Meal Prep HACKS For Quick & Healthy Meals! MissLizHeart

hey guys welcome back so today I'm gonna share with you some little tips on how you can make meal prepping a little bit easier and these are things that I do to prepare for the week so in case if you enjoy the video please give it a thumbs up and also consider subscribing before you go so we usually take a day out of the week and we go grocery shopping as a family and before we go grocery shopping I like to do a quick little scan of the fridge just kind of take inventory and see if there's anything that we're missing for the week what didn't get eaten and that way we know to either buy less of it and it kind of gives the fridge a clean slate so that when it's time to meal prep everything has a home again but we do like to do a vinegar wash with all of our fruits and vegetables which is basically just a splash of white vinegar with some water and we kind of just let everything soak for about two to three minutes we just use plain white vinegar we get it from Costco we usually buy a giant bottle because we use it for a lot of different things and what this does is it helps clean your produce from any dirt it also helps prevent any mold from growing on them and even though we do try to buy all of our produce organic this is still good to do because sometimes your produce can touch other things that do have chemicals on them and this is going to get rid of all of that you'll notice we also do the vinegar wash on things like limes and lemons because those are displayed in the same bullets as the stuff that we do eat and sometimes I do like to zest some of it for our sauces and I want it to be nice and clean I don't want to have to be washing last minute we also take the time to individually dry every single thing before we put it in its permanent home so that mold doesn't grow on it so we do keep our lemons and limes out on the counter I also recently found these little fresh papers on Amazon and they're really cool you basically just grab a little sheet and you can put them either directly in the drawer where you store your produce or you can put them inside of different containers and this really helps keep them fresh for a lot longer it's pretty crazy and I was a bit skeptical at first but it actually works really really well by the way guys if you like these little containers that I store my fruit and I'll say on my food prep containers I'm gonna be giving a full set of them away on my Instagram all you have to do is go follow me on there for the rules it's just at Miz Liz Hart we love using fresh herbs around here they tend to go bad pretty quickly if you don't store them properly so one of my favorite ways of storing things like green onions is actually keeping it in the plastic bag that it comes in and then filling up up with water and you stick this in the fridge and it's going to keep them alive a lot longer or you can also fill up some mason jars with water and then store them like that on your counter although if you tend to keep your home a little bit on the warm side they may not live very long on your counter you might want to keep them in the refrigerator and you can just cut them as you need them another thing that's also super time consuming when it comes to cooking is peeling garlic and chopping it so I like to do all of that ahead of time and a little trick that I mom taught me with the garlic is to actually preserve it in olive oil and if you guys actually take the individual pieces of garlic and shake them up in a mason jar really hard it'll actually make them super easy to peel and you don't have to smash them so putting them in the olive oil you can actually keep them in the fridge for about three to four days and you can just use them as you need them and they're not going to go bad super cross now if you want your spices to last you longer than a week and I would recommend freezing them and a really easy way that you can do this is by just getting an ice cube tray and chopping up all the spices that you want to preserve you can mix them if you want you can have like garlic and parsley in one maybe just like cilantro and green onions and another and then just fill the rest of the ice keep up with extra virgin olive oil and then you can freeze it and these will stay good for two to three months in your freezer and then you can just throw it in your hot pan when you're ready to use it and my last favorite way of preserving veggies is by pickling them I do have my own little concoction that I absolutely love right now it's just apple cider vinegar maple syrup a little bit of cayenne pepper and then salt in it seriously so good you basically just chop up whatever vegetable I just happen to like red onion and then you let that marinate in the fridge for at least 24 hours and you can eat this straight if you want to you can add it to your food to your salad it is so good I definitely think you should do what works for you in your family when it comes to meal prepping I've tried it portioning out all of my nails in the past and while it did work it was a lot of work upfront and now with the toddler I don't have the time to do that so I do things a little bit differently now I still like to fully cook a few items up front especially those that take a really long time to cook like quinoa rice no salsa skate good in the refrigerator for three five days which is great one thing that I did start doing when it comes to cooking things that require a liquid is I use bone broth instead of just regular water not only is it going to add additional flavor to your dishes but it also adds a lot more nutrients I also love making things like spaghetti sauce and large batches because this is one of those items that freezes really really well and I will typically freeze half of it and little a ziplock baggies I'm just perfectly