Meal Prep: The Ultimate Healthy Eating Guide and Recipes

With a little bit of time and energy each week, you can save not only hours in the kitchen each day, but also promote a healthier lifestyle and enhance your weight loss efforts; all by preparing your own meals in advance.

Meal preparation known also as ‘meal prep’ is a block of time dedicated during your week to cooking up large batch recipes and either freezing or refrigerating them to eat during the week.

Let’s take a look at some fantastic meal prep ideas, and how it can streamline your schedule and aid in weight loss.

How can meal prep make my life easier and healthier?

It can seem like a pointless chore for many of us with our busy lifestyles, but as with any organisational task, you’ll end up saving time, money and effort in the long run with a weekly meal prep session. You’ll also easily be able to manage your nutrition choices from your very own home, which is harder to do if you’re eating out all the time. It’s also a great way to lose weight, as you’ll be able to correctly portion your meals and follow a meal plan for each day, ensuring you’re not overeating.

Meal prepping allows you to have total control over the number of calories that you’re putting in your body, and being in a calorie deficit (burning more calories than we consume in a day) is the only way that our body burns fat. When cooking your own meals, it’s easy to see the amount of oil, salt, sugar and other not-so-good-for-us ingredients you’re putting into the dish - whereas in a restaurant, hawker centre or at a food stall, you just have no idea!

We all know that good nutrition is an important part of leading a healthy lifestyle, along with physical exercise so our bodies can operate to their full potential. Unhealthy eating habits lead not only to obesity, heart disease and diabetes but can affect our mental health as well. Meal preparation is a fantastic way to ensure you’re getting a good mix of vegetable proteins, carbohydrates and vitamins in the right portions.

Ready, steady, meal prep!

A quick internet search will find many recipes from all over the world to give you great ideas on healthy and nutritious meals that are easy to double, portion out, and store for future meals. To get you started, we’ve listed some of our favourite recipes using Quorn Mince for many different flavours and variety of dishes:

Vegetarian Curry Hot Pot with Quorn Mince

Curries are a fantastic meal to prepare in advance, as they are easy to double the recipe to portion out for your weekly meals. Easily frozen in containers, and defrosted for later use; curries are quick, nutritious meals that can be served with a variety of side dishes, including rice, bread or steamed vegetables.

Our Quorn Mince brings a rich, full bodied flavour to this delicious curry, and we’re sure you’ll visit this recipe again and again.

Quorn Udon Noodle Stir Fry

You can make up a large pot of this dish to portion out, then simply add fresh noodles each time. This recipe can be adjusted to include more of your favourite vegetables, including broccoli, mushrooms, bean sprouts, spring onions or snow peas. You can also serve the Quorn mince in this recipe with rice for a little variety.

Quorn Meat-Free Bolognese

For an international taste, bolognese is a crowd-pleaser, and not one vegetarians have to miss out on. With Quorn Meat Free Bolognese, it’s easy to whip up a double serving of this hearty dish during your meal prep. Bolognese goes with every flavour, and it’s simple to add additional carrots, eggplant, zucchini and mushrooms into the dish for extra nutrients.

Once cooked, you can divide it up into containers to be refrigerated or frozen. Throw a portion into a saucepan and serve with pasta for a healthy, home cooked comfort meal that’s ready to go in 10 minutes.

Quorn makes meat-free meal prep easy

We’ve discussed the many benefits of meal prep and how a little organisation goes a long way. By cooking up three to four different meals for later use in the week; you’ve done yourself a favour and can now enjoy the benefits of no-fuss meals especially prepared for you. No personal chef needed!

Are you ready to go on a taste journey with Quorn? There are so many benefits for our health (and our wallets) when it comes to eating less meat - and Quorn makes it easy to try out new and exciting meat-free recipes. We’ve got many more recipes for you to try, with different Quorn products such as our fillets, Swedish style balls, sausages and burger patties - all 100% meat free and 100% delicious. Quorn products are available at these retailers.