New to meal prep? Don’t worry! This guide is all you need! Don’t forget to watch my latest YouTube video and scroll down for the written recipes!
It’s been a while since I made a meal prep video and because you guys love these so much, I decide to make my first one for 2020!
Flashback to the time I was still working in an office, I would have really busy weeks where I often feel distracted and don’t really want to have to prepare my food multiple times during that week. Because of this, I would heavily rely on meal prepping because it’s so convenient and it helps me save more money and time.
Now that I work from home, I don’t meal prep as often as before but I would still say meal prep proves to not only save time and money but also to help keep track of your fitness goals. In fact, whatever your goals may be, meal prep is probably going to be helpful for you.
In the video posted above, I decided to focus heavily on whole foods plant-based meals. And without even realizing, I made everything gluten-free! As usual, everything tastes so good, healthy, and filling!
This meal prep took me about 2 hours to finish. This may sound like a lot, but if you take into consideration how much time you spend cooking every day, having some meals done in advance proves to be a time-saver, especially for people who are really busy on the weekdays. It’s a great way to spend a chill Sunday so that you could save time during your busy week.
Excited to try out this meal prep session with me? Head over to my latest video and scroll down for the written recipes!
Meal Prep Recipe
For my meal prep, I made three main meals:
- brown rice & wild rice with tofu fish steak and vegetables, with green curry sauce
- buddha bowl with sweet potato, beans, broccoli & peanut dressing
- brown & wild rice salad with a green curry sauce
Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
Main dish ingredients
For the rice:
- 2 cups short grain brown rice
- 2 cups wild rice
Note: for the cup measurements, I used the cup that comes with my rice cooker, which is around 3/4 cup than a full cup. But you can make as much rice as you’d like and store in the freezer if you have extra.
For the tofu fish steak:
- 1 block medium-firm tofu, cut into rectangular pieces, frozen & thawed
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp dry basil
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp kelp powder
For the sweet potatoes & carrots:
- 3-4 carrots
- 2 large Japanese sweet potatoes (use whatever)
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- sprinkle of salt
For the vegetables:
- 3 bell peppers
- 1 bunch of kale
- 1 stalk broccoli
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- sprinkle of salt
Optional ingredients:
- Around 2 cups of chickpeas or 1 can of chickpeas, rinsed & drained
- Lemon & herb seasoning
Sauce ingredients
For the green curry sauce:
- 1 tsp oil
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 can coconut milk (light or regular)
- 3 tbsp green curry paste
- 1 tbsp soy sauce OR gluten-free soy sauce alternative
- 1 tbsp lime or lemon juice
- 1 tsp brown or coconut sugar
For the peanut sauce:
- 4 tbsp peanut butter
- 1 tbsp maple syrup or agave
- 1 tbsp soy sauce OR gluten-free soy sauce alternative
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp water
Meal Prep Instructions
Here’s I put everything together 🙂
Step 1: Cook rice
Cook your rice in the rice cooker. I decided to do this step first because I can move on to prepare other things while the rice is cooking. If you don’t have a rice cooker, you can google instructions on how to cook rice on the stove.
I mixed wild rice in because it has fewer calories but has about twice the protein content of brown rice. Plus, it makes some beautiful rice! Feel free to just use brown rice instead.
Step 2: Marinate tofu fish steaks
A day before the meal prep session, toss the cut-up tofu blocks into the freezer. On meal prep day, throw the frozen tofu into your microwave in 30 seconds to 1 minute increments to thaw them out. Take the tofu out of the microwave and squeeze out excess water. If it’s still frozen, repeat the process until you’ve squeezed out most of the water and it is completely unfrozen.
While the tofu is microwaving, mix together the ingredients for the marinade.
Pour marinade on tofu pieces and set them aside while you work on other things.
Freezing and thawing the tofu will really help squeeze out most of the water and also make the texture seem more “meaty”. It also helps the process of marinating as it really soaks up the flavour (you’re creating new air pockets when you squeeze out that water).
Step 3: Bake sweet potatoes
Preheat oven until it reaches 420 degrees F.
While the oven is preheating, peel and cut up the carrots and sweet potatoes.
Add olive oil and salt to the sweet potatoes and carrots and mix well before popping it into the preheated oven. Allow to roast for around 30 minutes (or until fully cooked), mixing half way through.
Step 4: Prep veggies
Cut up your vegetables.
Add in olive oil and salt to the vegetables and mix well.
Place vegetables in a large baking pan and cover with aluminum foil before adding it into the oven to cook for 10 minutes.
Take off the aluminum foil and cook for another 10 minutes in the oven.
Step 5: Fry the tofu fish steaks and prepare chickpeas
Add a little bit of cooking oil onto a frying pan and add cook the marinated tofu pieces in medium-high heat.
OPTIONAL: You can sprinkle lemon & herb seasoning on top for additional flavor.
Fry tofu fish steaks for 3-4 minutes on each side.
NOTE: If you decided to include chickpeas, add these into the same frying pan and roast them.
Step 6: Make sauces
For the green curry sauce:
- Add minced garlic, green curry paste, coconut milk to a heated frying pan and whisk together.
- Add soy sauce, lime juice, and sugar. Mix well.
For the peanut sauce:
- In a small bowl, add peanut butter, agave nectar or maple syrup, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic powder, and water.
- Mix everything together.
Step 7: Assemble!
This is the part where you can kind of do whatever you’d like! How I like to structure each meal is that I like to have at least one “carb” source (in this case, it would be rice and/or sweet potatoes), at least one “protein” source (tofu or chickpeas in this case) and at least some vegetables. Then you can top with whatever sauce you want to add!
