 I'm Chef Robin. Welcome to Hands in the Kitchen Workshop. Today we're going to be talking about meal prep. Meal prep is the process of planning or preparing food. Even if you just opened up a rotisserie chicken or put a piece of toast in the toaster or opened a can of soup, you are still preparing for a meal. So we want to talk about preparing for a meal that maybe will translate to two or three meals so that our meal prep is a little bit more expanded on but actually saves us time in the long run when we're preparing for other dinners or lunches. So it's simply the process of planning or preparing food or batch cooking and preparing full meals ahead to make one's dinner easier. So batch cooking means to be expanded upon to do more than just one batch. So why would we want to do this? Now that we know what meal prep is, and actually through the course of this workshop we're going to be talking about why meal prep, prep strategies or plans for meal prepping, using tools that we probably already have in our kitchen and maybe some tools that you think are a little exotic but might be fun to enjoy using, also saving time with those tools. And then because we are going to be prepping for meals ahead, we want to make sure that we do it in a safe manner and store in a safe manner. So we want to cover all those ideas today and first we're going to start off with why would we want to do it? And essentially meal prepping helps us to save time. So if you don't care to be in the kitchen a long time, doing a little bit of expanded meal prep possibly twice a week will allow you those other five days of the week to spend less time in the kitchen. So you can go as full-hearty as you like in meal prepping or you can just do a little meal prepping say you have your rotisserie chicken and you turn it into chicken salad that still is meal prepping for another day actually thinking ahead to use products that you've prepared in more than one way. So you want to save time, also you're going to save money. So we all love to save money. One of the things that we want to remember is that a healthy plate, half of a healthy plate are fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables do require prep time unless you are taking advantage of the grocery store which now prepares for you or you can have prepared spiralized zucchini, diced peppers, grated carrots, chopped green beans, any manner of vegetables that are already cleaned and prepped for you. The thing is that if marker 32 has decided that they're going to spiralize the zucchini, the set amount of zucchini that's spiralized is the set amount that you take home so that you would need to use up that spiralized zucchini and maybe it's going to be too much. So it's an advantage to buying pre-cut or pre-frozen vegetables and fruit because then work has already been taken out for you but because that work has already been done it already increases the price of that product. So maybe you want to save more time and spend more money or maybe you want to save more money and spend a little bit more time that's a decision that you need to make but whichever you do decide upon it's in your control to do that. So now there are items at the store available for you to prep ahead easier but there also are some meal prep strategies that we're going to look at and some kitchen tips that will make meal prepping ahead easier. So saving time saving money taking control if you prep ahead of time and portion out proteins vegetables fruits grains ahead of time for meals in the future you have control of what that portion size is possibly you're working with a doctor or a healthcare professional who says you should be eating more protein you can decide then and there what that amount of protein is going to be have it already prepared and it's ready to pull out the news you can do that with things that you're supposed to be cutting back on as well so you're going to be in control of your serving size hopefully following recommendations from the AMA or your doctor but you are in control also you can take control when you do your own meal prep to use very nutrient dense foods or very healthy foods rather than a lot of product that's unprepared foods maybe filler or not very not very nutritionally rich so saving money time taking control and the big one is reducing stress if you actually have meals planned a couple days ahead of time that totally relieves you of the what's for dinner what's for lunch question excuse me so reducing that stress when it comes to meal time leaves you more time to be at bingo more time shopping with your granddaughter more time doing other things that you might enjoy more but knowing in the back of your mind that you're coming home to a meal that you can very easily put in the microwave or put in the oven and have ready to go so all of those reasons are why we might prep ahead so let's take a moment and look at some strategies as far as meal planning these are different ways that you can approach thinking about getting ahead with meal planning one way is to do buffet style meal planning where or meal prepping excuse me not meal planning meal prepping but maybe you decide that you're going to tackle the vegetables that you brought home