What do you do when you lack the time or motivation to cook every day? For many people, that probably means either eating out (expensive!) or eating instant stuff (which is often not very healthy or satisfying). But what other options do you really have?
Turns out, there’s actually a lot! In this article, we’ll cover several different methods of meal preparation to help you save time while still eating well!
Regular Cooking
You cook a meal, then you eat it. Simple enough! If you don’t know how to cook, then watch some cooking videos or read some books. To start, you basically only need enough knowledge to know how to follow a recipe. Learn how to cut onions properly. Learn how to pan-fry things. Oh yeah, and get a knife that’s actually sharp… many people don’t realize that cooking is way harder without proper tools.
Once you get good enough, you’ll be able to make modifications to recipes in order to adjust them to your taste, or even fix recipes that have glaring errors in them. And eventually you can even make your own recipes!
Meal Prepping
Meal prepping is the art of cooking once, and eating many times. But I’m not just talking about leftovers! The difference between prepped meals and leftovers is that prepped meals are designed to be eaten later, which means you are intentional about what you make and how you store it! It’s a lot more appetizing, in my opinion. 🙂
Some of the easiest foods to meal prep include:
- Burritos
- Pasta and noodle dishes
- Rice dishes (e.g. curry)
- Soups and stews
- Baked potatoes
- Casseroles
- Basically anything where the texture won’t degrade over time
Many people like to make large batches of one or two of the above dishes and then eat them over the course of the following week. But I like more variety than that! So instead, I recommend freezing most of your meals in identical microwave-safe single-serving food storage containers. Then once you’ve made a half dozen different dishes, you can grab a different one out of the freezer for your lunch every day! That way you’re not stuck eating the same thing for a week straight. Nice!
Partial Meal Prepping
What if you don’t want to eat frozen meals every day, but still want variety? That’s where partial meal prepping comes in handy! Instead of making complete meals all at once, you can instead prepare all of the ingredients ahead of time so that you can make your food fresh right before you eat it, while still saving tons of time.
For example, you could cook up a pot of rice, a p0t of beans, and a pan of meat. Shred some cheese. Then pre-chop a bunch of onions, peppers, and cilantro. Put them all in separate containers in the fridge. Now you can make a custom burrito whenever you want! And because all the ingredients are separate, you can build your burrito differently each time, and it never has a chance to get soggy either!
This approach works great for:
- Burritos
- Salads
- Sandwiches
- Rice bowls (e.g. bibimbap)
- Anything that is basically just a bunch of ingredients tossed together with no further cooking required afterward
Semi-Instant Meals
Still don’t have enough time to cook a meal from scratch, but don’t want to give up entirely and eat only instant ramen and prepackaged frozen meals? There’s a whole spectrum of home cooking waiting to be explored! Here are some ideas:
- Boil pasta and smother with jarred pasta sauce. Optionally, fry up some ground beef too, to serve as meatballs.
- Dump a jar of channa masala sauce into a pot along with a can of chick peas. Heat on stove, then pour over rice.
- Get a rice cooker if you don’t already have one! Just “set it and forget it”! No stirring required! No burned rice on the bottom of the pot! So easy!
- Make instant ramen, but crack an egg into it while it’s still boiling. Add some chopped vegetables too!
- Toast a Morning Star patty on the stove and then toss it into a chicken sandwich! A great option for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike! (it tastes like real chicken and is way easier to cook)
Minimalist Meals
…And by “meal”, I might stretching the term, because they’re basically just collections of ingredients. I imagine that these won’t be popular with most folks, but they do fill a niche and can really come in handy from time to time. Here are some examples of “minimalist” meals:
- Bread, cheese, an orange, and some celery
- Summer sausage, crackers, and half of a cucumber
- Almonds, yogurt, carrots, and grapes
- A bowl of rice, a fried egg, and a pile of arugula
Basically, the idea is to eat a bunch of minimally-prepared foods that all come together to form a well-balanced meal. You’ll note that each meal generally includes a good blend of protein, fat, fiber, and carbohydrates. You should also always include a vegetable, since I’ve found that it really helps me feel like I ate a real meal and not just a large snack. Feel free to toss on any condiments that make the meal more fun!
I’ve eaten many of these—especially when I was in college—simply because they were so convenient. Here are some of the pros of minimalist meals:
- Faster and easier than cooking
- Cheaper than eating out
- More fulfilling than snacks
- Healthier than instant food
You don’t have to eat these often, but if you’re crunched for time, they can be a great way to get a cheap, healthy meal in. They also tend to be great meals for when you’re out and about, such as when hiking!
Conclusion
You obviously don’t have to choose from just one of the categories above—try them all out! Mix and match! Just do what you can, and be happy with your time savings. And if you’re looking for tips on how to save money too, check out our next article:
The Readyist 
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