Meal Prep - pre-cooking to combat the stress of everyday family life

Between daycare, school and the office, many parents have little time to cook healthy, balanced meals on a regular basis. Shopping and preparing meals takes a lot of time, especially if fast food and ready meals are to be avoided. The simple solution is called Meal Prep, a clever way of planning and anticipating meals in advance. This saves nerves, time and money - and means less waste.

A new name for an old tradition

Meal prep is the abbreviation for «meal preparation» and means nothing other than meal preparation. This term sounds hipper than «pre-cooking» according to grandmother's tradition, but means exactly the same thing. Meals are prepared for several days in advance and portioned and refrigerated in food storage containers or preserving jars.

This means that everyone always has something healthy in stock, even during stressful periods, whether for lunch over lunchtime, before sport or when everyone wants to eat something at home at different times. This reduces the temptation to reach for something unhealthy when cravings strike.

Good planning and preparation is required to ensure that everyone can help themselves from the full fridge or freezer more often. You need a menu plan for the next few days, a targeted shopping list and - preferably on a Sunday - around two to three hours in the kitchen.

This requires containers for the meal-prep meals, such as jars or colourful lunch boxes. Children should definitely be involved in the menu planning. This encourages curiosity and independence. At first glance, the effort involved seems quite large, but the time saved during the week makes up for the effort at the weekend.

Cook once, eat twice to get started

The time-saving motto of Meal Prep is: cook when there is time, eat with pleasure when time is short. It is helpful to have a supply of long-life staple foods such as rice, pasta, lentils, tinned chickpeas, flakes and frozen vegetables. If you prefer not to pre-cook for several days, you can start with the «cook once, eat twice» option and only expect the next lunchtime meal. This saves a lot of time when pre-cooking in just a few steps.

Meal Prep's time-saving motto is: cook when you have time, eat with pleasure when time is short.

As the meals are stored for longer, care should be taken to prepare them gently. If vegetables are gently steamed, the loss of vitamins and minerals remains low. Pre-cooked food provides an ideal breeding ground for the proliferation of undesirable microorganisms. Prepared food must therefore be cooled as quickly as possible.

It is best to place the pan in a cold water bath after cooking or outside in winter. Meals should then be immediately covered and stored in the refrigerator. Unsuitable foods are raw fish and dishes with raw eggs, as they may contain salmonella. Frozen meals are best taken out of the freezer the evening before and left to defrost in the middle shelf of the fridge.