All about food prepping: 5 secrets to food prepping that every home cook should know about (A comprehensive blog post on food prepping).
Aug. 6, 2020
Hello world!! Over the last five weeks, I have written blog posts on food prepping—5 secrets to a successful food prepping for your home kitchen. In today’s post, I am combining all the posts so that you can read about all 5 secrets in one setting! 😊
 |
| Photo courtesy of Katie Smith from Upplash |
Do you want to cook but can’t seem to find the time or too tired to cook? Cooking is a lot of work, but it must be done if you want to live a healthy and happy life! Is there a way to make it more doable? Yes, the solution is in the prepping! “Divide and conquer” would be the method and it has worked for me! Instead of doing everything at once, you want to divide the process of cooking into several more manageable steps: planning, grocery shopping, prepping, and the actual cooking.
Secret #1: Plan for the week ahead
I write down
the names of the main protein for the week
in a calendar. This is a crucial
step: make it easy and simple as
possible so that it is very doable. I
use a free day planner I got from my insurance agent! It is small and it even comes with a pen too!
😊 I jot down the main protein I am planning to cook. For example: beef (Mondays), chicken
(Tuesdays), pork (Wednesdays), tofu or eggs (Thursdays), seafood (Fridays),
leftovers (Weekends). Then find simplest
recipes for each protein. I have posted
“Easy Korean Fusion Cooking Class” in this blog so check it out if you are
interested in learning how to “cook without a recipe”. These are just guidelines so that you don’t
feel lost in not knowing what to cook and they can certainly be changed.
When you
plan a menu ahead of time, for the week, for example, it alleviates a lot of
the pressure related to cooking. There is
some kind of magic, however, when things (thoughts) are written down. The act of getting things written down empowers you to execute the plan. What
used to be a background noise in your head space transforms into a mission to
be accomplished, so to speak! It's easier said than done, but I love it when it produces results! 😊
I like to write
down the main protein ingredient for each day of the week in my calendar. I may not follow through 100% of the time,
but I aim to follow the plan. It is like
having a road map. With a road map on
hand, you may veer off the road at times, but you know how to get back on the
road. I think that’s the important
point: to get back on the road and keep going!
The type of
protein ingredient will depend on your personal dietary needs. If you want to incorporate more vegetables,
you might want to include tofu and/or beans as a main protein source for the
meal. If you want to limit red meat
consumption, you can write down red meat only once per week, for example.
For this
week, I wrote down chicken for Monday, Beef for Tuesday, Pork for Wednesday,
etc. The amazing thing about writing
down the main protein is that you know what to cook; the decision has already been made! So, I would highly encourage you
to join me on this journey of doing things that we desire deep down of us: cooking for ourselves and our loved ones for general well being!!
Writing down
a menu for the week is like sowing the seed.
The sooner you take action, the sooner it will sprout and bloom! It will take time and efforts, but it will be
so rewarding in the end!
What would
be the final goal of this writing down the menu exercise? How long should we do this? I would say until it becomes “automatic”,
until it becomes a second nature to us.
Then you can move on to setting another amazing goal to achieve! 😊
Learning to
prep is like cultivating a perennial garden.
I love perennial gardens. Once
the perennial plant has taken root deeply, it comes back every spring and it
wouldn’t require as much attention as before! :)
 |
| Food prepping is like sowing the seed photo: courtesy of Markus Spiske |
Secret #2: Buy all types of protein in one shopping trip.
I like to buy
all protein ingredients for the week in one shopping trip, so I am ready for the
week. Research shows that fewer shopping
trips result in less money spent at the stores, so it is a good practice in many
regards!
 |
| Grocery shopping: how often should we go? photo courtesy of Thomas Le from Unsplash |
It goes without saying that if we don’t know what to cook and therefore don’t know what to buy, we are bound to spend more time at the store than necessary. Planning a meal for the week will solve the issue of spending too much time at the store, saving us a significant amount of time and money!
However,
adhering to the newly established grocery shopping regimen calls for an ample
amount of conscientious effort and discipline on our part initially. From my own experience, it took a while for
me to implement these new grocery shopping strategies, but then it got easier
over time. I used to go grocery shopping
so often before; sometimes I would go every other day! These days I go once
every 2 weeks. How do I do it?
I minimize
the grocery shopping trips by shopping all the main protein items that made to
the menu for the week in one trip. I
mark on the calendar which day is my protein grocery shopping day. As protein items, namely meat product, tend
to be the most expensive (assuming that you don’t buy processed counterparts
such as ham, bacon, etc.), shopping for the most expensive items once a week
or once every 2 weeks will drastically cut your grocery shopping times and
hence your grocery bills! 😊
When I shop
for main protein items for the week (or for 2 weeks ahead) I also buy main kitchen
staples such as onions, potatoes, vegetables, and fruit. I like to stock up on things we consume
regularly.
