One of my Favorite Meal Prep Recipes Ever | Beefy Queso Loaded Potatoes

These beefy queso loaded potato meals are going to be your best friend come meal prep time. They are loaded with flavor, easy to make, and all of your coworkers are going to be jealous of you at lunchtime. And I am giving you my full blessing to rub it in their dumb faces. Each of these meals has about 667 calories and 48 grams of protein and here is how you make them. The base of this meal is potatoes. You'll need 2.2 pounds or 1 kilogram of the potato of your choosing. I went with Yukon Gold, a russet potato is also a good choice. No need to peel, just wash off all the dirt and cut the potatoes into a medium to a large size dice. For this meal in particular, I like my potatoes to be a bit on the larger side. Once all of your potatoes have been cut, you can transfer them over to a large bowl over a digital scale and sprinkle in some salt and pepper to your liking. Then give the bowl 1 tablespoon or 15 grams of oil and toss it around to evenly distribute the oil, salt, and pepper across the potatoes. Get out your biggest sheet pan, spray it lightly with oil to prevent stickage, and spread your potatoes out evenly across the surface. If you need to use 2 sheet pans to prevent overcrowding, make sure you do that. I placed these into a 400 degree fahrenheit or 204 degree celsius oven for about 25 minutes, turning halfway through. Now that you've got your potatoes going, we'll cut up the vegetables next starting with 1 small onion or 150 grams worth cut into a large dice. After the onion comes 2 poblano peppers or 150 grams worth, cut to match the shape and size of the onions. I prefer the flavor of poblano peppers over bell peppers and they're cheaper so it's a win-win for me, but if you can't find poblano peppers where you live, a green bell pepper or a red pepper will work just fine. Up next is a small zucchini or 125 grams worth and this will get cut into a medium sized dice. And lastly for our vegetables, we've got about 4 ounces or 113 grams worth of white mushrooms. I like to cut these in half and then cut those halves into either threes or fours depending on the size of the mushrooms. At this point my potatoes had been going in the oven for about 15 minutes so I pulled out the tray and I tossed them around to flip over to the other side. This goes back into the oven for an additional 10-12 minutes or until they have reached your desired level of brownness. Now time for the macro friendly queso. Place a bowl over a scale and to it add ½ cup or 113 grams of cottage cheese. Next I added ¼ cup or 28 grams of pepper jack cheese and ¼ cup or 28 grams of shredded cheddar cheese. For some smokiness and spice, I'm going to add just a touch of chipotle peppers and adobo sauce. We'll only need a tiny amount of this so buy the glass jar to keep in your fridge or if you get the can, just put the excess in the freezer. You'll need 2 teaspoons or 10 grams of this adobo sauce to add to your bowl with the cheeses. And listen, if you are un gringuito, the more chipotle peppers you add to this, the spicier it's gonna be. So consider yourself warned. We'll give it about ¼ teaspoon or 1.5 grams of salt and then 1 teaspoon or 3 grams of garlic powder. Move the bowl into the microwave for 30-60 seconds to help melt those cheeses. Once it's out, give it a quick stir and then move the contents of that bowl into a blender and add in 3 tablespoons or 45 grams of 2% milk. I like to wait to add the milk until after it comes out of the microwave because I don't want the milk to curdle. Screw on the lid, throw it onto the blender, and let it go until it is smooth. As you are cooking through this recipe yourself, you should make this queso while the taco meat or the vegetables are cooking. As is the case with any recipe, before you start cooking, you should always read through the entirety of a recipe before you start. That way you know what to expect and you can plan out your steps so you know where you can multitask to save time. Once I had my queso ready to go, I laid out 5 metal ramekins and divided it evenly into each of them. Storing it on the side instead of placing it directly on top of the meals can help keep the ingredients from getting too soggy over the course of the week. After about 25 minutes, I was happy with where my potatoes were at so I pulled them from the oven and set them aside until I was ready to plate. Now for the beef. To a skillet over medium-high heat, add 1 tablespoon or 15 grams of oil and then lay in 2 pounds or 908 grams of 90-10 ground beef. Season the top of that beef with about 1 teaspoon or 6 grams of salt, 1 teaspoon or 3 grams of garlic powder, 1 teaspoon or 3 grams of cumin, and 1 teaspoon or 3 grams of paprika. Before I go mixing everything around and stirring those seasonings in, I like to give the beef the chance to brown, so I'll spread it across the bottom of the pan and give it some time to develop color. After some time and I begin to smell that then I'll flip it over to the other side and continue the cooking process. At this point I'll break up the meat into smaller pieces and stir in all those seasonings. Then when the beef is about 90% of the way cooked, I'll add in 8 ounces or 227 grams of tomato sauce. You'll stir this in and continue