When you’re trying to eat healthier, meal prep can help make healthy eating easier. Meal prep is the process of preparing meals in advance for later consumption. With these 13 gadgets, meal prep will be a breeze.
Meal prep is the process of preparing meals in advance for consumption. It can be done to save time or to have healthy food on hand when you’re too busy to cook.
CNN —
If you’re new to meal prep as a way of life, the first step is to make sure you have the appropriate meal prep containers. However, after you’ve gotten into the flow of meal prep, you’ll want to step it up with kitchen gadgets and tiny appliances that make things simpler – and more interesting.
We asked Allyson Spungin, a nutrition coach and certified personal trainer, and Talia Koren, a meal prep expert and creator of Workweek Lunch, for their favorite meal prep tools.
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Knife Set from Cuisinart
Make sure you’re satisfied with the essentials first: excellent knives, cutting boards that work for you, and a colander set for draining and washing canned goods, herbs, and vegetables before you invest in expensive kitchen devices that take up precious kitchen space.
Every meal prep professional we talked with stressed the significance of having excellent knives when it comes to meal preparation. If your knives are in bad shape, start again and buy in a basic knife set, such as Cuisinart’s bright six-knife set.
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Set of 4 Dexas Flexible Cutting Boards
Although heavy plastic and wood cutting boards have their place in the kitchen, it’s also worth keeping a pair of lightweight, flexible cutting mats on standby for meal prep. Being able to rapidly shuffle between several cutting boards without having to stop and wash them in between slicing the tomatoes and chopping the basil is a game changer when you’re chopping a lot of different items at once.
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Steel Colanders from Prepworks
When you need to throw lunch or supper together fast, little actions like opening, draining, and washing canned beans to put in a salad or grain bowl may save time and energy. Investing in a nested colander set enables you to drain and wash several types of food at once, eliminating the need to stop and wash throughout the preparation process.
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Food Scale by Etekcity
A food scale is an important tool if your meal planning efforts are driven by training or weight reduction objectives. “I enjoy my electronic food scale since it’s useful for figuring out portion sizes for my weekly meals and recipes,” adds Spungin, who utilizes meal prep to supplement her strength training efforts.
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Spiralizer Spiralizer Spiralizer Spiralizer Spiralizer Spiralizer S
“I adore my veggie spiralizer to convert zucchini, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and other root veggies into noodle-like textures,” says Spungin, who swears by a specialized gadget to vary up meal prep and prevent things from becoming monotonous. For extra bang for your money, I mix these lower-carb noodles with normal noodles!”
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Peeler Set with Three Peelers
Vegetable peelers are considered “basics,” but a set that enables you to do more than just peel a potato may truly improve your dinner prep. A straight peeler, a big peeler that can shred or slice, and a julienne peeler for finer tasks are included in this set of three.
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Grater with a Microplane
A fundamental reality of meal preparation is that it may rapidly become tedious. A microplane, on the other hand, may actually give flavor to bland dishes. Usage this tool to rapidly grate hard cheeses like Parmesan over salads, soups, or pastas; or to grate large flavor-adders like garlic and ginger for use in a variety of recipes.
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Mini Cuisinart Food Processor
Koren and Spungin both suggest purchasing a small food processor to help you expand your meal prep choices. Spungin’s small food processor is perfect for making homemade hummus, pesto, and salsas, while Koren’s is perfect for sauces and spreads.
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Immersion Blender by GE
Spungin says, “The immersion blender is great since it takes up very little room and is ideal for preparing soups and sauces.” If you don’t have a lot of counter space, search for an immersion blender with a chopping jar attachment that can replace a stand-alone small food processor.
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Salad Chopper with Nish
While most meal prep professionals advise against using multi-tasking appliances, there are occasions when a very particular appliance has a place in your kitchen. These are the finest and most inventive single-taskers we could find.
When it comes to getting your greens in — and enjoying them — the simple act of cutting a salad may make all the difference. However, cutting each thing individually may be a big pain and a huge mess. This salad chopper addresses the issue by allowing you to cut everything at once, right in the bowl.
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Herb Scissors with a Positive Attitude
Another frequent issue with food preparation and chopping is this: Chopping herbs is the worst! A pair of herb scissors can come in handy if you often find yourself irritated when cutting basil, parsley, cilantro, and other fresh herbs but don’t want to forego the delicious taste they contribute to your meal.
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Salad Dressing Shaker Oxo Good Grips
Switching up dressings and sauces, according to the experts we talked with, is the key to avoiding meal planning ruts. Try creating your own salad dressings instead of purchasing costly and sometimes unhealthy store-bought dressings. Measurements are printed on the exterior of the bottle, enabling you to combine ingredients directly in the container.
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4-Pack of Baggy Rack Holders for Food Preparation
If you like to store food in zipper bags, you already know that filling them may be a pain, particularly when dealing with liquidy meals like chili or stews. These baggy holders address that issue by allowing you to set up a packing assembly line, making it much simpler to transfer food from pot to storage container.
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