MEAL PREP FOR BEGINNERS | Cooking Chicken, Beef and Salmon

Oh boy, just Chanel here. Hey guys, just Chanel here. Welcome to my channel. In today's video, I am meal prepping. We're going to focus on proteins, salmon, beef, and chicken. I'll be sharing a few flavor profiles with you guys and also a few different cooking methods. So I hope you guys enjoy the video. Make sure you give this a big thumbs up if you want to see a vegetable meal prep video, even salads and dressings or some healthy pastas. Let me know down in the comments as well if y'all have any questions and let's just go ahead and get right into the cooking. Today I'm making a lemon garlic herb salmon in my air fryer. I have a Chefman air fryer. This is like a game changer, air fried salmon. Like, I don't know why you guys didn't tell me, but wowzer, it is absolutely amazing. So I can't wait to share this with you. It only takes 10 minutes to make. And then I'm also going to do a spicy barbecue chicken. This is great with sweet potatoes, rice, and veggies. Super simple. You can even make yourself like a little lettuce wrap if you like, you know, just to switch it up every day because nobody wants to eat the exact same thing every single day. And then I have a few different beef proteins here. So this is just beef stew meat, which I'll be using to make a stir fry. And then I also have some super lean ground beef. And I'm going to try out this like TikTok pasta sauce. And we're going to do a zoodle, so zucchini, noodles, spaghetti with the ground beef. So I'm super excited. Let's go ahead and get started with the sauce because these tomatoes have to roast in the oven. And yeah, let me show y'all the TikTok video. All right, it is this TikToker. And here we go. You're going to watch me cook for myself, Polidoro. All right, so I saw this on Sadel Curry's Instagram. And yeah, I love her. I love Aisha. So I'm like, yeah, you know, they know good food. So you're going to try out the recipe. Not with all that ASMR or nothing, but we're just going to go ahead and get started. This goes in the oven on 425. And I'm going to guess like 20, 25 minutes. I'm adding in some of my homemade Italian seasoning. This is basically basil, garlic, onion, little bit of salt and white pepper. And we're just going to season this entire dish in layers so that it's nice and flavorful. Instead of using our hands, we're just going to mash just a bit. Add in the garlic. Looks like he used about four tablespoons of butter. I'm only going to do two because, you know, we're meal prepping and your girl's trying to get abs. Add in some olive oil to your beef, especially if it's super lean. Put the rest of our homemade Italian seasoning. And mash that up. Now for the chicken, I'm going to generously season my chicken with some of my savory barbecue seasoning. So I would recommend if you don't have a like already blended barbecue seasoning at your house to use a little bit of smoked paprika. You could also use a little bit of liquid smoke. And then of course, a garlic and onion, red pepper flakes for that nice kick. And then a little bit of brown sugar. I'm also going to add in some barbecue sauce. I like to use the Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce. Now this is not the healthiest option. So if you know, you know, a low carb barbecue sauce, I know they're out there, definitely use that instead if you are trying to lose weight. But I don't think meal prepping is just for losing weight, right? Like sometimes meal prepping is just more convenient. Even if you're, you know, just trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I'm adding in a little bit of olive oil. I always add oil to my proteins before I cook them because I don't know, I just don't really like adding it to the pan. So it just helps like the seasoning stick better and like all the flavors and marinate well. We're going to sear this chicken in a cast iron skillet. And these are chicken tenderloins, by the way. I think that this is an excellent option for meal prepping because you can really control your portion size. Sometimes chicken breasts are really, really big and you know, portion size is a huge, huge part of living a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Turn our oven down to 375. Our pasta sauce is ready. Look at that. Oh boy. Look at how good that looks. I haven't even mixed it. It's just so pretty, honestly. Add our beef to a skillet. We'll keep this moving. I just separated the sauce from the meat. And so I'm going to saute my mushrooms right on the other side of the pan. And then we will add in our tomato sauce, a little bit more parsley. Now for the beef stir fry, of course, we need some onion. You can always use peppers and you know, whatever other like stir fry vegetables you want. What do people use? Like bean sprouts, those things that are not green beans, but snow peas. I'm doing it super simple and really just focusing on the protein. I'll probably actually eat my stir fry with a salad as a lunch one day. I am using another one of my seasoning blends. This is very similar to my roast seasoning. So if you guys have ever seen like me make a roast on my channel around Thanksgiving, you can pretty much use the same seasoning blend, but add paprika. This is a paprika base instead of a mustard, like powder ground mustard base. If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, you can totally use paprika, coriander, cumin, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. I think that's it. No, I'm missing some things, but those are the basics. Okay, those are like your basic seasonings that you can find at any grocery store that you should probably already have in your pantry. Another great seasoning, if you wanna just like buy a seasoning blend, you could purchase like a Thai seasoning blend, a little bit of light, low-sodium soy sauce, and then mix that around with our onions and pop the top on, turn your heat down and let it cook slowly. This is also another great dinner dish or like a party dish. If you wanted to do this in the crock pot, you can add in, you know, peppers and onions, some fresh ginger and garlic, and slow cook it for eight hours. All right, now trust me on this one. We're going to go ahead and spiral our zucchini to make zoodles. The thing is, since you're meal prepping, you should not cook these because you don't want them to be super, super mushy, right? You still want it to be like spaghetti type. And if you cook them now and then reheat them tomorrow or the next day when it's time to eat your meal prep, they will be overcooked. So you can grab a spiraler. You can buy a spiraler. Is that what it's called? A spiral tool? I don't know. Anyway, at TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Home Goods, anywhere, Amazon, obviously. Matter of fact, I'll just leave a link down below so that you guys can grab one. But it's super simple. You just