How to 'Meal Prep'...if you hate Meal Prepping (like I do)

there is no question that meal prepping can make your life easier benefits could include saving you time and money helping you eat healthier or helping you reduce food waste and I'm not going to argue against those but what if you want those benefits but absolutely hate meal prepping like I do and I'm sure I can't be the only one out there so this video is for you today I want to show you my preferred Cooking System that all starts with a simple two-minute decision and it's the best thing I do at the start of a busy week so in this video we'll cover the downsides of meal prep the human psychology behind my preferred Cooking System and lastly I'll show that system in practice with three weeknight meals that you can have ready in no time a bon me inspired sandwich a tostada and a crispy beef topping for pasta so by the end of this video you'll have an alternative method to filling up a bunch of Tupperware containers you'll expand your cooking creativity and I promise you will start look looking forward every Sunday to the morning Brays now before we break it down a quick thank you to today's sponsor made in today I want to talk about a newer addition to maiden's cookware lineup and that is the Dutch oven one of the most universal pieces of cookware you can have in the kitchen and as an aside these just look amazing in your kitchen and you can actually change out the knobs which is kind of sick this brass handle I think looks perfect so as far as specs go the one that I'm using is the five and a half quart dutch oven they're all made in France heat safe in the oven up to 580 degrees Fahrenheit and they can also be used on induction cooktops as well in this video I'm using it to sear and braise the meat but it can also be used for deep frying baking bread soups or stews all in the Dutch ovens wheelhouse so head to the link below to shop this Dutch oven and other cookware from made in during their Black Friday sale which I would highly recommend taking advantage of and thank you again to made in for sponsoring this video but now let me explain my problems with meal prepping as home Cooks we all want to make meals that taste really good but it's also really nice if they take minimal time minimal money help reduce waste and maybe a bonus if it's healthy too now there are countless cooking systems that can be used to achieve those goals depending on which of them is most important to you for example some of you may cook a meal from scratch some of you may make a pre-packaged grocer like blue apron or hellofresh others may make a box of mac and cheese or some equivalent or you may heat up a meal prep container and each of these systems have different Pros or cons depending on your unique lifestyle and what works for you for example making a meal from scratch can be cheap but it also likely requires the most energy and time the pre-packaged groceries may take less time but they also cost way more the box of mac and cheese on the other hand may be cheap and fast but it's not really a complete meal and a meal prep is likely the best of all four options as it's probably the cheapest the fastest and it will fill you up with a complete meal now this is only true assuming you spent all of the time to actually go out and meal prep that food in the first place and for me this is the number one problem that I feel like no one talks about with meal prepping and that is it takes a lot of energy to get started let me explain as humans it's been shown that we're wired to take the path of least resistance even when it may lead to incorrect or non-optimal outcomes and when it comes to successfully meal prepping there is a ton of resistance if you are meal prepping for even just a couple of days or the entire week think of all the steps and decisions that need to go into it first you got to think about what you want to make this week then you gotta find recipes that you are going to make then you got to pull together a long grocery list you got to go grocery shopping unload the groceries start to cut and prep the food cook the food Portion the meals and finally you have to clean up the kitchen which depending on what you made you may have ended up using almost every pot and pan you have now after you climb that mountain yes the time and money savings are definitely great but you still may run into a couple of problems with meal prep food and here are the big ones for me first reheated meals don't taste very fresh and often lack texture secondly there's no Variety in meals so if I happen to get bored after the second one I'm stuck with it thirdly I don't really like having to pre-portioned meals because some days I'm hungrier than another and then fourthly I don't get to use my cooking skills and creativity during the week and I'm not saying all this or making this video to take a stance as some kind of anti-meal prepping guy if meal prepping works for you in your lifestyle please continue to do it but the reason I'm pointing out all of this is because even if I know I have a really busy week or won't have much time I still just can't get down with meal prepping which is why I found a way way easier way a path of least resistance that I think gets me about 85 to 90 percent of the benefits of of prepackaged meals except I know I can stick to the routine and this is why I braise every Sunday so I'll get into the base method and some of the meals that I made in just a minute or two but first I need to explain why this method works so well for me and it actually all has to do with basic human psychology let's unpack that in the book Atomic habits the author James Clear shows this chart and explains that the difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments each one is like a fork in the road and these