cooking until the beef is finished and the sauce has reduced down and thickened. This should only take a few minutes and when it is ready to go, you can transfer the finished meat into a bowl until you are ready to plate. Next up we'll cook the vegetables. I'm going to use 1 tablespoon or 15 grams of oil to cook these, but to start off, I'm only going to add about 2 teaspoons or 10 grams of oil to the pan over high heat. The onions and the peppers are going to get started first, and I want to save a bit of oil for when I add the zucchini and mushrooms. Toss the onions and peppers around in the oil, give them a sprinkling of salt, and let these go for about 2-3 minutes to start to develop some color. Then you'll create a well in the center of your pan, dump in your remaining oil, and add your zucchini and mushrooms to the center. Give those a light sprinkling of salt, and allow them some time to sit over the heat untouched so they can develop browning as well. This should all move pretty fast. You don't want to cook these for too long, as that will leave them to lose their texture and become mushy. The high heat will help you get the color you want, and maintain some bite for textural variation. This is another one of those steps you can multitask on. You can cook these vegetables at the same time as the beef if you have more than one burner to cook on, unlike me. Now with everything cooked, we can begin plating. This recipe is going to make 5 servings, so lay out 5 of your meal prep containers. Each of your ingredients will get evenly divided into the containers. I would recommend keeping each component separate from one another in your dishes for storage throughout the week. I prefer this for two reasons. One, it will help things stay a bit fresher in the fridge. If you were to place the beef and vegetables directly on top of the potatoes, it can leave them to get a bit mushier. And two, it allows you the option to air fry the potatoes if you want them to be crispy for your meal. Once you have all your beef divided out, create a little space in the corner, and place in one of your ramekins of the queso. If you don't have any ramekins to use, it's not the end of the world if you have to put the queso directly on top. I would just make sure it goes over the beef, and not over any of the potatoes. And lastly, I topped each dish with some chopped cilantro for a garnish. Each serving of these beefy queso loaded potatoes has around 667 calories with 48 grams of protein. They will keep in your fridge for up to 5 days. Once they are cooled down and done steaming, pop on the lids and move them into the fridge for storage. When it comes to reheating, the easiest and most convenient way is to just use the microwave. Remove the queso ramekin and place the rest of the meal into a microwave for a minute or two to heat up. Then add the queso to the top and finish microwaving until it is hot. While testing this recipe, I found that when heating the meals, if the queso was microwaved for too long, it can curdle the milk proteins which is why I wait to add it. Reheating this way is great and the meal tastes awesome, but if you want crispy potatoes, you need to use the air fryer. To reheat using the air fryer, I placed the potatoes inside at 400 Fahrenheit for about 6 minutes, and they came out a perfectly crispy brown. The rest of the meal can be reheated in the microwave, or I guess you could put it all in the air fryer if you really wanted to. One thing to note is that if your queso is on the thicker side after being in the fridge, you can add a little bit of milk to help loosen it up. Once everything's heated, you can construct your bowl with the potatoes on the bottom, then the vegetables and beef, with the queso over the top to finish it off. I do believe that it's worth it to take the extra time to air fry the potatoes for this one. The crispiness that you get from them adds some texture that just hits so nicely. For the queso used in this meal, I wanted something more macro-friendly, hence the cottage cheese, but also something that wasn't too hard to make. For how simple this one is, you get some nice flavor, but it's obviously not as good as a In addition, any kind of ground meat can be used in this meal as well. Beef, chicken, turkey, pork, veal, moose, elk. Use whatever you've got. Like I said in the beginning, all of your co-workers are going to be jealous of you. They're going to see you warming this up and say, oh that looks good, what is that, are you going to share with me? And you say, it's beefy queso loaded potatoes, and no I'm not going to share with you, you clown bitch. Then say, if you want it, you can pay me $4,700. If not, get out of my face. Or I guess you can just respond nicely and say, it's beefy queso loaded potatoes, I got the recipe from mealprepmanual.com. I can't force you to live out my fantasy. The full recipe with all of the ingredients and instructions listed is published on mealprepmanual.com and that is linked down below in the description. Go check it out, and make this one for your next prep. Listen, if you want to be cool, hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet. YouTube thinks you're going to like these two videos linked above, so check those out if you want some more ideas. Bye-bye.