The 1-Hour Meal Prep That's Changing My Life

- I recently switched to a new method of

meal

prep

aration and it is completely

changing

my

life

. The gist is that instead of

prep

aring five of the same

meal

s to eat every day of the week, I prepare a limited one-

hour

meal. The goal of this meal prep isn't to have fully cooked meals that you can reheat in the microwave throughout the week, because honestly, preparing five lunches and five dinners in one day takes too much time. I don't like having the same dinner over and over again and I really don't like the taste of four days worth of food.

Instead, I focus on taking the most impactful meal prep steps, to make weeknight cooking easier and faster. Normally what that means is that I will fully prepare some basic components. Things like sauces, dressings, and condiments that will stay fresh all week and only partially prepare other components. Things like grains, vegetables and proteins. The downside to this method for some of you is that you have to cook something during the week. But I think the advantages for the rest of us are much greater. The main advantage is that you can eat a lot of different, delicious meals with lots of variety throughout the week, instead of eating the same food over and over again.

And every meal tastes fresh, unlike standard meal prep, which, let's face it, gets pretty old after the second day. Best of all, by spending just an

hour

preparing food, I can spend the rest of Sunday doing fun things like hanging out with my family and friends, traveling, or just relaxing. As you'll see later in the video, this method can also save you four to five hours of cooking during the week. But for now, let me show you how I prepare meals. For this week's meal prep, (whistle) we'll start with the fully prepared components, which will stay good in the refrigerator for at least seven days, so we don't have to worry about them tasting worse later on. the week.

The first thing I'm going to make is the creamy herb sauce, a kind of dressing. I start with 3/4 cup raw cashews and soak them in boiling water while I prepare everything else for the sauce. We want about two cups or about 30 grams of fresh herbs. And I'm just looking at the proportions of the herbs. It doesn't really matter, as long as you like the specific herbs you use, it will be delicious. I'll also add a generous amount of lemon juice, probably four tablespoons. That's one juicy girl. A jalapeño and garlic. A little bit of water to help everything mix.

Nutritional yeast. This will add that nice salty and cheesy flavor. Season with salt and pepper. A tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. The last thing is the cashews, so I'll go drain them and come back. And by the way, don't feel like you need to take notes on measurements if you're trying to do this, because there is a free PDF guide that has the measurements for every recipe we'll be making today. Let's mix it up. (mixer whirring) Oh! Delicious. The next condiment I'm making is a mix of quickly pickled onions and chiles. We have a medium red onion and we will cut it as finely as we can.

I'm also going to add some chilies to my onions, because I like spicy things. Our pickling brine is super simple. You're going to start with a cup of water. Next, you'll grab an industrial-sized tub of vinegar or just a regular-sized bottle. A nice big spoonful of kosher salt to season all those vegetables. And the pickled vegetables are a little sweet, just a little, that's why I add maple syrup. Organic cane sugar, totally fine. Simply bring this to a boil and you're done. Alright, carefully pour the hot brine over all the good stuff. Ah OK. Lack of match.

Much safer. You want to make sure you have enough brine to cover the vegetables. They will be at their best 48 hours after sitting in the refrigerator, but if you're in a hurry, you can eat them as soon as eight hours later. Next we're going to make our crunchy and seeded nut mix. I'm using a mix of pine nuts. The pints are very expensive so I only use a small amount. I'm going to cut them with seeds, which are much cheaper and also rich in protein. - You sound like a heroin dealer, "I'm going to cut them off with..." - I literally know nothing about heroin, like I don't even know how to do it.

So he's clearly not a drug dealer. And sesame seeds. Quick little mix of spices before you start cooking everything. teaspoon paprika, half a teaspoon of onion powder, half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes or any chili flakes you like, and a heaping half teaspoon of flaked sea salt. Line a plate with parchment paper. You'll see why in a minute. We are going to put a splash of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Once the oil is warm, go ahead and add the seed mixture. We'll toast this for three or four minutes. Once you see some of the seeds starting to brown, you'll want to stir them more frequently so they don't burn.

It's time to add the spice mixture. And that's why we added the oil before, because if you don't add the oil, the spices wouldn't be able to stick to the nuts and seeds. And these only need 30, 40 seconds, 60 seconds at most. Spread it out and let it cool. Parchment paper is great because if there is excess oil, it will absorb into the paper and also make it very easy to transfer this mixture to a jar. This is so good. It reminds me a little of eating popcorn. I'd like to eat it all right now, so I'll transfer it to a jar.