from the grocery store maybe it's a day that your caretaker is there or attendant maybe it's a day when your grandson or granddaughter is visiting maybe you get together with a friend and you're just going to knock out your vegetables for the next three or four meals you can chop or spiralize vegetables uh i'm going to show you how to easily go through a bunch of prep with a vegetable peeler i also brought a mandolin not everybody has a mandolin in their kitchen but it's a very efficient and quick tool that can go through even hard vegetables very easily and quickly so you can chop or spiralize a bunch of vegetables to have on hand to choose from you can throw a tray of starchy vegetables into the oven and roast them off and have carrots ready parcels ready potatoes ready maybe you won't be using them all for one meal but if you have them ready you can throw them in to build a soup you can throw them in to have on the side of a protein you don't have to do just a tray of vegetables for one meal it easily would translate to two or three you can also prepare sauces marinades and excuse dressings together vinaigrettes together ahead of time and hold them if you're going to make vinaigrette enough to go on one salad make enough to hold to go on another salad the vinegar and acid in that vinaigrette is going to be able to keep it for more than more than just that meals time also unless you're making a alfredo sauce which is really rich with butter and dairy most sauces that you make are going to be able to be held in the refrigerator for up to four days we're going to go through when we get to the safety part of our lesson as far as holding times in the refrigerator but there's no point of making one cup of marinara make two cups of marinara and freeze some make three cups of soup and freeze some just thinking ahead in order to get ahead for the next meal or two or three if you're going to cook up a grain cook up more than just what you're sitting down to grains are very versatile they can be added into salads they can be added into casseroles they can just have as a bootable which is a grain of protein vegetables and then you just need to have your fruit so make more than just a little same for pastas same for breads anytime you're looking at doing a side blow it up more than just what you need for that meal so that you can translate that goodness into another meal down the way and that's one component of your healthy plate that you don't have to worry about executing that time also you might want to think about batch cooking and that is also going over and above the amount that you need for that one individual meal anytime you make a soup make more anytime you make a stew make more anytime you make muffins make more there is actually a computer site called muffin tin mania and it's all about using muffin tins for everything other than muffin tins but you can use muffin tins for frittata it's a really great serving size fill your muffin tin up with frittata bake it put it on a tray set it in the freezer let it freeze then you can have individual frittatas in a ziplock in the freezer you just need to pull out what you need you can make smoothies the same way freeze them pull out individual little muffin size smoothies they'll defrost really quickly ready to get your morning started so excuse me quite a few things can go in your muffin tin in the freezer and then be pulled out really quick defrost really quick microwave in your set suits muffins zucchini bread almond or some things uh pastas can be made ahead of time it will hold in the refrigerator and pasta actually also can be frozen grains can also be frozen waffles are a great side instead of always relying on bread you can make savory waffles if you're going to make a waffle make eight waffles and just have them freeze them pull them out as you need very quick go to very fun go to they don't always have to be a sweet waffle a savory waffle is delicious under the bottom of chicken salad or on the side of a soup so you're prepping you've got some buffet style stuff to pull from and put together for plates you make some batches that you can pull from and have easy some people actually do advanced portioning and what i mean by that is that they meal prep and then single serve the final item so a lot of people have the same thing for breakfast every day and that is a hot cereal so if you have a hot cereal every day you can set out five jars put your dry hot cereal in the bottom add whatever berry or dried food you might like add a teaspoon of sugar or maple syrup or honey boom boom boom boom down the line put it in the refrigerator have them lined up in the refrigerator pull them out the next day pour boiling water over it just set the top on 10 minutes later you have your hot cereal ready so breakfast is a very easy meal to meal prep and get started another thing to think about at lunchtime is making jar salads and we could do a whole workshop on jar salads but jar salads are where the dressing of your salad goes in the bottom and then you just start layering up with good stuff ending with a crunchy lettuce or masculine at the top then when you're done you can pour it out and enjoy and these jar salads generally will hold on to