MEAL PREP 9 ingredients for flexible, healthy recipes + PDF guide

Hey guys, and welcome back to my channel. Or if you're new, I'm Lisa, and today we are talking meal prep. Now, I'm a big fan of meal prep because when it comes to healthy eating, there's one strategy that works time and again, and that's planning ahead. But I probably do meal prep a little bit different than most because instead of prepping the same meal for five days of the week, I prep individual ingredients. This still saves me heaps of time in the kitchen, but gives me far more variety in my meals throughout the week. And I don't know about you, but I'd get a little bored eating the same thing for five days in a row. So today I'm gonna show you nine ingredients that you can meal prep in under two hours on a Sunday. With plenty of ingredients prepped in your fridge, all it takes is a little creativity to combine them with fresh produce or items that you have in your pantry for healthy meals that take less than five minutes to make. And if you do meal prep this way, you'll have greater nutrient variety, your tummy will be happy, and you'll still save time in the kitchen. And I think that's a winning combination. So let's dive in, and I'll show you what I've meal prepped this week. To make meal prep as efficient as possible, I always recommend a little planning before you get started. This includes getting all of your ingredients out and ready and jotting down a few notes, like what you plan to make, any appliances you'll need, and how long it will take to prepare or cook. Once you've written your notes, you'll be able to see which items take the longest or which you can work on simultaneously. Roasted vegetables are one of my favorite meal prep ingredients because it's so easy to toss a bunch of veggies onto a baking tray and cook them. Today, I'm roasting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and red onion with a little bit of fresh garlic, but it's so easy to change up the veggies based on what's in season. My tip when it comes to roasting vegetables is to choose those that take about the same amount of time to cook. Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and mushrooms all take about 25 minutes in a 425 degree Fahrenheit oven, and carrots, beets, potatoes, and butternut squash all take about 45 minutes, so you'd wanna keep those vegetables on different trays. Once everything is sliced into evenly sized pieces, drizzle with a little olive oil or avocado oil and season with salt and pepper and give it a good toss. You could do this in a bowl or directly on the baking tray. Just make sure that once the veggies are on the tray, they're in a flat single layer with no overlap and then set them aside. Next, we're gonna make some sweet potato toast, and while sweet potato toast got a bunch of buzz a few years ago, I still haven't stopped making it. Not only is it a great gluten-free toast alternative, but it's a great way to sneak more veggies into your diet, which I'm always a fan of. To make the toast slices, you can use either a mandolin or a chef's knife. A mandolin will keep the slices even at about a quarter of an inch, while if you use the chef's knife, you can make them a little bit thicker. It's just personal preference. Once you've got all of your sweet potato slices, add them to a parchment-lined baking tray. You can cook these dry or with a little bit of olive oil or avocado oil, and I personally like them with a little bit of oil, so that's what I'm doing today. And once you've got both sides coated, just set this tray aside as well. I always have some type of protein every week, and this week I'm making my baked chicken with herbs. I'd say this is one of my go-tos when it comes to an easy chicken recipe, and I make it a few times a month. Now, I'm just baking two chicken breasts, as I'm one person, but you can, of course, double or triple this for a family. So you'll coat both sides of the chicken with avocado oil and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle on your favorite herbs and spices, and I'm using a mix of basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and garlic powder, but feel free to get creative. And if you need a little spice inspiration, make sure to watch my spice drawer organization video where you can see all of my spices. While those items are cooking, I'll begin the stovetop ingredients, and that includes the white rice and hard-boiled eggs, or in my case, slightly soft-boiled eggs. In terms of a starch or grain, I'm making white rice today because that always does better with my digestion, but you could also make brown rice, quinoa, lentils, or really any other pulses or grains. And the great thing is that you can switch it up every single week. At the same time my rice is cooking, I'll heat up another pot of water to boil some eggs. But before I do that, I'll check on the items in the oven and give my sweet potato toast a flip. The chicken should be done by now, and I'll use an instant read thermometer to double-check. If it is, I'll remove it and let it rest and add the tray of broccoli and Brussels sprouts. So the way I cook eggs is to boil the water first, then place the eggs in, and set a timer immediately when they've entered the water. I find this method always produces the most consistently perfect eggs rather than bringing a cold pot of water to a boil with the eggs already in the water. My favorite eggs are six-and-a-half-minute eggs, or what you might call jammy eggs. But if you like them harder or softer, feel free to adjust the time. The key with meal-prepping eggs, though, is to have a bowl of ice water nearby so that once you remove the eggs from the pot, you can submerge them in the ice water to instantly stop them from cooking. At this point, my rice is just about done, so I'll turn off the heat, fluff it up, and let it cool down a bit. When the eggs are done, transfer them to the ice water bath and let them cool as well. For the chicken, you can leave it whole or cut it up into slices or cubes. Since I have an idea of what meals I wanna make this week, I'll slice it up right now, again, saving me time later in the week. Then I'll place the chicken into a glass-locked storage container, and these are my favorite meal-prep containers as they're glass and spill-proof. Then I'll transfer the white rice to a container as well. You can peel the eggs now or leave them for later, but I'd recommend peeling them now, so all you have to do is grab one for a quick snack or slice it up into a recipe. And I'm storing these in a round glass-locked container. By the time all that's done, our roasted veggies and sweet potato are also done, so transfer those items to storage containers as well. You do wanna let the sweet potato fully cool before transferring to the container, as it will have quite a bit of moisture and you don't want it to get too soggy. I add a paper towel to absorb any excess moisture, but the simple fact of the matter is that these toasts will be soft when you reheat them, and I'm okay with that. I should also note that my paper towels are unbleached and don't contain any dyes, inks, or fragrances, which I think is important when using them with food. We've prepped veggies, protein, and a grain, but I think it's also important to meal-prep some spreads, snacks, and dressings. So today I'm gonna make two items in my Vitamix, homemade almond butter and homemade hummus, and I've shown you both of these before. For the almond butter, it's as easy as roasting four cups of almonds for 10 minutes, letting them cool, then blending on high for one minute. If you do that, you'll have ultra creamy and smooth homemade almond butter. Homemade hummus is just as easy as homemade almond butter, and I'm obsessed with this hummus recipe. It tastes so much better than anything you can buy in the store, and it has a fresh garlic flavor. Both this recipe and the almond butter recipe have their own videos, so if you'd like to see the process in more detail, make sure to watch those, and I'll link them in the blog post below. One of my favorite things to scoop up hummus with is celery and carrot sticks, and it's so much more efficient to chop a bunch of celery and carrots in one sitting rather than to cut and clean them as needed throughout the week. The good news is that if you store them in a jar with fresh, cold water, they'll also stay crisp for at least seven days, if not longer, and because you can easily see them in the fridge, you'll be more likely to grab them when you need a quick, healthy snack rather than that cookie you might be craving. Last on our list is an ingredient you probably know by now is one of my favorites, and that's zucchini noodles. Zucchini noodles are so versatile and can be used as a main dish with a bolognese sauce or as a salad with a light cucumber sauce. They'll also stay fresh for up to five days in a sealed container, and because they are 95% water, I line the bottom of this glass-locked container with a paper towel just to absorb any extra moisture. All right, so now that you have these nine ingredients prepped, let me give you a few ideas of what you can make in less than five minutes by combining them with items you likely already have in your fridge or pantry. For breakfast or a snack, peel one banana and cut it in half. Then slather on some of your homemade almond butter and top that with any type of dried fruit, nuts, or seeds. Today, I'm adding cranberries, slivered almonds, and a sprinkle of chia seeds for a snack that totally hits the spot. Next up is sweet potato toast, and this can be breakfast or lunch for me. Just pop the sweet potato slices in your toaster to warm them up, and while that's happening, you can slice an avocado and a radish and grab some baby spinach and microgreens from your fridge. Then just layer it up and top it with a soft-boiled egg. Next up, I have a simple and quick breakfast salad. Just add baby spinach to a bowl and top that with slices of tomato and avocado, one of your soft-boiled eggs, and a few slices of prosciutto. You can keep it simple like this or spruce it up with some nuts, hemp seeds, or a variety of other ingredients, and I usually just drizzle it with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. When the food munchies strike throughout the day, your jar of fresh carrots and celery will be staring back at you, so grab those and enjoy your healthy hummus snack. For lunch or dinner, you can make a chicken macro bowl. Just add several of the ingredients you've already prepped into a bowl together, like the white rice and roasted vegetables, along with some fresh baby spinach. I'll also take two slices of my sweet potato toast and quickly dice those up to add on top of the salad. Because the chicken is already sliced, you can easily add as much as you'd like, then finish the bowl off with a big dollop of homemade hummus. For a simple dinner idea, you could add the chicken, roasted veggies, and white rice to a plate before heating it up. This is your traditional protein, veggie, starch meal. It is about as easy and no fuss as it gets, but still packed with flavor. For another dinner idea that takes less than five minutes, heat up a little olive oil in a pan with minced garlic. Add a few handfuls of baby spinach and let that wilt down for a minute or two. Then add some zucchini noodles and toss it all together to warm the noodles up. You can keep it vegetarian like this, or if you'd like more protein, just dice up some of your chicken and add it to the saute pan. Before serving, I like to add a little sprinkle of fresh Parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper, and just look at how gorgeous this turns out. So that's my step-by-step meal prep process, and what I usually do on Sundays. The items I prep do change with the seasons, so if you liked this video and you'd like to see more meal prep videos in the future, make sure to give this video a thumbs up and let me know in the comments below. All right, that's it for me this week. We will see you guys again in the next video.