I’m not a meal prepper. I have great admiration for people who prepare food in bulk for the week in a single day.

The convenience of having a home-cooked meal ready to go with a quick reheat is unmatched. Despite this, It’s just not for me.

Instead, I’ve come up with several “lazy meal prep hacks” for quick and easy meals that are still fresh and healthy.

They are listed in order of ‘quickest-and-easiest’ to ‘requiring-more-time.’ This particular order also directly translates to “from most to least expensive – this is one of those times in life when we actually can ‘buy more time’ should you choose.

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Pre-Prepared Meal Prep Services

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s actually very hard to find meal prep services that use quality ingredients, no preservatives, no seed oils, AND taste good. I’ve tried many, and there’s only one I keep coming back to.

Daily Harvest is my top recommendation for meal prep kits. They use organic, clean ingredients, their meals taste amazing, and they offer tons of variety.

The nutritional diversity of the various vegetable ingredients used in each dish is something I will never accomplish in my kitchen (can you imagine all the chopping?).

The downside is that you have to add your own protein. I don’t mind this so much – I would rather cook my protein fresh; reheated meats just aren’t my thing. You can avoid cooking protein with:

• a rotisserie chicken
• canned tuna/salmon
• uncured deli meat, or
• prepping just the meat ahead of time (if you’re grilling on Sunday, go ahead and throw several extra cuts on there to have during the week).

Use my link for $65 off your first box.

Keep Ready-To-Eat Food on Hand

This strictly excludes processed foods and store-bought microwave meals. My version of “ready to eat” includes frozen veggies, frozen grains/quinoa, prewashed organic salad greens, and ground meats.

This method requires slightly more time as you have to piece together your meal as you go, but once you get the hang of it, you can have diverse, nutrient-dense, healthy meals in literally just 5-10 min.

Here are some ideas:

• Easy Salad Recipes – Prewashed, organic baby greens require no chopping. Grab a handful for a quick salad. Keep cherry tomatoes, prechopping cucumber, onion, shredded carrots, sliced olives, and your other favorites on hand to throw on top.
  • My favorite clean salad dressing is Primal Kitchen brand.
  • My favorite lite dressing is Bolthouse Farm yogurt-based dressings (found refrigerated with the produce).
• 5 min grain bowl – heat up about 1/2 cup of Path of Life brand frozen quinoa – let’s use the Southwest Mango option. Add canned or frozen corn, black beans, add your preferred protein, top with plain Greek yogurt, pico de gallo or salsa, and fresh crunchy lettuce for a quick southwest bowl. Here are more flavor varieties.
• 5 Min Veggie Bowl – frozen vegetables are excellent for this, as well as the prewashed bags of mixed veggies you can find in the produce sections. You’re looking for vegetables that do well cooked for these meals, like an ‘egg roll in a bowl’. Get a bag of cabbage-based stir fry vegetables and add to a pan on high heat, add meat, an egg, soy/tamari sauce, and Primal Kitchen teriyaki sauce. Saute until veggies are soft.
• For protein to add to these bases:
  • keep ground meat on hand for quick cooking (lean ground beef, turkey, chicken)
  • canned tuna/salmon,
  • precook just your meats for the week (the grill is super easy for this)
  • Pull from a rotisserie chicken or uncured deli meats
  • Boil eggs ahead of time to peel and eat as a snack or top salads
  • Use plain Greek yogurt to top meals and add extra flavor
  • Greek yogurt + Levels whey protein powder makes for a super quick, protein-rich snack

One-Pot Meals

This is where I will bulk cook. If I’m going to do it for one meal, might as well double up and get a few more out of it.

Anything you can throw in a slow cooker, pressure cooker, or saute in a large pan will work. Here’s my favorite One-Pot Turkey Scramble recipe.

While you’re at it, you might as well take full advantage of the opportunity and heal your gut, too. Soup is hands down the quickest and easiest way to both meal prep and heal your gut.

You can sign up here to get my full free Gut Healing Meal Plan and Prep Guide PDF, which includes over 10 gut-healing soup recipes and strategies.

You will be asked to sign up for my portal. Once there, you can access the PDF and program at any time. 

Other Time-Saving Tips:

• Buy pre-chopped vegetables (fresh or frozen).
• Or, if you prefer to save money and chop yourself, a mandoline slicer will cut chopping time in half (see what I did there?).
• A garlic press and peeler is another kitchen staple. As one of the most therapeutic foods, fresh garlic is something you don’t want to miss out on!
• Wash produce when you get it home from the store and before storing it. Just don’t do this for berries. It makes them go bad faster.
• If you prefer to cook meat as you prepare your meals, divide single-servings up into glass storage containers before putting them in the fridge (use glass instead of plastics. Plastic particles leach into the food).
• Have a safe cooking device you can throw all your ingredients in and leave for several hours like a slow cooker or pressure cooker. On days when you’re crunched for time, you can prepare your ingredients the night before and turn it on in the morning or before meal time.