(Insert mental-image-that-reminds -you-of-meal-prep here)
What is the deal with the weekly meal prep?!
I can barely get through a scroll-sesh on the food and cooking section without a constant borage of “meal prep” how to’s. Really, people? Is this where we’re at in our world? Spending a full paycheck at the grocery store, only to be followed by spending an entire weekend day cooking food that will be slop by the end of the week and sent to the compost? Just give me your money instead, and I’ll set fire to it in front of you. This has got to be the most ridiculous and wasteful way to feed oneself and I cannot understand why so many of you are being duped by its supposed “efficiency”.
There’s a favorite saying that runs through kitchens- hushed under the overworked grizzled voices of the professional cook: “work smarter, not harder!” Usually followed up with an “Ass Hat”, or some similar term of endearment. I now, exclaim this to you Substack audience: “Work smarter not harder!” Cooking is bloody hard work no matter what, the key to making it enjoyable… or even bearable… is efficiency. And no, buying and prepping all your food for a week does not fall under that parameter! I’m talking about cooking as you go! It’s like cleaning as you go (another necessary requirement to cooking well!)
Cook as You Go
An example: you’re making rice tonight, so make twice as much so you have rice for tomorrow. It takes no extra time, only a larger pot and a container to save it in. Today you have a rice bowl with roasted chicken and a veg. Tomorrow, you have fried rice with veg and another protein. Maybe today you roasted 2 chicken thighs in the oven. So roast 4 instead and eat the others tomorrow. Toss them into a salad with some almonds and a jar vinaigrette that you always have in your fridge because making a vinaigrette is easy and cheap and there’s no reason to ever buy salad dressing. Roll the ingredients from one meal into the next- it’s called “cross utilization” and restaurants wouldn’t be able to function without it.
To be fair, mixed amongst the many posts on “meal prep” I found a partner category claiming superiority over meal prep, called “ingredient prep”. Same idea as the weekly meal prep but spend your day cooking individual ingredients instead of composing entire meals. Erhh! Wrong! This is effectively the same thing, people!
Have you ever eaten broccoli that was roasted three days ago? It’s gross! And why bother? It takes 15 minutes to roast broccoli fresh and eat it, so why not just do that? If your life is so chaotic that you can’t spare 15-30 minutes to make food to feed yourself and/or your family, then you have way bigger problems with life priorities and time management than any weekly meal prep can solve for you!
Maybe I am an Ass Hat. And I certainly do not know the individual daily pressures placed on each and every one of you, and I’m sure they are many and complicated. And in spite of my judgey tone,
I am NOT interested in shaming anyone or making any of you feel badly for the food choices you make.
But cooking as you go, cleaning as you go, rolling over some of today’s ingredients into tomorrow’s meals, really is a more gentle, affordable, and EASY way to cook!
I Get It
I don’t live somewhere where there are amazing grocery stores, markets, and ingredient options. Most of what we have available in our stores is mediocre at best. It is not a joy to go to the store, and our farmers markets only run for a few months and at really inconvenient times of the week. So I’m not going to sit here and tell you to go to the market every day and enjoy talking with the knowledgeable people behind the cheese counter and oh what a delight it is to get daily fresh ingredients and cook with your most beautiful finds.
Sure! In my dream life that’s my reality! (And I do make that effort for my personal chef business to drive hours to those places for my clients) But in my real life, I dread going to the grocery store. Staring at an entire produce aisle full of wilting and rotting greens at premium prices, not finding anything inspiring or beautiful to cook, still having it buy it anyway, then dropping half my mortgage’s equivalent at the check-out before coming home to put it all away and still figure out what to cook for dinner that night. It sucks! The food system in the USA is total garbage and I genuinely hate it. And I don’t really hate anything… but I do hate that. But I live here and have to eat here so this is where we are.
Component Cooking is KEY
Finding rhythm with my roll-over ingredients and thinking in terms of the dish’s “components” that can be swapped with whatever I have on hand, is the only way I have been able to affordably cook with minimal waste. The component categorization is key!
For example, let’s say 4 nights a week, we have some version of starch, veg, protein.
Start with the starch
Like rice, quinoa, pita bread, roasted potatoes, lentil, cheesy bread or bruschetta, or whatever (all of which are cooked in double batches so there’s some for today and some for tomorrow!).
Next, a veg.
Maybe a roasted broccoli, or cauli, or cabbage salad, or blistered peas and asparagus, or grilled bok choy, or a big juicy bowl of greens, or whatever. Here’s some veg inspo.
And then there’s the protein.
Maybe grilled tri tip (and I’ll cook 2 instead of 1 so there’s one for today and one for tomorrow or in a few days), rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, roasted tofu, steamed fish, or whatever. Here’s some protein inspo.
Add Your Favorite Condiments
And then maybe a crunchy chili oil or vinaigrette or some goopy sauce that makes you smile.
And that’s it. You can easily cook some version of that several nights a week and only have to cook 1 or 2 of the components if you’ve rolled over ingredients from another day’s meal.
There’s also the soup and bread-thing option.
Some kind of soup or stew or chili that you’d have made in a large quantity and frozen in portion-sized batches, so all you have to do is defrost and then add a quesadilla, or grilled cheese sando, or bruschetta, or whatever to accompany it. Here’s some soup inspo.
The pasta option.
Pasta plus veg and/ or leafy greens (chard, spinach, kale, puntarelle, radicchio, dandelion, …) with garlic, lemon, maybe chili, and butter pan sauce, or a pesto sauce, or bolognese or marinara (that your past-self cooked and froze in batches for your current-self)… Maybe add some rotisserie chicken into the mix, or pulled pork or braised beef, or chickpeas, or whatever.
And then maybe on a weekend, a more time-consuming Roast
Roast a couple of whole chickens, or bbq a few pork butts, or grill a couple of tri-tips, and roast a bunch of veg and make a big batch of mashed potatoes and then incorporate some of the ingredients throughout the week into your “component cooking”. Just being sure to use the things that will go bad first (like the roasted broccoli!) Here’s some menu inspo from a year of Potato Dumpling Society.
None of these options are mind-blowing in their uniqueness or creativity, but they will feed you and can be cooked and assembled quickly (assuming you’re rolling over at least one or two of the components from a prior meal).
And now a note on food safety!
I know too many people who will not eat leftovers. It’s so flipping wasteful, I don’t even understand. Side rant- If you are one of these people, do not get your uneaten restaurant meal to take home just to watch it rot slowly in your fridge. Just own-up to the fact that you don’t care about food waste and save the restaurant the cost of the takeaway containers (that also end up in the landfill alongside your sad, rotted meal).
YES, YOU CAN EAT LEFTOVERS! Toss them into yesterday’s rice for a fried rice dinner. Add them to a salad, heat them up in a pan and make them filling for a taco or quesadilla or burrito with a side salad… Or just heat them up and eat them as-is!
5 days from cooking is a general rule of thumb for still edible. 3 for fish. Same goes for fresh ingredients. If you have a broth, soup, or liquid- be sure to bring it to the boil for at least a minute or two before serving (I don’t use microwaves so have no idea what that looks like timewise). In fact, bring any reheated food up to 165F- if you don’t have a thermostat, it should be hot to the touch all the way through; and for liquids the safest bet is just to bring it to the boil (water boils at 212F).
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Quickly and thoroughly cool down your ingredients before packing them up, especially skin-on potatoes that can carry the risk of Botulism. You have 2 hours to quickly cool and 6 in total, which is generally more than sufficient time sat on your kitchen counter.
IF YOU MAKE A BROTH, STOCK, SOUP, or something liquid and accidentally leave it out over night on the counter- It’s ok! You DO NOT need to throw it out, just bring it to the boil and let it boil for a good couple of minutes before eating. Unless, of course, it’s been sitting in 100 degrees.
When in doubt, always use your nose. If it smells off, do not eat it or try to reheat it. Trust your instinct. If you’re not sure and think that it’s been stored improperly, do not eat it. Better to be safe than sick! But if it has been stored properly, smells and looks good, then there is no reason not to eat it!
Here’s the USDA Food Safety temps for you to reference.
If you’ve stuck with me to this point, thank you! I genuinely hope this helps you feed yourself and your family a little easier this week. And please do send me any questions or comments!!
To RECAP:
· Prep ingredients as you go (cook a double batch today to feed yourself tomorrow)
· Clean as you go (a messy workspace is a messy mind. Make a mess, clean a mess and keep your sanity!)
· Use “Component Cooking” as a guide to help you slot-in the ingredients you have on-hand: starch, veg, protein. (as a bowl, salad, soup, roast, taco bar, sandwich bar, pizza night, etc….)
· Keep your pantry, fridge, & freezer stocked with a combo of items that are slow to go bad and ones that need to be eaten more quickly. (condiments you like, grains, potatoes, onions, garlic, tinned fish, tinned tomatoes, beans, lentils, cheeses, cured meats, frozen meat, etc…)
· Shop when you can, maybe going more frequently just for the quick-to-rot items like salad greens, some veg, and fruit and save the “big shop” to re-stock your pantry items (grains, dried beans, nuts, oils, vinegars, frozen meat, …)
· Eat your leftovers! Uneaten food is basically you just setting fire to your dollars. Got a single carrot left? Add it to your fried rice with other veg. Get creative- you know what to do! Trust yourself.
An aside: A New Website!
I’ve been on Substack since 2023 and am not planning to leave, BUT I am in the process of building a new website:
where all of my recipes are more easily searchable and categorized. It’s like an old school food blog, no paid subscribers, just me sharing with you about food and travel. AND this type of cooking features heavily under my series “There’s Nothing to Eat”. So come on over and spend some time. I hope I can be a voice of encouragement to help your cooking be more seasonal, fun, and easy!
And that’s all I’ve got, Polpette!
Give me your thoughts and happy “component” cooking!
Leave a Reply