And the final condiment we're going to make is a very, very simple lemon dressing. This is about three tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice. (Gagging and coughing) I have a sesame seed in my throat from before. A little bit of maple syrup to eliminate some of the acidity. Some red pepper flakes. A couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds. Sea salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil and a large clove of garlic. We will simply grate it right there to give it a nice flavor. Alright, we are done with our seasoning preparation. As I mentioned, all of those components will stay fresh in the refrigerator or pantry for a week, probably longer.

Now, we will move on to the rest of the components. I don't want to make them completely today, because they won't stay fresh for as long, but I'm going to take a few mini prep steps and that will make my

life

a lot easier when it comes time to meal prep later in the week. I have some farro here. That will be my whole grain cereal for the week. Put that on the stove. Once it boils, we will start cooking the farro. Today I am going to cook farro in a super simple way. Just water, salt, a bay leaf and black pepper.

While the farro cooks, I'll work on everything else. Every meal preparation needs some type of vegetable and today I eat red cabbage and carrots. Once you make them, they won't wilt in your refrigerator in a day or two and they're both super affordable, which is obviously wonderful. So let's cut our cabbage in half and then we'll grate it. They are organic carrots that I have scrubbed, so I won't bother peeling them. Now, look at this mix of vibrant colors we have here. Now, for our protein I have two different ones. The first is tofu. I have two blocks of extra firm tofu.

I'll probably bake this throughout the week, maybe pan fry it and crisp it up nice and crispy, but today I'm just going to follow a couple of mini prep steps. So we'll drain the tofu, press it for 10, 15 minutes, then cut it into cubes and store it in the refrigerator. And these may seem like small and perhaps inconsequential preparation steps, but I promise they make a difference. The next protein we are going to prepare is some canned cannellini beans. My favorite way to prepare them is to roast them in the oven with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

They are crispy and very good. The problem, however, is that if I roast them today they won't be as amazing on, say, the third day. So today I'm going to take a couple of mini prep steps and that will make them much easier to cook on, say Tuesday or Wednesday. Oh, perfect timing. Our farro should be ready. You want the farro to be al dente. It should still have a little bite to it, and once it's done you'll drain it. And the key to making sure whole grains are nice and dry, and not soggy or clumpy, is to spread them out on a baking sheet.

Let them dry like this and then you can store them in the refrigerator. Alright, that's the end of our meal prep. I'm going to put everything in the fridge and then go enjoy the rest of my Sunday. That's the beauty of making a quick meal. And starting tomorrow, I'll show you how I combine all of these fabulous components into even more fabulous meals. For our first meal of the week, we'll make an easy and delicious pasta salad with crispy beans using some of the components we made earlier. If we hadn't prepared the meal yesterday, this meal would take about an hour to prepare. but today it will take me less than 30 minutes and I will start by roasting the beans.

I'll just put them on a baking sheet and toss them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. You can add a couple of additional seasonings and flavorings if you like. Today I take some oregano and nutritional yeast to give it that subtle salty and cheesy flavor. And they will be really delicious and crispy in the oven. These can be baked undisturbed in the oven for 20 minutes. In the meantime, I'll start on our pasta. So I have some money here. This is actually enough for two meals. I'll have this for lunch tomorrow too. And the next day it will be pretty good, it's not too long of a wait to eat the leftovers.

So this is a much, much better alternative. I want to add some vegetables to this pasta and I bought some delicious broccolini at the farmers market the other day, so I'm going to add them to the pasta with a few minutes left. A couple more things to prepare. I'll cut up some cherry tomatoes for our pasta and chop up some fresh basil and parsley that I had left over from the green sauce we made. The great thing about this meal is that while the beans are roasting in the oven, I can do everything else. Cook the pasta, drain the pasta, chop the broccoli, chop the herbs, so it's very sleek and easy.

I'm going to add the broccoli directly to the pasta, just blanch it. The beans just need a few more minutes, so I thought I'd make a salad in the meantime, because it's good for you. I have frisee and mustard greens and I'll use the lemon dressing we made yesterday. A pinch of flaky salt, a little bit of our seed mix and this is what I call a 30 second salad. You can see that the beans look really different than before. They are like open and crispy. And now it's time to assemble our pasta salad. Let's add some of our creamy herb sauce as a topping.

Let's gather some beans, our herbs and tomatoes. Let's give it a try. That's really good, better than I thought it was going to be. It feels very gourmet, especially because of how little active cooking it required. I also bought my leafy greens to go with and this will make a great leftover lunch tomorrow. Tuesday dinner consists of a loaded lavash wrap. Unlike our last meal, this one requires no cooking at all, so it will be ready in less than five minutes, which is delicious. I will be using several of the components from our meal prep. We're going to start with our creamy herb sauce and add a little bit of this carrot and cabbage mixture.

