Three simple meal prep recipes for wholesome summer time cooking

0
514

I don’t mean to brag, but I was really good at preparing meals when my kids were little. Every week I had a plan of what to eat. I made a list and bought all the groceries I needed, I thought about thawing the chicken breasts the day before cooking, and I’d shred and wash a whole head of lettuce so it was easy to make salads for one week.

At some point I gave up this good habit. Most days I don’t have a plan. I look in the freezer for something that can thaw in time for dinner and order the other ingredients I need at Instacart and add random things like seltzer to my order to meet the minimum order quantity.

I had to revive my food preparation habit. “The Ultimate Meal Prep Cookbook from America’s Test” Kitchen inspired me to try meal prep again.

If you are new to meal preparation, you need to plan and prepare the meals that you will have for a period of time, usually a week. There are usually steps you can do ahead of time, like chopping onions, grating lemon or lime peel, or pruning meat so you can get dinner on the table quickly on busy weekdays.

This book gives you a four-meal plan for a week, as well as a pantry option that you can prepare from ingredients that you likely have on hand. That works perfectly for me, as I like to order takeaways once or twice a week or eat out. When I tried meal prepping, some friends invited us for a last minute cookout. So I prepared and prepared three meals this week.

That’s what I liked about meal prepping

Without a doubt, my favorite favorite benefit of meal preparation was having a plan. There wasn’t a single day when I had to think about what to eat that evening. I had a plan and I knew it was going to be a decent meal.

I also liked the ease of grocery shopping. I had a shopping list of spares so I could use something I already had at home instead of buying something new.

I liked how each recipe has tips on how to prepare it. It’s popular for meal preppers to take about an hour on a Sunday and do the prep for the week. But I liked to take short breaks in my workday to get up from my desk, stretch my legs, and do a little food-preparation task. It is a nice mental and physical break to take five minutes to peel a few carrots or chop a few shallots.

I liked that most of the meals used mostly ingredients that have a long shelf life. Carrots, leeks, shallots, and garlic don’t spoil as quickly, so if I had to postpone a meal for a day, I didn’t have to worry about food waste. Meat and fish can be frozen. And canned beans and dried spices last pretty much forever.

And I liked the way most meals were cooked in a pan, with maybe a bowl, cutting board, and knife for prep work. That made cleaning easy.

Day 1: Cod fried in foil with leek and carrots

Cod fried in foil with leek and carrots

Daniel J. van Ackere / America’s test kitchen

Maybe it was beginner’s luck, but my very first meal cooked – foil-baked cod with leek and carrots – was great. I got a nice bunch of leeks from a local farm that has a seasonal share of vegetables and I chopped them and the carrots in the afternoon. In the time it took my oven to heat up, I had the fish and vegetable foil packs prepared and 15 minutes later they were ready to eat.

Opening the pack with a prepared meal inside and inhaling the aroma of the food, herbs and butter felt like a treat. This dinner was definitely an improvement on my usual weekday meals. It’s a complete meal in itself, but I added a small side salad with more vegetables from my local farm.

Day 2: Roasted pork tenderloin with apples and shallots

Provencal pork fillet with apples and shallots

Daniel J. van Ackere / America’s test kitchen

Let’s just say my beginners’ luck came to an end and mistakes were made with my roasted pork tenderloin with apples and shallots. And yet the end result was delicious.

Mistake 1: I got a pork tenderloin from a farmers market that wasn’t the typical long, round pork tenderloin I was used to. It was shaped more like a large cube. I was afraid that the cooking time would be too short. But I cut it to match the pork that I could see in the photo of the recipe.

Mistake 2: I didn’t buy Golden Delicious apples because I wanted to use up some yellow apples that I already had. But when I tried to cut them, they were old and brown on the inside. The recipe said I could substitute Gala and I would have different apples, but was that Gala? I didn’t know and I didn’t have time to buy new apples. I had to make do with what I had.

Despite these flaws, this meal was delicious. The apples were just sweet and sour enough to play the hearty shallots – maybe they were galas after all. And there was plenty of pork for light sandwiches at lunchtime.

Day 3: Rock steak with pinto bean salad

Rock steak with pinto bean salad

Steve Klise / America’s test kitchen

When I cook steak, I usually go for a ribeye or strip steak. I shut down a system for cooking so I know I’m not going to ruin an expensive piece of meat. I leave rock steak to the professionals in the restaurants. But I was ready to try rock steak with pinto bean salad.

Because all of these recipes make the most of similar ingredients used in different ways, this meal came together super quickly. That’s because I chopped the shallots and picked the parsley earlier than I was preparing other meals.

The steak was cooked in four minutes, and while it was resting I made the bean salad. Deviating from the suggested list for bean substitutes (kidney beans, black-eyed peas, or black beans), I used small white beans. In general, bean salads aren’t my favorite side dish. But the combination of the chilli in Adobo and lime juice made this version really delicious – I was happy to have leftovers.

Connected: