 Excuse me ma'am what do you think you're doing? I'm making some healthy meals so I can hike better. You can probably tell by my accent that I'm a good old southern boy and I love a lot of things about the south but the heat in the summer is definitely not one of them. It's oppressively hot and we have to escape so every July Vanessa and I tell our boss to take this job and shove it and we budget as much time and money as possible to spend the summer in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. We spend the majority of our time in small mountain towns around state and national parks and while we found some surprisingly great restaurants it's a much safer bet to pack the beer essentials for cooking on the road. It allows us to stretch our travel budget, eat healthier on the road and gives us more time for exploring and adventures. And you don't need much things like a large skillet, knife and cutting board, a few dry goods like spices, pasta and grains allow us to make a wide variety of meals that all work great for meal prep. So I thought this would be a cool opportunity to highlight some of these one pan recipes because they're not exclusive to travel we mostly cook the same way at home. By the end of this video you'll have five new recipes to go to the next time you're looking for a healthy meal prep option with minimal ingredients, equipment and cleanup required. Let's get straight into the first recipe and by the way I've linked every recipe in this video in the description below so you can print whichever you're planning to make. Okay first up we have my firecracker ground beef stir fry this recipe that I'm making here on the video will vary slightly from the written recipe that I've linked below but I'll walk you through everything but this recipe basically combines a sweet and spicy sauce with ground beef or bison and some bell pepper green beans and onion. In this video I'm using a whole bell pepper whole sweet onion and 12 ounces of green beans I'm also dicing everything small whereas in the original recipe you'll find kind of bigger pieces I think the small it makes a better eating experience I also use like a double everything because I didn't want to waste the vegetables because I'm only buying them for this recipe so you can adjust accordingly you might want to increase the sauce maybe like 1.3 1.5x everything you see in the sauce but you're kind of seeing how this comes together it's super easy you're just going to brown and cook some ground beef or like I use bison here and about a half tablespoon of olive oil take that out of the pan add another tablespoon or if you're using more vegetables you might go like a tablespoon and a half you'll cook these for like eight ten minutes let the onions soften those green beans turn like a bright green color the peppers might start to pick up a little bit of color in spots and you'll add in your cooked beef or bison back to the skillet and your sauce stir everything together and cook this for maybe two three minutes till that sauce starts to caramelize around the edges and thicken and then you can serve this with rice I went with my trusty jasmine cauliflower rice combo to you know you get more volume for fewer carbs and then just garnish with some scallions toasted sesame seeds some red pepper flakes or chili oil if you have it I think you'll like this one next we have a brown butter sage mushroom ground turkey orzo situation everything cooks together in one pan and you wouldn't necessarily think you can have butter on a healthier diet but there's just three tablespoons and browning it gives you this complex nutty caramelly flavor that pairs really nicely with the mushrooms if you've never made brown butter before it's really easy you just throw it in the pan and keep it moving around it's going to foam a lot and then once that subsides and you see a brown color and you'll be able to smell it you can throw in some sage and then some mushrooms cook those for maybe eight ten minutes till you get some browning and you kind of have two options here you can pull the mushrooms out to add at the end but I like to keep them in the same pan cook a pound of extra lean ground turkey mix it all together and then add the orzo I like to add the orzo and let it toast for a few minutes totally optional and then you can add some Italian seasoning dish on mustard once you get a little bit of browning in spots on the orzo mix everything together and oh and by the way if you don't want to use orzo which is kind of like a pasta but rice you could always use a rice you'll just want to use something that's quicker cooking and yeah you just use chicken broth add this in keep cooking 10-ish minutes give it a taste make sure the orzo is fully cooked you can add a little bit more broth if you need once the broth is cooked off and the orzo is good to go add in a little bit of milk over low heat and some parmesan or reggiano or just regular parmesan fold everything together this should be like a thick and creamy sauce if it's not you can add a little