life in your refrigerator for three to four days even with the lettuce i was really amazed but we made some as a group and they really turned out lovely and even three to four days later it was very nice and pleasant to enjoy so overnight oats jar salad and then bootables bootables are kind of a grown up jar salad and that it has more of an emphasis on your grain and protein so it's a full meal in a bowl but you can rotate out which grains you like you can rotate out which proteins you like add a bunch of vegetables and then possibly just you need apple sauce or pear slices on the side to make a complete meal so a lot of different ways to go about prepping this is a pretty complete and serious poster uh there's no be there's no like real rule of how much or how little to prep it's up to you to do in a safe manner if you want to create every breakfast in a jar and every lunch in a jar and every dinner in a bowl for a week go for it but if you just want to think what small can i do to get ahead a little bit that's also very fruitful in terms of having stuff ready for that next meal so those are some strategies that we want to speak about and now we're going to talk about tools that we have in the kitchen to help us out and also how to maintain safety in the kitchen and cleanliness in the kitchen so the first tool i think everybody probably owns in their kitchen is a vegetable peeler so i like this kind of vegetable peeler and i also like this kind of vegetable peeler they're very inexpensive uh i think four three four three two dollars not very much probably not two dollars but definitely fairly inexpensive and we are going to make some uh zucchini noodles zucchini noodles are like all the rage this summer so uh if zucchini is not your go-to vegetable or maybe people are dropping off zucchini from their gardens to you grab your vegetable peeler take off the top of your zucchini okay and then if you want to make fettuccine noodles i'm just going to use the wide blade and very quickly i have lovely noodles from zucchini that are wide if i want to have some angel hair zucchini i'm going to use my separated blade and then these will come apart sorry it's not coming apart anyway um it has a little ridge nature to it and then i also have my mandolin so if i want a very uniform vegetable product i can take my zucchini on my mandolin and it's going to give me a lovely little very precise cut of every piece of zucchini so i would take that zucchini and if i wanted to use it that evening i would probably toss it in a little salt set it in a colander and let it rest in the sink it's going to draw out moisture and then if i wanted to use it as a noodle actually the heat from whatever sauce i was using would be enough heat to change it into a cooked noodle so you're really not going to put these zucchini zoodles in any kind of water at all you can add a dressing to it and it's the same kind of thing any acid that you use in that dressing is going to act upon the sorry it's going to act upon the zucchini to soften it and make it very nice and flavorful so if you can imagine that we had a whole bag of zucchini noodles and i wasn't going to use them all or if i had done this entire zucchini then i would put it into a storage bag and i could either hold it to use later on in the week or i would want to take a straw blast the ziplock around the straw extract as much air out of the bag as possible close it up label and then lay it flat and put it in the freezer and that actually would be very quick and you could just pull it out from the freezer and then use it as we spoke about either with a hot sauce or with a cold salad dressing it's going to be really nice and lovely and it won't take up a lot of space in your freezer and plus zucchinis are everywhere and very inexpensive now to use so why wouldn't you do that just would be a fun thing to do so tools that we have in our kitchen for getting ahead a little bit don't forget your peels okay they're really inexpensive they're really a quick go to and it's probably even if you maybe have a little bit of dexterity issues or arthritis issues it's probably not going to be a whole lot to just have a zipper a zucchini zip cut with your vegetable peeler take advantage of your blender like we were speaking about before get all your smoothie ingredients together fill a blender full of of smoothie ingredients have what you need for the morning and then take your muffin tin and freeze away the same thing for batters that you might want to make use your blender the same thing for dressings take advantage of your blender those people either have a handheld blender now in their kitchen or a stand blender or their next door neighbor has a blender especially if you like your food softer go ahead cook it blend it freeze it then pull it out when you need it nuke it be ready to go um spiralizers or mandolin's are fun to use lots of people rely on their slow cookers and insta pots to get ahead as far as meal prep goes uh if you buy a boston butt which might be on sale um and cook it off in your slow cooker it's not going to heat up your kitchen and sorry and then you'll have enough to make barbecue that can easily be frozen and pulled out at a later time uh insta