And the lemon dressing from meal prep goes really well with this salad, so we'll add a little bit in there. The third component we'll add is the crispy white beans, our pickled onions, and chilies. They have been in the refrigerator for about 48 hours now. Look how pretty it is. Look at these colors. We have green, purple, orange, pink, red. It's called rainbow plant life for a reason. Will it bend? Did I fill it too much? She thick. Alright, let's take a bite. That is a feast for the palate. An advantage. 10 out of 10. I think I'll make it for lunch tomorrow.

It's day three and things usually go downhill at this point in preparing a typical meal, but we're making a fantastic bowl of fresh cereal that you'll love. And since we use almost all of our meal prep components, we're saving a lot of time. I'm going to start with the tofu. If you remember from meal prep, I pressed two blocks of extra firm tofu and cut them into these cute cubes and we'll bake it. It will be two minutes of prep work. And I deliberately keep the flavor of the tofu pretty simple, because I want it to be versatile.

I want to be able to use it in tomorrow's meal and plus, with all the other flavors in this grain bowl, you really won't mind. Now, for the secret crispy, crispy layer, I'm using potato starch. Let's put the microphone here so we can hear some of the sound. And the great thing about baking tofu instead of frying it is that it's pretty easy. You only need to turn the tofu once. In the meantime, we'll work on everything else for our cereal bowl. I have some of the farro here. YeahRemember, I cooked this very simply on the stove with just salt, pepper, and a bay leaf.

And this has been at room temperature for about 30 minutes, and I'll save the rest of the farro for lunch tomorrow. Let's take out our carrots and cabbage. We are going to add a lot of flavor with our sesame and lemon dressing. And if I had dressed like this on Sunday, I would definitely be soaked by now and not as fresh. So doing this now is one of those big steps you can take to make your food taste fresher. Something I like to do with my grain salads is add fresh herbs, because they are delicious, vibrant, and add freshness.

Again, if I had made this on Sunday, the herbs would have wilted and not have as much flavor. Then I take some fresh basil and a little mint. This already smells amazing and would be a delicious side dish, but we'll turn it into a full meal. So I want to add a couple more things. I happen to have some olives that I need to use. Green olives, the Castelvetrano olive, about which I have already spoken poetically. The best olive in my opinion. Another fun mix: dried apricot for a sweet, chewy touch. Look at these colors. The salad has great chewiness thanks to the farro and apricots.

I want something a little crunchy now and look what we have. We have our crunchy seed mix. Alright, there's still about 20 minutes left on the tofu, so I'll take that time to clean it up, maybe have a glass of wine before dinner, and get back to you after that. The tofu is ready. Looks great. While you were out, I very cleverly flipped the tofu halfway through and didn't actually pour myself a glass of wine, because I realized it's 3pm right now. m., I'm filming early so you can see everything. So instead I poured myself some Spindrift, which may not be as good as wine, but it's still very good.

And now we are ready to assemble our grain bowl. A final touch. Pickled onions and chilies to give it that flavor and spiciness. I honestly wish it were dinner time, because I'm going to destroy this bowl. It looks incredible. There are so many fun flavors here. It also tastes so fresh that every component tastes like it was made today. It took 30 minutes total with only 10 minutes of active cooking. That's the beauty of this meal prep. You get a really fresh tasting meal without a lot of work. Today I'm ready for some new flavors, so we'll flip the script and make a bowl of tofu noodles.

We only used a couple of meal prep components, but we still saved a lot of time. Preparing this meal should only take 10 minutes. The water for my noodles is heating up and in the meantime we will make the sauce. This is soy sauce, Chinese black vinegar. It is original, tasty, spicy, slightly sweet and delicious. Toasted sesame oil. And tahini may not be traditional in East Asian food, but I love the sesame flavor and it will give that nice body to the sauce. A little heat and I have Sichuan chili flakes. And just a little bit of maple syrup to bring out the salty and savory flavors.

The water is boiling, so I'm going to add the noodles, and these only need four minutes. While the noodles are cooking, we will make the vegetables. I have some cabbage and carrot slaw left, a pinch of salt, and I have a red pepper in the refrigerator, so I'll slice it and add it to the noodles. A couple of leftover chives, I think they'll go well with this too. And the second component of the meal prep I'm using today is the baked tofu I made yesterday. The noodles are almost ready. I'll rinse them under cold water just to get them to room temperature and then we'll combine everything.

It's time to get spicy. Pour sauce over noodles. Add our cabbage and carrots, mix everything together and some toasted sesame seeds for a nice nutty finish. Honestly, I'm surprised that just an hour of meal prep has resulted in so many delicious, flavorful meals with very little work. If you want more meal prep content, be sure to check out this playlist here or the PDF guide with all the recipes linked in the description box below. See you in the next video. Bye bye.