Meal Prep Tips

+ my recipe for pre-cooked shredded chicken

I’ve never been one for meal prepping since so much of my daily life is predetermined. I want my meals to be more spontaneous, and dictated by what I’m craving at the moment. And who wants to spend their only days off on the weekend chopping, cooking, and packaging food?

When I decided to start tracking macros back in November, this was the one thing I was dreading. What I've come to realize is meal prep comes in many forms. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. In its most rudimentary state, deciding what to eat is meal prepping—at least in my book. Kudos to you if you know on a Sunday what you want to eat on Wednesday.

When Isabella still lived home, and we all sat down for family dinners, I found that the kids liked it when I planned the meals for the week. I’d spend Sunday mornings flipping through cookbooks for inspiration. One benefit of meal planning is it forced me to reckon with how much I’d gladly cook and eat the same rotation of meals because they were favorites, and they were easy. 

So, if you only get as far as planning your meals for the week, you’re still ahead of the game in my book. Tracking macros while in a calorie deficit means my best days happen when I plan them ahead. I’m 18 pounds lighter than when I started this back in mid-November, and that’s incentive to do the thing I look forward to least: actually prepping food in advance.

The truth is, I did this often without thinking about it. I always made a double batch of rice so I’d have leftovers to make fried rice. When I cook pasta, I always make extra so the next meal is that much faster. You can toss cooked pasta into a skillet with sauce, shaving at least 20 minutes off your prep time if you have leftover plain pasta in the fridge.

Another way I naturally meal prep is when I use an onion. Most recipes only need a small amount. I automatically chop the rest, and store it in a container in the freezer. This allows me to skip the chopping for a few meals, and use what I need from the frozen chopped onion stash in the freezer.

I tend to buy proteins in advance, and clean when needed, as is the case with shrimp, and then portion into containers, so I can pull what I need from the freezer to thaw in time for lunch or dinner. 

During the summer, I can jars of passata (plain, strained tomato sauce) and marinara (seasoned with garlic & basil), along with jams and have been known to pickle foods, too. Again, kinds of meal prepping in their own right.

Now I’ve moved onto the next level of meal prepping: intentionally cooking proteins in advance. I work from home, and am thankful I can step away from my desk in the middle of the day to prepare a fresh lunch. Sometimes I can do this leisurely, and make a hot meal. Other times, I’ve got 20 minutes between zoom calls, and lunch is a fast and furious affair. 

This is where the precooked proteins, like the shredded chicken recipe below, come in very handy. I can add it to broth with some veggies for a simple soup. Mix it with Greek yogurt, dijon mustard and seasonings of my choice for a chicken salad. It’s great for adding to stir-fries or fried rice. The possibilities are truly endless.

There’s a lot of ways you can pre-cook chicken for this purpose. The easiest is probably roasting a whole chicken. Serve some the night you make it, and shred the rest for later. You can throw a few breasts or thighs in a slow cooker with a jar of salsa, tomato sauce or BBQ sauce, then set it and forget it until it’s cooked through, and tender enough to shred it. I prefer the method below because it uses exactly the lean protein cut that helps me maximize my macros, and is seasoned very simply, making it a blank canvas for whatever flavors I want to introduce when using it in future meals.

Here’s hoping we all of find ways to carve out moments of peace in the week ahead. Be well, and remember to be kind. —xo, j.