 Even though I call this a stir-fry, I like to steam the vegetables beforehand to kind of make them extra soft because I'm gross and I like that. Hi, I'm Erica, also known as the Pancake Princess, where I do data-driven bake-offs, so I am someone who has a ton of baked goods in their house at all times. Today, I'm gonna be sharing with you some of my top meal prep tips, and I'm also gonna show you two of my go-to meal prep recipes, so stir-fry and some baked tofu spring rolls. So for me, meal prepping is really important to save me time because I tend to work out during the week, right after work, and then I'm starving by the time I come back to save me money and to keep me healthy when I'm not eating all of these baked goods. Okay, let's start cooking. First, we're gonna start with stir-fry, so stir-fry is one of my favorite things to prep because it's so easy, so versatile, you can throw whatever you have into the stir-fry. I always like to plan my meals, thinking about three components, so protein, vegetable, and carb. Today, my carb is gonna be rice that I have prepped for this meal prep session. My protein is gonna be this tempeh, and then the vegetables are gonna be carrots, broccoli, and kale. I tend to lean towards plant-based proteins like tofu, tempeh, beans, and lentils. So when I'm cutting my carrots, I like to cut them into like coin sizes just because it's easier to stub with a fork that way and they still cook through pretty fast. When prepping broccoli, I also love to use the stems. These are perfectly good, so I just throw them in with the rest of the stir-fry. They cook up nice and soft, or you can keep them kind of crisp-tender, if you like. One of the challenges that I encountered when I first started meal prepping was the quantity of the recipe, so over the years I kind of found if I make a recipe that has more than four servings, I will get sick of it by the end of the week, but anything around four servings is great. So when I'm making stir-fry, I don't really follow a recipe, but I just know roughly that I might eat three carrots and like two heads of broccoli and a head of kale in a stir-fry that will feed me for like four or five meals, but I also love to eat a lot of vegetables, so obviously scale and like kind of test it out and see what works for you. So I love cooking with tempeh. It's a great alternative to tofu because it will just take on whatever flavor you're cooking with. So if you like tofu, I would give tempeh a try, and it has a great texture for stir-fries. So because tempeh is so dense, I like to cut it into pretty small squares, so I'll usually cut the whole block in half and then cut little triangles like this just so they're kind of bite-size. So I have my tempeh already, the vegetables are all prepped, so we're ready to make stir-fry. Okay, so I'm gonna start by adding just a little bit of oil. So I'm gonna dump the tempeh in, and while it's cooking, I'm just gonna add a little bit of soy sauce and adding the soy sauce not only seasons it, but it gives it some nice flavor. So this tempeh looks like it's done to me. You can see those nice golden edges. So I'm gonna put all of this tempeh into a meal prep container that I'm gonna use to store all of the stir-fry. So we're gonna move on to doing the vegetables. Start with the carrots because these take the longest to cook. When I'm adding water to steam, I just put a little bit of water in the lid and then put that on top to save on dishes that I'm using. I'm gonna add the broccoli because this just needs to steam for about five or six more minutes and cover it again. Pretty much done here, and I'm just gonna add the kale since it doesn't take very long to cook. And this kale looks nice and wilted. Since these vegetables are super plain right now, this is when I add the sauce and then I'll add the tempeh back and maybe do a little bit more seasoning. So I'm gonna start with the oyster sauce. Fish sauce is super pundit, so I just do a little dash. Some soy sauce. Today, since I'm being fancy, I'm gonna do a little bit of rice vinegar, cooking the vegetables, and now I'm gonna add the tempeh. And now I'm just gonna finish it with a little drizzle of sesame oil. And that's it. That's the stir-fry or the steam fry. All right, so now that our stir-fry or steam fry has cooled a little bit, I'm gonna put this in my biggest meal prep container. And so I love using glass because it doesn't stain. Like if you're doing like a turmeric stew, it's really easy to clean and it's easy to microwave. So again, waiting for the food to cool so that you're not putting steaming hot food in the fridge. So I made myself a little plate of the steam fry and I'm gonna give it a try. So good. Next, we're gonna move on to some tofu spring rolls. And I love this dish for when it starts to get warmer because it's a super fresh dish. Lots of vegetables incorporated. So typically when I make spring rolls, I like to incorporate cucumber. I prepped a lot of this ahead of