portioned for four people and then the other half I will keep it in the fridge and that can be eaten within three to five days but a little trick that I like doing especially to get my toddler to eat vegetables is blending a ton of really good veggies and adding that to my spaghetti sauce so when it comes time to eat this we can actually just eat the meats off by itself who wanted to you it would be a complete meal in and of itself I find that things like fish and chicken don't really take that long to cook what takes a long time is preparing the marinade so I do all that I find I have it already pre-mixed and I just put it in a jar I can typically remember what exactly I need but if you guys are making different marinades that look similar you may consider putting a label on your jar so that you don't get them mixed up I'll make sure to leave the ingredients to this marinade down below if you guys want it I also like to add fresh herbs garlic onion sometimes so that's why it really helps if I can do all of this work upfront and then when it comes to making dinner and it's so fast because my marinade is already done and I will usually make like a sheet pan dinner which basically means no dirty pans I will set the oven to 450 degrees and I will roast my veggies with olive oil first and I do that for about 15 minutes while I have my fish marinating with that pre-made marinade and then after those 15 minutes have gone by I will then take the sheet pan out add my fish and then cook it for another 15 minutes and we are done dinner is served I can serve that with whatever salad has prepared for the week [Music] our go-to lunch item is typically salad so I do like to make sure that we have lots of options for our salads that we don't get tired of them so one of the things I love making is like a fruit and veggie salsa I really just change it up depending on what I bought that week sometimes I make mango salsa here I did make a strawberry salsa which I will have the recipe down below but it's basically just strawberries cucumbers red onions and then for the dressing we have some sesame oil some sesame seeds balsamic vinegar and what I love about making salsas is that you can add them to your salad and they can actually substitute your dressing because it starts to kind of release its own juices from the fruit and veggies or you can also add this on top of your chicken or on top of your fish to add a ton of flavor I also make sure to have other options that don't have any type of vinegar on them just so that they're a little bit more versatile and I can actually snack on them throughout the day if I want to if I didn't want to have it on a salad so this is one of my go-to s which is just tomatoes mozzarella I will add some basil to it I also make sure to have lots of toppings on hand and I do like to store them in the refrigerator to keep them fresh for a lot longer I like keeping things like walnuts sliced almonds cashews and storing them in an airtight jar makes them last so much longer which I really appreciate if you guys have never made your own dressing at home or you don't know where to start you feel like it's overwhelming all you have to remember is the base of the dressing which is basically one part asset and two parts oil so in this case the asset is my balsamic vinegar and I'm doing 1/4 of a cup of it and then for oil I'm using extra virgin olive oil and I'm using half a cup of that you can build on it from there you can add salt and pepper you can add Dijon mustard garlic onions like have fun with this if you don't have any type of vinegar lemons also count as your acid so you could do 1/4 of a cup of lemon and then 1/2 a cup of extra-virgin olive oil in muffington is your best friend when it comes to preparing breakfast foods I love making egg bites because you can customize them to everybody in the family you can make some with just egg whites you can make some with no cheese others with bacon like whatever your family likes if you guys are interested in the recipe that I use I will link it down below I basically mix three different cheeses a little bit of milk and I put in a blender so it comes out nice and creamy and then I just top it with whatever toppings I want if you guys have been following my channel for a long time you know one of my favorite combinations is goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes so I'm still making those to this day and they're so good those are actually my husband's favorite to make them for about 15 to 17 minutes and you can do a bunch of other stuff while those are cooking in the oven these are just great to grab and go if you're somebody that's always on the go or if you're at home what I love doing is actually making them into little tacos I love these sprouted corn tortillas because they're a lot healthier for you and they will just warm those up I'll add my egg some black beans a little bit of avocado cilantro hot sauce and I have myself a healthy taco for breakfast that took me less than five minutes to make so I hope you guys enjoy these meal prep hacks give the video a thumbs up and subscribe before you go if you did enjoy it and also don't forget to head over to my Instagram if you guys want to win all of these meal prep containers that I shared throughout the videos and I will talk to you guys next time

Channel: MissLizHeart

Views: 811,827

Rating: 4.9440222 out of 5

Keywords: misslizheart, meal prep hacks, easy meal prep, how to meal prep, food hack, food hacks, meal prepping, meal prep, healthy, meal prep ideas, sheet pan dinner, egg bakes, easy lunch, easy dinner, vinegar wash, meal ideas, back to school meal prep, faster dinner prep hacks, healthy meal prep hacks, weekly meal planner, organized fridge, back to school lunch, hacks, life hacks

Id: 41Wu4pBtSvA

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019