pots are great for doing rices or any kind of grain and doing more than just that green for that meal uh use your waffle iron i was talking about is a fun idea for having a side that maybe you're not used to and i would suggest if you have leftover grains putting them in your waffle batter and getting a double dose um and waffles also freeze really well uh take advantage of your muffin tin in different ways always have a sharpie and a zip lock around especially if you're freezing uh zip locks come in freezer quality they definitely have this big triangle on the front where you can put the date of and what the product actually is but they're clear which makes it easy to see what the product is unless you're done a blended soup or stew and a lot of people like we are speaking about are using jars uh to make salad in but also to do storage in you can see through them you can tell what's there um you can also use smaller jars i'm a little clumsy so i don't rely on glass products a lot but also in trying to get away from plastic products lots of people might be drawn to using jars and they are readily available they are everywhere so especially around canning time but almost uh anytime you go to the hardware store even if it's not canning season there's going to be a box of jars on some shelf somewhere all right let's talk about food safety and prepping food first you want to make sure that everything in your work area is very very clean that your hands are clean that your cutting boards are clean your vegetables if you're going to be storing vegetables for later use you don't want to start off processing dirty vegetables go ahead and take a few minutes clean them peel them if you feel like they need to be peeled um but definitely have them ready to work on as opposed to not so make sure your work area is clean your knives are clean and any other tools that you might be using also if you're prepping ahead and you're doing proteins you want to separate your proteins if you have a raw protein make sure that it gets processed after you've done vegetables and cooked food if you only have one cutting board make sure that you address using your vegetables first then clean your cutting board sanitize your cutting board then you can put cooked meat or protein on your cutting board clean and sanitize then use raw meat or protein on your cutting board it's very important some people who do a lot of cooking will have a meat board and a vegetable board and that's just their go-to but still remember also you want to always address any cooked product that needs to be cut and chopped first and then your raw product if you're using the same board you want to cook to doneness before you package away it's really unhealthy to only cook your chicken halfway and put it in the refrigerator and then pull it out and expect it to come up to temp and be tasty it's much easier to refresh a chicken with a hot sauce or a marinade than a halfway raw chicken that just has to cook forever and ever go ahead and cook your proteins all the way before you package them up for another meal in the future so for ground beef that would be 260 for poultry products that would be 265 or when you pull out the meat thermometer or fork you're getting a clear very clear substance coming out from that chicken breast or thigh or leg no blood no pink nothing like that um casseroles that might possibly have cheese or eggs or meat in them you also want to bring up to 165 before they're done so after you've cooked those protein products and you want to package or you want to package your vegetables or your sauces bring everything down to at least room temperature chill down to room temperature it's very dangerous to try to take something a hot soup or something and try to package it when it's still hot it's very dangerous to put anything hot into the blender and try to blend it while it's still hot so make sure that you give yourself an amount of time to bring that product down from heat chill it and hold it at proper temperatures and that's what we're going to speak about next is how long can you hold on to something that you're freezing or putting in the refrigerator and how's the best way to hold on to it we talked about a few storage containers and talk about a few more really the enemy and it's a strange thing for me to say that air is the enemy i don't know what in other context i would ever say that but as far as keeping food fresh air is the enemy you really want to use airtight containers when you store things which is what makes ziplocks really fun or plastic containers which have a really tight fitting lid or jars which have a screw on tight fitting lid so it's important you can buy all manners of containers now that work really well for food storage this is actually from some takeout but it's lovely it will go in the microwave it's very good size for portioning it also has a very tight fitting lid so if i did enough takeout and had three or four of these that would be dinner dinner dinner so but an old reliable bowl is the yogurt container we tend to eat a fair amount of yogurt in our household so we definitely always have containers these are a quart size or four cups which is large but they do come with really tight