choices Stack Up throughout the day and can ultimately lead to very different outcomes so if our goal is to make a dinner that tastes amazing but also saves on money time and is healthy that's likely a decision that's been made and influenced by an earlier decision so I mentioned it earlier but we're kind of wired to take the lazy route in order to combat this James Clear presents the two minute rule this essentially boils down to identifying a two-minute Gateway habit that naturally leads you down a more productive path and the Gateway habit should be so easy that it's basically impossible not to do for example in the book if your goal is to run a marathon that's a very hard thing to do so in order to work towards that you have to start at the easiest Gateway habit and ideally it should take you less than two minutes so for the first one putting on your shoes is really easy The Next Step would be walking 10 minutes then 10 000 steps then running a 5k and finally working yourself up to running a marathon so it's a pretty basic concept but the question is how can we apply the two minute rule if our goal is to make a delicious meal with minimal time money and effort and this is actually a really hard goal like I mentioned earlier there's usually a lot more steps and decision than meets the eye for example what am I in the mood for what ingredients do I have do I need to run the store do I have time to make this normally these are questions we ask ourselves before we even get started and this is the problem we need to develop a framework where we don't need to even think about all of that stuff and this is why I came up with the five-step framework that I use and that is the Sunday braise the first very easy step is buy a braising cut of meat that's literally it and here's a short list of some good braising Cuts but you can find whatever is on sale or looks good to you for me I got a chuck roast which is one of my favorite value to flavor Cuts but at this point you aren't doing anything else you don't need to think about how you want to braise it you don't need to have a specific recipe in mind all you are doing is bringing that braising cut home so you may think you need to figure out what to actually do with that in step two but we're actually keeping it even simpler step two the easy step is salt the meat so all you have to do is pull the braising cut out of the packaging and sprinkle salt liberally over all of the sides and typically I will just throw this in the fridge the day before to let it dry brine overnight but you can do it in the same morning now step number three is where the difficulty actually picks up a little bit so the moderately hard step is braising the meat and I've outlined the basic steps of braising which are actually quite easy but what starts to get hard about this step is you have to make a decision on how you want to flavor the braise so at this step you could start looking for a specific recipe like red wine braised short ribs or in a chili or barbecue sauce but you still are kind of just meal prepping because you're locking all of that meat into one specific flavor profile which is not really what I like to do if I want some versatility throughout the week so for me I like to keep it even simpler for this one I added the oil to the Dutch oven and then just dropped in the meat to sear and you want to sear it on all sides to develop some nice Browning and I actually just skipped the aromatic base here and added the braising liquid which in this case is just some beef broth but legitimately you could use water and it's still going to taste really good so bring that liquid to a boil over the stove and then I just pop it into a preheated 300 degree oven for five to seven hours and go about your day when you come back just pull the beef out and it should shred apart beautifully and taste lip smacking good so I separate that out into containers and save the broth to use as well so now after step three we have some braised meat that is ready to take on a variety of flavorings throughout the week and here is where it starts to get a little bit hard as step four and five are decision steps that need to be done concurrently four is Flavor the braised meat with fridge and Pantry Staples and then step five is make it into a delicious meal with minimal time money and effort so at this point I haven't actually done any thinking about what I happen to have in my fridge or Pantry as someone who cooks a lot I have a wide variety of things and Pantry Staples that I keep on hand and I do have a video if you guys guys want to check that out but really this is not about the specific fridge or Pantry Staples or recipes that I made I want you to use this as inspiration because I promise you once you start those first three steps the fourth and fifth step become much easier and you get way way better at them over time so with that being said let's hop into dish number one which is a braised beef Bon Me inspired sandwich so for the bond me I set a pan over medium high heat and added some of the braised beef after it's been heated up and started to crisp I add the pantry Staples which in this case is a squirt of sriracha a squirt of hoisin sauce and lastly a couple shakes of Maggie seasoning and just like that after mixing it up you have an absolutely mouth smacking spicy sweet and salty beef that could honestly be a meal on its own but to actually turn it into a meal this is done in step five to make this into to a bond me inspired sandwich I needed some ingredients that I may not always have on hand so for me this was a baguette some fresh cucumber pickled carrots a serrano pepper cilantro and some QP Mayo to assemble the sandwich first I hit it with some Kewpie mayo and then spread that on both sides next I added two long slices of cucumber