I Get Paid To Meal Prep For A Family Of 7

Hi, I'm Erica and I'm a professional

meal

prep

arer aka personal chef in New York City. Today I'm heading to Claudia's house to

prep

are a big

family

-style

meal

and I'm excited to take you guys for a ride. I just got to Claudia's house and Breath Direct is here which is great, I'm just going to unpack it. This is always the first thing I do whenever I reach out to a client. It's checking that I have everything I need for the entire place. What I'm doing today for Claudia is what I call

family

-style meal prep. I've seen it on the web called buffet style meal prep, a good amount, family style, meaning a few mains, a few sides, all stored separately rather than what I call a composed plate. meal prep that is more like a lunchbox style where you would put a half and a couple of sides in a container.

This little one in the family who really likes noodles and red sauce, so let's mix them up and put some vegetables on it. I hope the diet makes her feel comfortable with the idea of ​​eating spaghetti squash or maybe she won't even notice again when I know I'm going to use quite a bit of an ingredient, I try to get all the preparation out of it at the beginning of the preparation of the food, so a good example is something like garlic, which I'm going to use a lot. I just chopped a little bit, maybe like ten cloves, so I have it in this little container.

I will use it during food preparation. Another thing I always like to have on hand is a small salt vendor. It's much easier to be able to scoop out the salt with your fingers instead of pouring it in or breaking it up with a container or grinder, my personal opinion is that if you find a store bought sauce that you really like, that has great ingredients and is similar to something you would make at home, it is a great way to shorten the time it can take to prepare food. so starting with a store bought sauce, I make it from time to time.

I think it's a shortcut and it's definitely okay to take what I've made here for the marinade. I'm not just using pesto, I've got some garlic. a little bit of balsamic vinegar, a little bit of salt and a little bit of ground pepper and I'll add a little bit more olive oil and then our chicken, we'll be ready to go. A question I often get when people ask about meal prep is how much they weigh. and as a little grain thumb, what I always aim for is a quarter cup of dry grain per serving per person.

Tip: Always salt vegetables while they are cooking. You must salt the water a good amount. One catholic teaspoon per cup of grain you want food that tastes good over the course of the next five days, so I like to focus on our hearty vegetables, something like asparagus. I also really like dark meat. Dark meat is something you enjoy. I highly recommend leaning in. in that direction, so, for example, today we will eat chicken thighs instead of chicken breast because the chicken thighs will stay moist. A couple more things I love are cruciferous vegetables, so we're talking cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, all those things. stay fresh so I love kale salads so the last thing I'll say that I really like for meal prepping is eight balls or any type of burger because you're infusing flavor and you're also creating a ball or burger that has built up moisture. , so it will stay nice and moist even if you reheat it, so we're about an hour and a half in and we're getting close to being done here.

I have the onions caramelizing once it's ready, it's like an assembly arrangement, it's important before putting the food away to let it cool completely. This is for any meal prep, but especially family style meal prep, where it is placed in a large Tupperware. You don't want too much heat in your Tupperware before you take it out. Leave it in the refrigerator because it will create condensation which can affect freshness. I love preparing family meals as a way to make back to school more manageable. It's a great way to get a head start on lunch box prep because what you have when you're done with a big family meal, there are lots of little things that can go into bento boxes like this one, if you don't have anything to put in the final compartment, something fun you can do is just put some stickers or a note.

Now I'm arranging the finished product so it can be photographed, which is one of my favorite parts. If a recipe really seems special to me, I will write the recipe and post it on my blog, but you have to get it all. So the last thing I always do before leaving a client is take note of everything I did on little sticky notes. If there are specific instructions for reheating, I will always make a note of that and also leave a little note to let them know how things went in the kitchen today and any information about the food they may need.

I just put everything in the trash, ready for today. If you have any questions about preparing family-style meals, definitely ask them. Below in the comments section you can also find me. My Instagram account is Fresh Erica and if you are interested in my blog, it is Fresh Erica com you.