In today’s crazy busy world, dinner is often forgotten until the last second.  Our What to Eat? Meal Plan subscribers get the convenience of a healthy meal plan sent to their inbox every week that helps them plan their meals and a grocery list that helps them shop faster. However, dinner can still be made a little easier and faster!

A little prep work when it comes to dinner can be the difference between actually cooking that meal or hitting the drive-thru. This week try some of these tips and see if it helps you eat a little healthier during the week!

1.  Plan Fast Recipes

For our What to Eat? Meal Plan subscribers we focus on providing the fastest dinner recipes possible.  Most meals can be made in under 30 minutes of hands-on time.  The meals that take longer than that are often slow cooker, instant pot, or casseroles that may take longer to cook but still require less than 30 minutes of hands-on time.  You never know how late you will get home so don’t plan 5-course meals during the week, keep it simple!

2.  Prep Ingredients

Unlike meal prepping for breakfast or lunch, for most people dinner is a whole different beast. Breakfast and lunch are often consumed outside of the home, but dinner is consumed once you get home from a long day of work. If you are eating dinner on the go or outside of the house, it might be best to follow our meal prep tips for lunch.

You also shouldn’t plan to spend your ENTIRE weekend prepping food.  When it comes to dinner, focus on prepping as many of the ingredients ahead of time, not the whole meal. In our meal plans, we suggest optional ingredients to prep ahead of time to make dinner time go faster.  This frees up time because dinner goes faster but you don’t have to spend all weekend prepping all your meals.

Here are some of the examples of what you can do ahead of time:

Prepare Vegetables

Anything you need to do to get the veggies ready for that meal, do that before the busy work week starts.  Most vegetables are hearty enough to make it a full week in the fridge even after you’ve prepared them, so prep away!  If the recipe calls for ANY of these, do it ahead of time.

• Wash
• Chop
• Peel
• Spiralize
• Slice
• Store them in a ziplock baggy or an airtight container.

Prepare Starches

If any of your recipes call for whole grains of any kind – such as rice or quinoa.  Make that AHEAD of time.  No one needs to be waiting 30 minutes for you to make rice before you can get food on the table.  Better yet, as we suggested in our general meal prep tips, maybe pay a little bit more for instant/microwavable versions where applicable.

Make Sauces Ahead of Time

Homemade sauces are cheaper, but it can be a pain to pull out all of those ingredients when you are in a rush to get dinner started.  Combine all ingredients for sauces to be used that day in a mason jar or ziplock bag.  You could fully cook them, or have them semi-mixed and ready to dump wherever they need to be dumped!

3.  Cook Fewer Days

When it comes to dinner, become a leftover queen!  Cook once, eat many times!  We suggest cooking only 2-3 days per week. If you have a big family, this may not be as realistic, but if it’s just you or you and one other person no bonus points for overachieving!

Examples From This Week’s WTE? Meal Plan:

Meal Plan 1:  Honey Garlic Salmon Packets & Roasted Asparagus

What to prep:

• Wash and trim asparagus.
• Optional: Combine asparagus with oil and seasonings, store in a ziplock bag up to 3 days ahead of time.  When you are ready to cook the asparagus, just dump them onto a parchment/foil lined pan and bake!
• Honey garlic sauce: add all ingredients to a mason jar ahead of time, instead of using a saucepan you could microwave to melt ingredients then whisk them together.

Meal Plan 2:  Shrimp Pesto Zucchini Noodles

What to prep:

• Wash and spiralize zucchini noodles (or buy them pre-made!)
• Prep pesto and store in a small jar or ziplock for up to five days.

Meal Plan 3: Crab Cake Bites & Broccoli

What to prep:  

• Cut down broccoli florets or buy pre-prepped florets.

Meal Plan 4:  Chicken Meatballs & Celery

What to prep:  

• Wash and prep celery ahead of time.
• Prep zucchini (hidden in meatballs) – shred and squeeze dry of excess water.  Store in a ziplock bag until ready to use.
• Prep oat flour ahead of time if you are grinding your own.

Meal Plan 5:  Dijon Hamburger Bowl

What to prep:  

• prep sweet potato or brown rice ahead of time

Focus on making dinner faster, not on cooking every meal! 

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