Then you
might ask what do you do when you run out of items you need for a recipe? First, I try to use up other things in the
fridge or pantry and if it doesn’t work, I will just go get them! However, you get better substituting over
time. You eventually learn to improvise
or create your own recipes! I think
that’s where learning how to cook without a recipe comes very handy, which happens to be the theme of my blog Ms Fusion
Korea!
Secret #3: Process the veggies and meat product so that they are ready for cooking.
 |
| Washing veggies and storing in containers is an essential step to cooking! |
Clean and
store all the veggies when you come back from grocery shopping. Meat product can be portioned and stored in
the fridge or in the freezer depending on when you want to use it.
Processing
veggies and meat has many advantages.
First, produce stays fresher. I
found that vegetables tend to stay fresher when they are washed and stored in a
container (preferably in a glass container).
Meat product such as fresh chicken, pork or beef will stay fresher when
they are processed with spices and marinades.
Various seasoning agents will not only flavor meats, but also will act as
preservatives.
Second
advantage would be that you will cut down on cooking time significantly. Making a salad would be much easier, of
course. You can use the meat right away
as it has been already seasoned. Having main
ingredients that are already prepared would be a big time saver whether you are
cooking for yourself or your family out of your busy daily schedule.
Here’s a couple of ideas that you can implement right away.
Idea #1
Easy
pork marinade: 2 parts
soy sauce, 1 part white wine, sesame oil
*Note: this marinade works very well with all other meats such as beef and pork.
I like to
use this marinade to marinate pork. You
may want to adjust the amounts as soy sauce tends to have varying degrees of
saltiness. You may also add some sugar
(or sweetener of your choice), if desired.
This marinade works well with chicken and beef as well as a base flavoring
agent or as a dish in itself. In
general, you will need about ½ cup of marinade for about 2 pounds of meat, but
this again depends on how strong you want the marinade to be in the meat.
 |
| pork (ribends) in the easy Korean pork marinade |
Idea #2
 |
| wash veggies right after grocery shopping: kale and rainbow chard in the wash |
|
| Store veggies in large containers for longer shelf life: kale, leaf lettuce, green cabbage washed and cut |
Secret #4: Take the initial cooking step.
Taking initial cooking steps will dramatically cut down on the actual cooking time. For example, veggies such as spinach and green beans can be
blanched and stored in the fridge or freezer.
Meat can be marinated and/or can be cooked and stored in the fridge or
in the freezer. When I buy ground meat, I like season the meat right away by mixing it with onion (food processed), pepper and salt. The idea is that you don’t start from zero. When the chicken is cooked already, it will
take a lot less to cook a dish! When the ground beef is already seasoned you don't have to worry about building flavors.
Ground beef seasoned with onion, pepper and salt:
ready for cooking meatballs or to be frozen
Secret #5: Regularly stock up on staple ingredients so that you can cook any time!
 |
Well stocked up spice rack makes coking easier photo cutesy of Heather Mckean |
How would
you stock up your pantry so that you can depend on it most of the time? First
you would need to have a list of items you use all the time by category: spices (including salt and sugar), veggies,
meat or meat alternatives, frozen
seafood, frozen veggies, canned food (beans, veggies, tomato sauce), oil,
vinegar, etc. Second, you would want to
write items you would need under each category:
e.g., under spices—salt, sugar, curry mix, ground black pepper, cumin,
etc. Thirdly, consult the list before
going grocery shopping! 😊
 |
| Take inventory of your pantry before going grocery shopping! Photo cutesy of Alli RCciio |
Lastly, you
want to have certain items ready to go in the fridge such as boiled eggs and
some easy salad dressings for quick salads or marinades. I like to have boiled eggs in the fridge
ready to be used in a salad. Canned tuna
can be easily turned into a meal.
Premade salad dressings come in handy; they can be used in a salad or
can be used as a sauce for many protein dishes such as chicken, pork, beef,
tofu and many more!
 |
| It pays to have a nicely organized, labeled kitchen pantry! :) photo cutesy of Artem Kostelnyu |
Being
prepared for cooking takes efforts but once you get used to it you will find
that cooking is so much easier to do!
So, there you have it: how to stock up on kitchen staples. I hope you have found some inspirations in my posts regarding food prepping. Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions to share!! Thanks for visiting my blog and happy prepping and happy cooking to you all!! 😊