MEAL PREP | 9 ingredients for flexible, healthy recipes + PDF guide

Hello guys, welcome back to my channel. If you're new, I'm Lisa and today we're going to talk about

meal

prep

. Now I'm a big fan of

meal

prep

ping because when it comes to

healthy

eating, there's one strategy that works time and time again. and that's planning ahead, but I probably prepare meals a little differently than most because instead of preparing the same meal for five days a week I prepare individual

ingredients

, this still saves me a lot of time in the kitchen but gives me a lot more variety in My meals during the week and I don't know about you, but I would get a little bored eating the same thing for five days in a row, so today I am going to show you nine

ingredients

that you can prepare in less than two. hours on a Sunday with plenty of prepared ingredients in your refrigerator, all it takes is a little creativity to combine them with fresh produce or items you have in your pantry for

healthy

meals that take less than five minutes to prepare and, if you prepare the meals This way you will have a greater variety of nutrients, your belly will be happy and you will still save time in the kitchen.

I think it's a winning combination, so let's dig in and I'll show you the meal I made this week. Make meal preparation as efficient as possible. I always recommend a little planning before starting. This includes taking out and preparing all the ingredients and taking some notes, such as what you plan to make, what appliances you will need, and how long it will last. take to prepare or cook Once you've written down your notes, you'll be able to see which items take the most time or which you can work on simultaneously. Roasted vegetables are one of my favorite meal prep ingredients because it's so easy to mix up a bunch of Place the vegetables on a baking sheet and cook them today.

I'm roasting broccoli, brussels sprouts, and red onion with some fresh garlic, but it's so easy to change up the veggies depending on the season. My advice when it comes to roasting vegetables is to choose those that take about the same amount of time to cook: broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and mushrooms take about 25 minutes in a 425 degree Fahrenheit oven and carrots, beets, potatoes, and squash take about 45 minutes, so you'll want to keep those vegetables on different trays once everything is cut into equal sized pieces, drizzle with a little olive or avocado oil and season with salt and pepper and mix well.

You can do this in a bowl or directly on the baking sheet, just make sure that once the vegetables are on the sheet, they are in a single flat layer with no overlap and then we set them aside. Next we're going to make some sweet potato toast and although sweet potato toast got a lot of hype a few years ago, I still have it. I haven't stopped making it, not only is it a great alternative to gluten free toast, but it's also a great way to incorporate more vegetables into your diet, something I always like. To make the toast slices, you can use a mandolin or a chef's slicer.

With a knife, a mandoline will keep the slices uniform at about a quarter inch, while if you use the chef's knife you can make them a little thicker, it's just personal preference. Once you have all the sweet potato slices, add them to a parchment. -lined baking sheet, you can cook them dry or with a little olive or avocado oil and I personally like them with a little oil so that's what I'm going to do today and once you have both sides covered, ready. Other than this tray, I always have some type of protein every week and this week I'm making my Herb Baked Chicken.

I would say this is one of my go-tos when it comes to an easy chicken recipe and I make it. A few times a month now I'm only baking two chicken breasts because I'm one person, but of course you can double or triple this for a family, so you'll coat both sides of the chicken with avocado oil and season with salt and sprinkle pepper about your favorite herbs and spices and I'm using a mix of basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary and garlic powder, but feel free to get creative and if you need some spice inspiration, be sure to watch my video on organization from the spice drawer where you can see all my spices while those items are cooking, I'm going to start with the ingredients from the stove and that includes white rice and hard-boiled eggs or in my case lightly soft-boiled eggs in terms of starch or grain.

Today I'm going to make white rice because that always works better with my digestion, but you can also make brown rice, lentils with quinoa, or any other legumes or grains, and the best thing is that you can change it up every week at the same time my rice is cooking. I'll warm up another one. a pot of water to boil some eggs, but before I do that I'll check the items in the oven and give my sweet potato toast a whirl. The chicken should be ready now and I'll use an instant read thermometer to check if I'll remove it and let it rest and add the tray of broccoli and brussels sprouts, so the way I cook the eggs is to boil the water first, then place eggs and set a timer immediately when they enter the water.

I find this method always produces perfect eggs more consistently rather than boiling a pot of cold water with the eggs already in the water. My favorite eggs are six and a half minute eggs or what you could call jammy eggs, but if you like them. harder or softer, feel free to adjust the time, the key when preparing eggs is to have a bowl of ice water nearby so that once you take the eggs out of the pot you can submerge them in the ice water to prevent them from cooking instantly. At this point, my rice is almost ready, so I'll turn off the heat, fluff it up, and let it cool a little.

