I desparately want to get good at meal prep but I dont like freezing in parts and still having to prep/assemble day of and i dont like using reusable meal prep container because its too many dishes and they take over my life. so im trying a new thing where i assemble raw ingredients in small foil pans and cook each meal in the pans then put a lid on them and freeze them in the pans and then reheat in the oven, and then obv the pans are disposable. i did a test batch with about 8 meals and it seemed to work pretty well so on my next day off im going to make like 12 days worth of food (36 meals). I wanted to post it here and get some input from people who are probably much better at this than me. side note: i am trying to lose weight by eating high protien calorie deficit
by samanthadill13
6 Comments
This looks doable. I noticed you chose a lot of prepped/chopped/sliced foods to to make things easier and quicker. Is that grocery list for a whole month? It looks good!
I will definitely be trying some of these! Thanks!
This seems pretty clever. My only major concern would be how well the pans will be sealed in the freezer. I don’t think those lids are going to keep air out, which means you’re risking freezer burn the longer the meals stay in the freezer.
For long term storage a vacuum sealer would be a better bet. As long as the edges of the pans aren’t sharp you could just put the whole thing in a vacuum-sealable bag and seal it, then when it’s time to eat just cut open the bag, pull the pan out and you’re good to go.
My only other concern (if I was doing this myself) would be about using the oven for reheating; that takes a lot of time and wouldn’t be feasible for my lifestyle, but if it works for you then great! I would probably pull meals out the day before and put them in the fridge so I only had to heat from cold, not from frozen, and I’d use the air fryer over the oven. Plus if I was really in a hurry, I could also dump the food into a microwavable container and skip the oven part entirely. If I’m not dealing with a huge load of other dishes all the time then occasionally needing to wash one container wouldn’t be a huge burden.
I like the recipes, but oven baking for 35 mins seems a lot, combining it with pre-heat on my electric oven. But cooking it in large batches seems doable!
Can you or anyone suggest an air fryer / microwave / pan instructions? I will not be adding cheese at all.
as a note, i believe my macro estimates are a bit off, the rice is meant to be added dry and cooked in the oven i think i estimated macros for 1/2 cup cooked rice. im going to be lowering my rice amounts to about 1/3 cup dry but the rice recipes should be probably 200 more cal than they are noted on my recipe card
This is clever but it hurts me to see all that disposable packaging.