Meal Prepping for Two Makes Dinnertime Easy
Interested in saving money on food costs? You can make dinners for two that are timesaving, healthy, and more cost effective by meal prepping.
In an earlier post, we talked about how meal planning can help you save money on groceries. Today we’re taking that one step further to meal prepping.
If you’ve never done it, meal prepping is making larger batches of a few different meals. You then portion them out in individual servings and refrigerate or freeze them for later. It’s a super-efficient way to save time and money on your meals.
I travel for work, so I try to meal prep and take my food with me as often as I can. Spending a couple of hours preparing food in advance helps me eat healthier while I’m away from home. It also saves me a lot of money because I don’t have to eat out for every meal. But meal prepping isn’t just for travel.
You can prepare all kinds of meals in advance – it doesn’t have to be just dinners. Breakfast, lunch, and healthy snacks are all good to make and portion out ahead to keep ready in your fridge or pantry. For me, meal-prepping dinner is most beneficial, since that tends to be the meal that takes the longest to prepare each day.
Having a freezer full of ready-to-eat dinners for two provides a number of advantages for our almost-retired life:
- We eat healthier meals.
- We’re more intentional about our menu selections when we plan them ahead to meal prep.
- When we meal prep, our meals are pre-portioned for a healthy serving size.
- Having pre-made meals available helps us resist the temptation to order in or grab takeout food when we don’t feel like cooking.
- We save time.
- I don’t know about you, but the days seem to fly by faster all the time. It often seems like I’m just getting going on a project, or we’re enjoying a shared activity, and it’s time to stop what we’re doing and start dinner. Meal prepping helps us spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying what we like to do.
- It doesn’t take any longer to cook six or eight chicken breasts than it does to cook two. And you can chop a few onions (or peppers, or mushrooms, etc.) almost as quickly as one. When you meal prep, you’re making multiple meals in about the same amount of time it would take to make one.
- We save money.
- Sometimes, buying food in bulk costs less. For example, a three pound package of ground beef or chicken can cost less per pound than a smaller package.
- When we go shopping, we only buy what we need for the meals we’re planning to prep. We’re not tempted to throw in impulse items that can jack up the grocery bill.
- If we have multiple days of meals ready and waiting, it cuts down on the number of trips to the grocery store, which also helps us stick to our budget.
- It’s convenient and helps us live a more stress-free life.
- Knowing our dinner is already prepared and we don’t have to think about it makes our days more peaceful. Plus, there are significantly less dishes to wash every night! Meal prepping is great!!
So, how do you go about starting to meal prep some dinners for two?
- Start by thinking about the kinds of meals you can make that will store and reheat easily.
- Things like soups and stews, crockpot meals, or one dish entrees like pasta or rice dishes freeze well and can be reheated quickly.
- If you need inspiration, you can find countless ideas (and recipes!) on Pinterest, YouTube, or TikTok.
- Have plenty of appropriate storage containers ready.
- You will need multiple containers that will hold enough for just one or two portions. That way, you can take out enough for one meal at a time.
- The dollar store is a great source for foil or plastic containers of all sizes. Keep in mind you shouldn’t reheat food in plastic in the microwave – even if it’s BPA free. I shared a link to the perfectly-sized containers we use for two portions of soup or chili in this post.
- You can freeze individual portions in a ziplock bag by filling the bag and placing it in a container in the freezer (so that it will hold its shape while it freezes). They’ll stack up after they’re frozen, saving space and making it easy to take out one portion at a time.
- Plan the entrees you want to make when you meal prep. Then make a list of all the ingredients you’ll need before you go shopping.
- Double-check your pantry and fridge for items you think you have on hand to be sure you have enough for what you’re making.
- Decide how many servings you want for each dish and plan accordingly. Do you want to double or triple the recipes? How many times will you want to have stuffed cabbage rolls in the next few weeks? Make sure you’re prepared to eat it all before it spoils!
- It’s a plus if you can make a few dishes that use the same ingredients, like cooked chicken or ground beef. That way you’re only cooking that item once. (For instance, you could cook a large amount of ground beef and use it for batches of enchiladas, spaghetti with meat sauce, and shepherd’s pie.)
- Set aside a full day to do the actual cooking. And plan to do it together with your spouse if possible.
- Two sets of hands will make things go a lot smoother, and this is a fun activity you can share!
- Start by doing what the French call the mise en place (“MEEZ ahn plahs”). Read through all the recipes you are making, and try to set aside a separate area for each one. Then assemble and prepare the ingredients you can do ahead of time.
- Plan out your schedule for cooking the different dishes, and try to use multiple applainces if possible. If you can have a pot or pan cooking on the stovetop, another recipe in the crockpot, and another in the oven or air fryer, etc. it will speed up the process.
- As you move from one completed recipe to start another, clean up that area and put away the things you’re finished with. That way you won’t have a huge cleaning job to do at the end of the day.
- It’s probably a good idea to start with just two or three different recipes to get the hang of large batch cooking.
- I’ve seen videos of people meal-prepping for a month of meals for a family of four or more, so with practice and good planning you could do a lot of cooking in one day!