time, just some sliced cucumber. These are some quick-pickled carrots. It's a really simple mixture of just some apple cider vinegar, water, a little sugar, and salt. So if you don't have time to prep them ahead of time, they'll still taste good even if you do a quick pickle for like 30 minutes. I also have some vermicelli noodles, some lettuce, and this is a block of tofu that I am pressing to get all of the water out as much as possible before I bake it. As you can see, a lot of water has leaked out. I dumped most of it in the sink. So now I'm just gonna chop it up into slices for baking. When I cut tofu for spring rolls, I like to do it in big, kind of like long slabs because obviously spring rolls are kind of on the longer side. If you're looking for something that's gonna fit nicely inside a spring roll. I cut the tofu into four thin slices and then into thirds. I have 12 slabs of tofu about this size. That's perfect for making 12 spring rolls. So about like three per meal. I just put a little bit of oil on the tray and I'm just gonna use this piece of tofu to spread the oil around because honestly, I don't want to dirty another dish. Now I'm just gonna lay out the tofu on the tray and I'm just gonna season it with soy sauce. Honestly, whenever I go to the Asian market, I just buy whatever soy sauce is on sale. But if you have any good soy sauce recommendations, let me know in the comments. The tofu is like pretty well covered in soy sauce so I'm just gonna pop this in the oven for about 25, 30 minutes. The tofu is done baking and so it's nice and golden with a little bit of, you can see that soy sauce kind of speckled on top. Now I'm gonna transfer the tofu to a plate to cool and then we can start assembling the spring rolls. I typically will start by just soaking the rice paper in a large plate of water and this usually doesn't need more than like 30 seconds to one minute. All right, so you wanna take it out when it is soft but not too soft because it's gonna be impossible to work with if it's just mush and try to get it as flat as possible. While I'm assembling the spring roll, I'm gonna put another paper in the water just so that it can get a head start on softening. Okay, so with my spring roll, I'm gonna just use like maybe one leaf of lettuce. Gonna do a little pile of noodles. Vermicelli is super easy to prepare. It looks super kind of just like clear and spiky but all you have to do is soap it in hot water for like 10 to 15 minutes and it'll soften up. Some cucumber on here, add some pickled carrot. Try to drain off as much liquid as I can before I add them. And then I'm gonna add my tofu. Rolling it up is pretty darn easy, especially because I'm only making these for myself so I don't really care if they look pretty as long as they taste good. So I usually start by just rolling the ends up and then I tuck one end under the lettuce if I can get it there and just try to roll it as tightly as I can. I thought that was gonna be really ugly but it's actually not bad. So this is spring roll number one and I'm gonna put it in my Tupperware for later. So sometimes I will roll all of my spring rolls ahead of time and just kind of do it all at once. And sometimes if I know I'm gonna have a little more time throughout the week, I might just prep all of the components but roll them fresh either before lunch or dinner. My least favorite part of meal prepping is definitely the cleaning. I hate washing dishes which is why you've seen me use a lot of shortcuts when I'm in the kitchen to try to use as few dishes as possible. I love the process of cooking but just cleaning is the worst. But on the other hand, the bonus of meal prepping is that I only have to do dishes basically one day a week and so I get them all out of the way that one day and I don't have to worry about them for the rest of the week. Even if you don't have time for a full meal prep, just do a mini one. So sometimes I don't have time on Sunday to do a full two meals for the week. So I'll just cut some broccoli because I know if I have a full head of broccoli in my fridge, I'm never gonna cook it but if it's cut up into florets, I might just toss it in a pan and steam it throughout the week. And I'm gonna go ahead and taste this one. So I'm gonna dip it in some dipping sauce and try it. I just love these spring rolls because you got so much flavor from the dipping sauce but so many veggies packed into this little, it's actually pretty giant spring roll with the tofu for protein. It's just such a nice like light summer meal. So I have finished meal prepping for the week and yes, I'm gonna be eating the same thing all week, basically the same two meals but one great tip is if you do takeout during the week and it's kind of compatible with what you've cooked, you can add some in and just kind of jazz up your meal prep for the week with takeout. I hope today's video inspired you to try meal prepping for yourself. 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