Meal Prepping 101: How To Cook Faster As a Busy Worker

In this article we’ll be sharing how to improve your meal prepping skills so that you can leave the kitchen ASAP especially when you just don’t have time and you really need to eat well too.

We’ll also be sharing tips to help you cook faster. Meal prepping is basically preparing your meals ahead of time for the week or day.

There are so many individuals in this world and like they say, variety is the spice of life. While some may love cooking, others absolutely don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen.

Many workers have so many other things they want to do in a day and if cooking isn’t one of your strongest points, that’s totally fine! After all, this is a ‘no judgement zone’.

Find out some hacks and tips that we’ve tried out in the past to help you spend as little time as necessary in the kitchen. We don’t claim to be chefs, and if you’re one, unfortunately this article isn’t for you –sorry!

That’s why we curated a one-week meal plan for the busy worker. This is your tool to prepare healthy meals in less time and at an affordable rate. We don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen and so do you, so keep reading.

Download: 1 Week Meal Plan for the Busy Worker

1. Salt your Water

When boiling your water for pasta, potatoes or any other thing, salt your water immediately as it helps raise the boiling point/ temperature thereby saving you some extra minutes that might be spent in the kitchen.

We are happy to share here that salt does just more than adding flavor to your dish. We also have to remind you to please take note of the level of your salt intake.

2. Prepare/ Have Things in Place (Dice/Chop, etc.)

One quick meal prepping tip to leave the kitchen in no time is to buy ingredients that have already been prepared. All you’ll have to do afterward is throw them into your pan or pot. These include vegetables, salad, fruits, etc.

Rather than buying separate vegetables for a garden salad for instance, you can purchase already chopped garden salad. You’ll have no need to wash the fruits or cut it and time will have been saved. Otherwise, if for better reasons you’ll prefer to chop your vegetables a quick tip is to cook nothing more than three ingredients at a time.

For instance, if you want to make a stir fry dish, you can make use of onions, broccoli and carrot rather than adding other vegetables like tomatoes, spinach, kale, etc.

Using less ingredients will mean less time spent chopping and help you speed things up in the kitchen.

3. Wash Fruits and Vegetables before Putting it Away

If you’re someone that loves to eat your food freshly cooked, try washing up your fruits and veggies before storing it away in the fridge. That way, all you’ll need to do is chop and go. Store in a reusable container.

Alternatively, cut and chop them twice a week and store in the fridge if you don’t want to get those already chopped from the grocery store (see point 2.).

4. Preheat Oven, Pan or Pot

Preheating your oven or pan will mean that your food will start cooking the moment you drop it into the pan, oven or pot. This is a good way to save up some time.

So next time, while you are getting other things ready, begin heating your pan, oven or pot rightaway.

5. Freeze your Soups, Stews, Sauces

A quick way to save up time is to cook in batch and store. So cook meats, poultry or seafood, soups, stews and sauces and store in reusable containers. Freeze it.

The next time you’ll need to make food, you’ll only need to defrost or microwave.

6. Weekly Meal Prep

It goes without saying that weekly preparing your meals will help save up time. If you can pick a weekend to cook meals in batches it’ll come in so handy.

When meal prepping, batching is really important. Chop all veggies at once, make sauces and stews, then move into meats. Double up on your favorite ingredients so that you can have more of that dish.

Next thing to do after the food is prepared is to store in good containers for the entire week. Remember to make at least 3 meals that you can switch up on for the week without feeling too bored of eating the same thing over again.

Also, hard boil eggs and save in the fridge for later. Again use good air tight containers.

7. Keep Leftovers

Simply put, you’ll have days when those leftovers will come in extremely handy and you’ll be happy to have saved that up in your fridge or freezer. This is a no brainer for meal prepping.

8. Have Ingredients Ready

You should always have a list of ingredients for the week or biweekly. This will ensure that your kitchen is stocked up for any urgent meal ingredients. You’ll avoid having to do last minute shopping.

9. Invest in Good Kitchenware

Equipment like rice cooker, deep fryer, slow cooker, food processor, blender, etc. help make cooking less stressful. Something as little as having a potato peeler will save you the stress of having to use a knife to peel your potatoes. You can use the peeler for other vegetables like carrots.

A good knife is also important to speed up cutting and chopping. Use a spoon to peel ginger as it’s faster than a knife.

10. Learn a One Pan Meal

If you are able to learn a dish that you can be prepared in one pan or pot as a whole, you’ll save up time and not have to wash anything extra. For example, you can roast vegetables and meat in a pan, mix with spices and that will be a good dish!

11. Clean on the Go

As you are cooking, try to clean up as much as you can. That way, you’ll have less dishes to clean as soon as you’re done.

Try out these tips and you can be sure that you’ll spend less time in the kitchen. Remember to subscribe to the blog to receive exclusive information in your inbox.