When the eggs are done, transfer them to the ice water bath and I'll let them cool for the chicken as well. You can leave it. I'll cut it whole or into slices or cubes, since I have an idea of ​​what meals I want to make this week, I'll cut it right now again, saving me time later in the week, then place the chicken in a glass. close the storage container and these are my favorite containers for meal prep as they are glass and spill proof. Then I will transfer the white rice to a container. You can also peel the eggs now or leave them for later, but I recommend peeling them.

Now, all you have to do is grab one for a quick snack or cut it into a recipe and I'll keep them in a round glass container so when everything is ready, our roasted vegetables and sweet potatoes will be ready too, so transfer them. Those items in storage containers you should also let the sweet potato cool completely before transferring it to the container as it will have quite a bit of moisture and you don't want it to get too soggy. I add a paper towel to absorb the rest. excess moisture, but the simple fact of the matter is that these toasts will be soft when you reheat them and I'm okay with that.

I should also note that my paper towels are unbleached and do not contain dyes, inks or fragrances, which I believe. it's important when we use them with food, we've prepped veggies, protein, and a grain, but I think it's also important to prep some spreads, snacks, and dips, so today I'm going to prep two items in my vitamix, homemade almond butter and homemade hummus and I've shown you both before for almond butter. It's as easy as toasting four cups of almonds for 10 minutes, letting them cool, then blending on high for one minute. Doing so will leave you with ultra-creamy and smooth homemade almond butter.

Homemade hummus is as easy as homemade almond butter and I am obsessed with this hummus recipe. It tastes so much better than anything you can buy at the store and has a fresh garlic flavor. Both this recipe and the almond butter recipe have their own. videos, so if you want to see the process in more detail, be sure to watch them and I will link them in the blog post below. One of my favorite things to make hummus with is celery and carrot sticks, and there's so much more to it. It's more efficient to chop a bunch of celery and carrots at once rather than chopping and cleaning them as needed throughout the week.

The good news is that if you keep them in a jar of fresh, cold water, they will also stay crispy for at least seven minutes. days, if not longer, and because you can easily see them in the refrigerator, you'll be more likely to reach for them when you need a quick, healthy snack instead of that cookie you might be craving at the bottom of our list, it's an ingredient which you probably already know. It's one of my favorites and it's zucchini noodles. Zucchini noodles are very versatile and can be used as a main dish with bolognese sauce or as a salad with a light cucumber sauce.

They will also stay fresh for up to five days in a sealed container. and since they are 95% water, I cover the bottom of this glass-sealed container with a paper towel just to absorb any excess moisture. Now that you have these nine ingredients prepared, let me give you some ideas of what you can make in less than five minutes by combining them with items you probably already have in your refrigerator or pantry for breakfast or a snack, Peel a banana and cut it in half, then spread some homemade almond butter and top it with any type of dried fruit, nuts or seeds.

Today I'm adding blueberries, chopped almonds, and a pinch of chia seeds for a snack that hits the spot. Next is sweet potato toast and this could be breakfast or lunch for me, just place the sweet potato slices in your toaster to heat them up. and while that's happening, you can cut up an avocado and a radish and grab some baby spinach and microgreens from your refrigerator, then just layer them and top them with a soft-boiled egg. Next I have a quick and simple breakfast salad, just add baby spinach. to a bowl and top it with tomato and avocado slices, one of your soft-boiled eggs, and a few slices of prosciutto.

You can keep it simple like this or garnish it with some nuts, hemp seeds or a variety of other ingredients and usually just drizzle it with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar when you feel like snacking during the day, your jar of carrots and Fresh celery will be staring at you, so grab them and enjoy your healthy hummus snack for lunch or dinner. You can prepare a chicken macro. bowl simply add several of the ingredients you've already prepared in a bowl together, such as white rice and roasted vegetables along with some fresh baby spinach. I'll also take two slices of my sweet potato toast and quickly dice them to add on top. of the salad because the chicken is already sliced, you can easily add as much as you want and then finish the bowl with a big spoonful of homemade hummus for an easy dinner idea, you can add the chicken, roasted vegetables and rice white to a plate.

Before you heat it up, this is your traditional plant starch and protein meal, it's as easy and fuss-free as it gets, but still packed with flavor For another dinner idea that takes less than five minutes, heat up some olive oil In a pan with minced garlic add a few handfuls of baby spinach and let it wilt for a minute or two, then add some zucchini noodles and toss everything to warm the noodles. You can keep it vegetarian like this or if you want more protein, just dice it. some chicken and add it to the pan before serving.

I like to add some fresh parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper and look how beautiful it turns out, so that's my step by step food prep process and what I usually do on Sundays, the items I prepare change with the seasons, so if you like this video and would like to see more meal prep videos in the future make sure to like this video and let me know in the comments below okay that's it for me this week the We'll see again in the next video.