This post originally appeared onThe Simple Dollar.
Instead, you cover the pan and put it in the freezer.
Very soon, youll have a homemade meal on the table.
There are several advantages to using a meal prep day.
Here are twelve strategies for getting your own meal prep day off the ground with great success.
If you dont, then youre not prepped for meal prep day.
Are you going to make six batches of beef stew?
What ingredients will you need?
For example, the last time I did a meal prep day, I spent $325 on ingredients.
Lets say I averaged 4.5 batches of seven different meals, and each batch covered eight peoples individual meals.
Thats 252 meals, which means that the average meal cost was $1.29 a pop.
Yes, I dropped $325 dollars, but my family was then covered for 252 meals.
I like to use onions as an example here.
Im making five batches of each, so thats ten small yellow chopped onions.
The reasons simple:somethingis likely to go a little bit wrong and take you longer than you expect.
It happens almost every time.
If youre on a very tight schedule, youre going to suddenly findeverythinggoing off the rails.
Do not take on a huge amount of meal preparation like this within a tight time window.
Small things will go wrong, and then theyll lead to bigger issues if youre in a time crunch.
That way, if things take longer than you expectand they probably willits not a problem in any way.
Do you have enough baking dishes to store all of your planned casseroles?
Do you have enough freezer-ready soup containers to store all of the soup?
For casseroles, we use theseGlad OvenWare 9 by 12 pans.
Theyre inexpensive and highly reusable and work great in the freezer.
For soups and stews, we use thesereusable deli soup containers.
Again, very reusable and freezer friendly.
Again, freezer friendly and highly reusable.
Thats kind of the theme here.
Those container options alone should store almost anything you might want to consider making on a meal prep day.
Strategy #6 double-check You Have the Storage Space, Too
Youve got food.
Youve got a plan.
verify that you have plenty of space to actuallystoreall of the stuff youre making.
We can store at least a months worth of meals in our freezer, so thats handy.
Strategy #7 Label Everything!
Nothing goes into the freezer without being labeled with those tools.
My philosophy with soups is to make them a bit thicker than I normally would before I freeze them.
You want the burritos to seem rather dry when you put them in the freezer.
If they seem wet at all, theyre going to be soggy afterwards.
The same is true for things like enchiladas and lasagna.
If you pull the noodles straight out of boiling water and use them immediately, everything will be wet.
If you strain them, youll still probably find more dampness than you want in your casserole.
Sometimes, Ill even use a bit of corn starch to thicken it even further.
These steps help keep a lasagna from being runny after some time in the freezer.
We usually just choose a batch of whatever meal were most excited about from the meal prep process.
Its a nice way to end a long day of meal prepping.
Invite a friend over for the day and do all of this meal prepping together.
Then, just makehugebatches of everything!
Make eight pans of lasagna at once!
12 Strategies for a Successful Meal Prep Day| The Simple Dollar
Trent Hamm is a personal finance writer atTheSimpleDollar.com.
Image byDC Central Kitchenvia Flickr.