cut the top off of your zucchini and you go to work with it. I like to, I don't know why it's chopping. But I totally like to pull my zucchini after every 10 spins because if you just keep going with this, it will, you'll have the longest noodles ever and that's really annoying when you're trying to eat and you don't know where your noodle ends. Ooh, this is so cute. Ooh. Okay, so I just pull it out like that and then I'll start again so that cuts them so they're not super, super long. Last but never least, salmon. We're adding a little olive oil, of course, to the salmon fillets. This is really important, especially with the air fryer because you want it to get a little crispy. And then we're just going to season our salmon. I'm going to make a quick lemon garlic butter to pour over our salmon before we stick it in the air fryer. I just have melted butter here. I'm also going to add a little bit of dill weed. You can add fresh dill if you like. I feel like the seasoning variant of dill works better since we are putting it in the air fryer. So it's kind of like zapping it opposed to baking it. I think fresh dill works really well if you bake your salmon. Garlic butter right on the top of this. Pop it in the air fryer, 400, 10 minutes. Now, obviously there's a lot more to meal prep than just protein. So make sure you give this video a big thumbs up. If you'd like to see a vegetable meal prep video and a salads and dressings meal prep video, I really love making homemade dressings. So I would love to share that with you guys. And then of course there's more to just a healthy lifestyle. Diet is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge part, right? Of living a healthy and balanced lifestyle. There's also drinking a ton of water, making sure that you're drinking at least what? Eight cups of water a day. I don't feel like anybody just drinks eight cups of water a day. I feel like people are always like shooting for a gallon a day. So I love using my little tumbler. This from ShopQuality to get my water in every single day. And then you guys know I live by Love Thy Liver, my daily detox blend. This is a gentle detox. I'm actually about to mix Love Thy Liver, which I have here, and a little bit of Summer Snatch. This is like a pre-workout blend that I crafted. Super fruity and flavorful, but it provides a natural energy boost. I'm gonna mix these together with a little bit of lemon juice, make myself a cup of detox tea. I find that drinking my daily detox blend, Love Thy Liver, first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, really helps alleviate bloating and just really helps me maintain my weight. And then drinking Summer Snatch, and sometimes like I'm doing now, I mix it with Love Thy Liver to give like a super tropical flavor because you have the passion fruit, the orange, and the peach from Love Thy Liver. I love to drink this midday to give me that extra energy boost to finish work. And yeah, not get sleepy too early because girl, I've been trying to stay up and get a lot done. Okay, so you literally only need a tiny, tiny bit of Summer Snatch. It is pretty strong. I mean, it's quality, okay? And then I do about a tablespoon of Love Thy Liver so that I can make two cups. We're gonna add in half a fresh lemon. I feel like I've used so much lemon in this video. Fill this with some hot water. A lot of y'all always ask me about my tea kettle. This is the Fellow Kettle, and I forgot what the model is called, but I'll leave the link down below. I think I have an affiliate link, I think, maybe. I'm going to let this steep for about three minutes. Also, if you are on the go a lot, I would definitely recommend adding this to your meal prep session. Ooh, our salmon. And actually, enjoy and get iced. Summer Snatch is amazing iced. Just go ahead and make a full gallon whenever you meal prep for the week. Stick it in the refrigerator, and you can pour it in your tumbler and whatever to-go mug that you like to use. It's super refreshing, gives you a nice energy boost, burns calories, aids weight loss, improves your digestive health. I mean, it's just all around bomb. All right. Ooh, perfect. It literally comes out perfect every time. It's like evenly cooked. It's, oh, gosh, girl. I was so against air fryers, but I don't know why I was being like that. Favorite infuser mug and favorite teas. I mean, wow. Yes, this is so satisfying. The most flavorful detox tea you'll ever have in your life, okay, is the passion fruit for me. All right, let's look at this meal prep. Lemon, garlic, herb, salmon. Our zoodles with homemade tomato pasta sauce. And of course, meat sauce to accompany that. You could also make a chickpea pasta for the rest of the meat sauce. And then our beef stir fry, so flavorful. Onions, ginger, garlic, ooh. All you have to do is add broccoli, girl, or some spinach, you know, whatever. And then our spicy barbecue chicken. Yes, whoo-cha. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. Just a few last minute tips. Your portion size for protein should be a closed fist, right? So your closed fist. I think another great way to figure out your portion size for meat is to actually go by your vegetables. So however much meat you have, make sure you have double the veggies. And if you're not able to finish both, you may should cut down on the meat a little bit. But doubling your veggies is like something that I live by. So making sure that you have a lot of vegetables in your meat. Like, you know how you go to a restaurant and they give you like this much broccoli and your steak is a 16-ounce steak? That ain't right, okay? Another thing is cut out the salt, especially if you're trying to lose weight. At least do low sodium, but if you can, cut out salt completely. I think a great way to do this without using like table salt is to use sauces when you're actually flavoring your meat, when you're seasoning your meat. I know a lot of y'all probably love, love sauces. I know so many people that love ranch and honey mustard and barbecue sauce. I'm not a sauce person like at all, which is why I actually love to marinate my meats and use sauces when I cook. But this is a great way to cut down on your calories. A lot of the times, especially when you're eating chicken, you want some honey mustard or barbecue sauce, and that's just empty calories. Season your chicken and other proteins really well so you don't have to use sauce on the side. And what's something else? We have salt, of course, tea, water, portion size. I think that, oh, and then just using fresh vegetables, fresh herbs, onions, garlic, ginger, peppers, rosemary, thyme, cilantro. Ooh, girl, Taco Tuesday, what? But tacos, but like lettuce tacos. Ooh, we may have to do a cook with me. But yeah, let me know what cook with me y'all want down in the comments too. Anyway, thanks so much for watching. Hope you loved it. I'll catch y'all in the next video. Bye!