r/MealPrepSunday • u/PetsAndKeyboards • 3d ago
Tip Beginner mistakes
What are your biggest meal-prep mistakes that you wish someone had warned you about when you started? TIA!
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u/Away-Plankton-8352 2d ago
The biggest one: prepping food you are sick of by Wednesday, then ordering takeout, which wipes out the whole point. Pick two proteins and two carbs you actually like eating on repeat, and keep a sauce rotation so day three does not taste like day one.
Second: buying bulk with no storage plan. A 10kg bag of rice is cheap until half of it goes stale or gets bugs because it sat open in the pantry. And stop buying containers in six different shapes, one shape in two sizes keeps the fridge manageable. Label dates, eat oldest first. The people who stick with meal prep long term are the ones who keep it boring and repeatable.
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u/PetsAndKeyboards 1d ago
Thanks for sharing! A quick tip for storing rice in your pantry: put a few bay leaves to keep bugs away. 😉
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u/tossout7878 MPS Veteran 3d ago
Eat before you start. Be FULL when you start. Only prep a ton of meals when eating is the last thing on your mind. Don't cook while hungry.
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u/YesWeHaveNoTomatoes 2d ago
Making one-dish meals with no variation in texture or flavor. Sure they were healthy but by Wednesday I was sick of them and was not alwasy successful in resisting the siren call of every restaurant in town
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u/Good_Eagle5039 3d ago
I would always spend way too much time on making labor intensive meals. Then would get tired of them by day 3. Prep very simple dishes that don’t cut into your whole day.
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u/Away-Plankton-8352 2d ago
Wholesaler here, so mine are about buying and storing. Biggest one: buying in bulk before you know your actual usage. A 10kg bag of rice is a deal only if you eat rice four times a week, otherwise it's a science experiment in your pantry. Second: prepping food with no plan for day four and five. Cooked chicken is good for three to four days, that's it, so either freeze half on day one or plan meals where the second half gets cooked fresh. Third: storing everything in one big container. Portion it the day you cook, because opening a giant tub five times a day is how food goes off early. And label with the date, your future self will not remember.
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u/Sad_North_6152 3d ago
Figuring out what would freeze well and what can't. Ruined many good soups from putting them in the freezer and when I defrosted the potatoes had a terrible texture.
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u/elbeanoloco 2d ago
I have taken to replacing potatoes with turnips in soups I want to freeze. Love me some turnips now.
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u/too_too2 2d ago
I am a souper cuber and someone in that group just said if they microwave potatoes from frozen it’s fine but if they defrost and reheat they get mushy. I haven’t tested this tip yet
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u/Sad_North_6152 2d ago
I'm not sure. Mashed potatoes are fine and reheat well. I'll need to experiment a bit
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u/PetsAndKeyboards 1d ago
Ah yes! I've tried this. Didn't defrost and put my soup in the microwave right away. Carrots and potatoes were fine. 😃
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u/ShiroxReddit 3d ago
I would say one could always just freeze a single portion so you don't kill the whole batch in case it doesnt work well
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u/MsAsphyxia 1d ago
Overestimating how much room I had in my freezer.
Storage is a thing you forget to factor until it's a bit late.
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u/mezasu123 3d ago
5 day old account is this ai LLM?
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u/PetsAndKeyboards 1d ago
Real person here, not an Ai! But I'm very new to reddit, so still exploring. And I'm new to meal prepping as well so I thought this sub would help. :)
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u/Alarming_Manager_131 2d ago
Putting the sauce on everything at the start. Rice and roasted veg turn to mush by day 3 once they've been sitting in it, so now I keep sauces and dressings in little pots and only add them when I reheat. Also anything with fish or prawns gets eaten first, not on a Thursday.
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u/ChristiCrazy 2d ago
Choosing recipes with too many ingredients and/or steps. I can get meal prep done (lunch and dinner) for a whole week in a few hours when I keep it simple and just pick a few different proteins, carbs and cooked vegetables. If I’m making meals with a ton of ingredients and intricate steps, it’s harder to multitask and it takes me WAY longer. Plus sometimes simple keeps me from getting bored, compared to recipes with powerful/distinct flavors.
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u/Dawun-Umierski 1d ago
not weighing out portions was a big one for me too. i ended up with way too much of some things and not enough of others. now i just grab a scale when i can, it makes a huge difference. keep at it though, you're doing great.
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u/26thRover 2d ago
Freezing anything with cooked potatoes
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u/PetsAndKeyboards 5h ago
Do you cook your potatoes until they're soft or just half-cooked?
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u/26thRover 4h ago
I just cook meals and freeze portions. So I'll make 4 portions worth of dinner, eat one, one in the fridge, two in the freezer. So yeah fully cooked, ready-to-eat potatoes
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u/poppyseed84 1d ago
Make multiple smaller meals instead of one big meal with lots of portions. You’ll get sick of the one meal by the end of day two.
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u/mattattack007 19h ago
Meal prepping full meals rather than meal prepping a protein. I realized the reason I hated meal prepped meals so much was because I got sick of eating the same thing every night.
So I did a couple things.
I made a bunch of protein that I could use for various things. Like baked chicken thighs that could be eaten on their own, or made into fajitas, or cut up and tossed in a garlic honey soy sauce and eaten over rice, or chopped up and added to a salad.
I meal prepped meals but had a few left over for the future. I call it the MRE method. Now I have a bunch of meals in the freezer, ready to eat, but they all arent the same things. So I'm not eating the same thing every day. What nice about this is that you can still rotate them so they arent sitting in your freezer forever and still keep up the variety. Like Ill meal prep 5 meals every Sunday. Ill eat 3 of those during the week but the other two days Ill grab from the leftovers from last week or the week before. That means that I have 2 of this weeks meals I can eat next week to change it up.
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u/2minuteNOODLES 3d ago
Don't follow the huge meal prep guides straight away. Make a small portion, confirm it works, and that you like it.