snapping lids the drawback is that the drawback to using a container such as this is that you cannot necessarily see what's inside so if you have too many containers like this and they're not labeled it's possible that you will overlook something and not get to it to use otherwise if you keep your food rotated in your refrigerator these are really handy and they are really tight and airtight if you're going to use something like this in the freezer you only want to fill to this level where they have that ridge and in these containers too they have a ridge because once it goes into the freezer there will be expansion and if you don't leave some room for that expansion it will pop the top off and you will get freezer burn on your product so that is not at all tasty but there are all manners of storage containers out there depending on the investment that you want to make you can even purchase segmented storage containers and actually put your protein grain vegetables in close them up have them in the refrigerator and hold them out to me so we want to talk a little bit about how long we can keep things in the refrigerator once we've prepped ahead of time I didn't pick every item that a person might possibly be cooking but I did pick some items that you might have questions about so making harbored eggs is incredibly easy I think it's one of the first cooking tasks that a child does is to make harbored eggs and harbored eggs once they're cooked if they are in their shell they are good for up to 10 days in your refrigerator they're a complete protein so if you're going to make one harbored egg make half a dozen especially when eggs are on sale it's a great way to hold on to eggs and always have them handy you can make egg salads you can put them on salads you can put them on sandwiches you can just have them on the side sliced on top really great go-to very easy and they'll stay in the shell in your refrigerator for up to 10 days so that is a great item really to just pull out and have on hand speaking of eggs if you make a large frittata or a large omelette and are not able to finish it in that day of that will also stay in your refrigerator for three to four days so you could easily make a frittata for the week and enjoy it on two to three weeks you could easily have an omelette that's too large and you wrap up that omelette or put it in a ziplock take the air out and put it in your freezer and it will actually stay okay in your freezer for one to two months so if you need a quick snack and you remember that you have an omelette in your freezer pull it out and enjoy it but in a frittata also freezes really well and comes down from freezing really well those soups and stews that we talked about getting a head on can hold in your refrigerator for three to four days so again there's no point in just making a little bit of soup or a little bit of stew because that can translate to another lunch or to another dinner and they can be in your freezer for up to three to four months even containing meat oftentimes those soups or stews will have an acid with them in the form of tomato so that also helps to prolong its shelf life in the freezer they generally come back from the freezer as a good product um something some things don't always freeze well the soups and stews do generally freeze well and you can also once your soup or stew has cooled down you can do it like this ukemi pour it into your bag take out the air and then flatten it and have a lot of flat ziplocks in your freezer not taking up too much space labeled and dated and carefully there for you to use um cooked meats in your refrigerator i would say take advantage of them in two to three days definitely in menu planning if you're starting off the week with a roasted chicken make sure that you're eating up that chicken by the end of the week or two or three or four days but in the freezer they can they can hold for two to three months so a little for two and seven but i definitely i definitely work in that freezer or cool chicken and it would hold for two months so as a general rule you want to use up your refrigerated prep in three to four days the freezer definitely gives you a little bit more time you just have to keep an idea of the inventory that you have in your freezer and that is one of my first go-to's and menu planning is shop what you have on hand first shop in your freezer or have freezer food on friday why not or shop from your refrigerator so hopefully you've thought a little bit more about not just prepping for one meal but prepping for more than one meal if you've taken the time to make a meal plan then it makes it really easy to meal prep according to that plan so the challenge is to watch the workshop video on menu planning figure out how to do that for a week or two and then do a concise grocery list come home and have the items that you need from that list in your home set yourself up in a clean working space get a friend get a grand kid get a care attendant that works with you and just have fun and then get that much farther ahead and every night or every lunch be able to sit down to a healthy tasty attractive meal so thanks i'm chef robin this was hands in the kitchen workshop we'll see you in the kitchen