bit more cheese keep it over low heat to keep reducing it and then you add in some freshly chopped parsley and a little bit of fresh lemon juice and this is good to go you could serve this with an Italian style side salad or Caesar salad if you can find you know a lower calorie Caesar dressing it's also great with grilled bread if you have the calories to spare if you're out there active in hiking go for it we just keep it pretty simple throw this into meal prep containers and it's just easy to reheat reheats really well and yeah dig in so i made this recipe back in 2021 at the height of the keto potatoes or faux potatoes craze so it has radishes don't worry you can totally use potatoes but the radishes are surprisingly pretty good especially when you cook them in some rendered bacon fat like this are they as good as potatoes of course not i always like to give that disclaimer but they're pretty great you save a lot of carbs so anyway this uses um just table radishes red radishes any kind of you know turnips daikon radish whatever great ways to save some carbs and instead of potatoes in a dish like this where you're gonna have a lot of other flavors working together and uh yeah thanks to the bacon you don't need any additional fat you'll just kind of crisp that up set it out of the pan cook these radishes add some ground beef or your choice of protein mix it all together and then this uses a lower calorie burger sauce and then all of that is topped with some cheddar cheese some diced dill pickles the cooked bacon more cheese and then it's just baked until you've got this like uh cheeseburger without the bun really tasty tangy cheeseburger but without the carb situation i really like it of course we're gonna top it with some parmesan or reggiano because that's great on everything and it's a little bit of extra reserved crisp bacon there you go again you serve this with potatoes or you swap the radishes for potatoes and i mean you're eating good now we're making a Tex-Mex breakfast skillet this uses lean Mexican chorizo egg whites potatoes and peppers and then all that's mixed with some green chili enchilada sauce some corn tortillas and cheese it's pretty simple lean chorizo is can be hard to find i surprisingly found this at a smith's which i think is owned by kroger back in texas uh you know h e b has my favorite lean chorizo you can also make it with extra lean ground chicken or ground pork tenderloin i'll link to some of my recipes for that as well down below anyway you just want to brown and fully cook the chorizo and then set it aside and potatoes diced potatoes and poblano peppers in this case i'm using kind of some multicolored fingerling potatoes and anaheim peppers because it's what i found uh this one i kind of dice them what's called medium dice where the original recipe calls for small diced i wanted to try it i would go smaller but if you do go medium like me you'll need to cook it a bit longer than the recipe calls for just to make sure those potatoes are forked tender yeah then you're just going to cook chorizo cook the veggies transfer it out cook some egg whites you can use whole eggs if you want no worries there then everything gets mixed together like i said with the sauce chopped corn tortillas topped with cheese if you have a cover and just cover this up and a and a pan that retains heat like cast iron just cover it up if you don't throw in the oven i like to garnish with some cilantro pico de gallo guacamole fat-free greek yogurt it's really good you get some nice tanginess little protein boost can't go wrong here i think you'll enjoy this one for breakfast reheats really well and great way to hide a ton of egg whites last but not least we have a greek chicken skillet this combines lean ground chicken with a mediterranean rite rice which is chickpea rice if you don't have rite rice or don't want to use chickpea rice don't worry you can use any kind of quick cooking rice or even orzo like in the brown butter recipe so you want to brown and fully cook a pound of extra lean ground chicken and a little bit of olive oil while you prep your veggies and then you'll add in some cavender's greek seasoning surprisingly this is an arkansas company but everyone thinks they have some of the best tasting greek seasoning trust me it tastes pretty great you want to mix all that together and then add some water and your rice once that's boiling and you'll just stir this together turn off the heat and cover for about 10 minutes you want the rice and chicken to absorbed all the water shouldn't be any water remaining if there is cover it a little bit longer this is where you kind of have some options in the recipe i throw everything together and i like to bake it but you could swap the zucchini for something like cucumber have these cherry tomatoes and serve this like a chilled chicken salad but i bake it for 20 to 30 minutes the tomatoes kind of wrinkle and almost turn into burst roasted tomatoes and all you need now is just a little bit of fresh lemon juice fresh herbs you're good to go