before adding the beef the cilantro and lastly the pickled carrots and this is one of the best sandwiches I've made in a while especially considering how little mental and active effort it actually took to make I'm literally just salivating foreign that just shines by using this simple method a couple of pantry and fridge sauces and then pair it with some fresh vegetables I did kind of more of a classic uh Bon Me vegetable but you could definitely do less you could do more whatever you want to um yeah it's kind of late so I'm going to finish the rest of this and I'll see you guys tomorrow for dish number two now I could make Von Meese for the rest of the week but like I said I get bored easily and what's great about just salting and braising in a neutral liquid is that it can easily take on a variety of flavors and here we have some beef tinga so I covered this in an old video of mine but to make an even simpler version all you have to do is add some fridge and Pantry Staples to a blender for this I added a half can of tomatoes two cloves of garlic a big spoonful of Chipotles and adobo 1 4 medium onion a Sprinkle of dried oregano and a big sprinkle of salt before just blending that up into a sauce now all we have to do is combine it with the Beet set a pan over medium heat and add a squirt of oil along with a bay leaf and just let that Sizzle for about 20 seconds before pouring in the sauce let the sauce simmer for about five minutes to get it cooking and then you can toss in the braised beef from the fridge I like to mix that up and let it simmer while stirring for about 10 minutes or so so the flavor can develop as best as possible and again just like that step four is done to turn this into an actual meal I sliced up some avocado finely diced an onion cut a couple of lime wedges grab some cilantro and Cotija cheese and I'll be serving the beef on some tostadas so to assemble add some Greek yogurt or sour cream to the tostona before topping with the beef tinga and adding the sprinkle of diced onion layer of the avocado crumble the Cotija cheese add a sprig of cilantro and lastly a squeeze of lime foreign quick notes on this one firstly flat out delicious uh Tango poblana is such a great recipe I've made a video on it in the past is this quite as good as maybe one that was slow stewed over an hour or two probably not but we're like 90 of the way there I would say at least very very delicious now secondly is that this shows kind of the beauty of putting things in motion we bought the braising cut we salted it then we braised it so we already did some work up front and then now this becomes a very approachable meal you can make on a weeknight normally if you wanted to make Tinkerbell from scratch it would probably take you an hour hour and a half or so but with this I can literally whip up a version of it in about 15 20 minutes tops now the third thing is that the first two dishes really needed like a bulk of the meat but the last dish is one that comes in handy when you are almost running out of that braised meat the last thing that I love about this method is that it forces you to get creative especially when you are running out of that braised me so instead of just housing the last bite or two I like to make a crispy topping for pasta that uses some basic Staples to start I finally minced some garlic and rosemary and then set a pan over medium heat with a little squirt of oil toss in the garlic and rosemary mixture to let it toast for just 10 seconds and then you can mix that in with the beef and you want to keep this over medium low heat and just kind of spread the beef into a thin layer to let that fat render and fully crisp up once done you have this delectable crispy garlicky beef that's a perfect Pasta topping for that pasta I kept it really simple I first made morecella hazon's three ingredient sauce which I did with the other half of the Tomato from the second recipe a couple tablespoons of butter another fourth of an onion and a big sprinkle of salt before letting that simmer for 30 minutes well that was going on I also boiled some dried pappardelli pasta and now let's bring this dish together add some of the sauce to the pasta and mix those together until it's well combined then I plated it up using the can of tomatoes to prop up the pasta with another Spoonful or two of the sauce before adding the crispy beef topping the final shaving of Parmigiano-Reggiano and then lastly I snipped on a little bit more of the fresh Rosemary so in conclusion this video though I do highly recommend them and they will be linked below is not really about the recipes but instead it's about applying the basics of that two-minute rule to whatever your preferred Cooking System is whether it's meal prepping cooking stuff completely for scratch or like what I like to do is kind of a hybrid of both we're just one simple decision buying a braising cut of meat at the grocery store before you even think about recipes or anything can set you on this pathway of good decisions for the rest of the week and turn into a bunch of delicious 15 to 20 minute weeknight meals so hopefully you guys have enjoyed the video um if you guys try out this kind of ideology to making something this week I would love to see it on Instagram just tag me but that will wrap it up for me in this one I will catch you all in the next one peace y'all [Music]

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 1,686,954

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, meal prep, meal prep ideas, why I dont like meal prep, healthy meals, weeknight meals, easy recipes, weeknight recipes, how to meal prep, healthy meal prep, meal prep for the week, how to make healthy food, weeknight dinner ideas, 15 minute meals

Id: ZJe3yL7NHdA

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022