ingredients out and prepare them once, same with cleaning and stuff, you can use a pan for a bunch of stuff during meal prep and only clean it one time
if you're making new meals every day, you'll need to prep ingredients, wait for the oven/stove to heat up, wait for cook time, and also clean everything up each time you do it.

you could do a hybrid meal prep, where you prepare a bunch of foundations for meals, then when you cook with them you use different ingredients each time. or even just think of a bunch of meals that share ingredients, and then prep the ingredients but dont mix them. then when you want to cook, you just take a modular approach with stuff.

I only prepare food from home and gave up ordering out or eating out in 2017 for various reasons. A lot of stuff I just prepare fresh daily. But there are certain things that Ill cook and then put into containers and bring to work all week that heats up and taste great in a microwave.

One of those dishes Im making this week. Im making a pot of chili. Chili taste excellent reheated and its so easy just grabbing a container and putting it in my lunchbox and going. Its absolutely a time saver.

Plenty of other dishes as well. I dont do this every week but the weeks I do its nice.

archizzy posted...

One of those dishes Im making this week. Im making a pot of chili. Chili taste excellent reheated and its so easy just grabbing a container and putting it in my lunchbox and going. Its absolutely a time saver.

chilis the best meal prep food imo, its so easy cus most the time making it is waiting and you can make a ton.

BucketCat posted...

chilis the best meal prep food imo, its so easy cus most the time making it is waiting and you can make a ton.

Yeah itll last me all week. Its also versatile in the ways I can alter eating it day to day. I can eat just a bowl of chili. I can make my loaded chili dogs absolutely smothered in chili, cheese, diced white onions, scallions (green onions), jalapeos, and banana peppers. I can make a loaded baked potato where I smother a baked potato with chili, cheese, crumbled bacon.

Or I can cook some macaroni noodles and make chili Mac. Almost like a version of Cincinnati chili but using macaroni noodles instead of spaghetti noodles. Its delicious. Or I can make rice and combine it with chili. There are a handful of ways to really change it up if you dont want to just eat a bowl of chili 5 days in a row.

There are other ways as well not to mention the sides you can add to a bowl of chili like cornbread, or a peanut butter sandwich that alters the dish just enough.

I love chili. Plus this will be the last pot of the year until it gets cold in the Fall again. I dont make it when its warm out so I look forward to Fall again when I start eating it again.

Depends what you're making I guess. A basic meal of rice and protein is very easy to bulk make and eat throughout the week. Same with soups and sauces.

But it's not also about time, it's about having easily accessible food readily available so that you're less tempted to deviate from a specific plan/diet.

Yes.
My main protein are cooked 3 days in advanced because it takes a lot of time to wash, cook and clean up. Let's say I'm having chicken for the next few days. I'll cook the entire pack it comes in and portion it out over the next few days. Never froze my meals before because I usually finish it up before the week's over.

For me? Absolutely not. I have a massive gluttony problem. Meal prep for me just means eating a shit ton more than I need to.

If it takes 12 minutes to cook chicken breast, its either 7 breasts for 12 minutes all at once or 1 breast every day for a total of 84 minutes. That's just the cooking.

what is time for, except to be wasted?