You may have seen people who spend six hours every Sunday making 42 identical containers of chicken and broccoli. That’s not us, and it doesn’t need to be you.
We do one hour. Not cooking every meal, just the fiddly bits that make weeknights slow: chopping, marinating and a couple of batch jobs. Here’s the plan.
Before you start: know the week
Food prep only works if you know what you’re cooking. So plan the week first (our family meal planning guide has the method), then look at each dinner and ask: what’s the slow, annoying part? That’s what you prep.
The one-hour plan
0:00 to 0:10: Get the oven and stove going
- Put a tray of veg in the oven to roast (pumpkin, sweet potato, capsicum, onion)
- Put a pot of rice or grains on
- Boil half a dozen eggs
These cook while you do everything else.
0:10 to 0:30: Chop
- Chop the onions, carrots, celery and capsicum for the week’s dinners
- Wash and dry salad leaves (wrap them in a tea towel in a container, and they last for days)
- Cut veg sticks for lunchboxes
Store each dinner’s veg in its own container, labelled with the day. Weeknight you will be delighted.
0:30 to 0:45: Marinate
- Put Wednesday’s chicken in its marinade
- Mix a batch of taco seasoning for Thursday
- Make one sauce or dressing for the week
0:45 to 0:55: Batch and freeze
- Portion the rice for two dinners
- Freeze anything you won’t use within three days
- Bake one lunchbox batch, if you’ve got momentum (scrolls or muffins)
0:55 to 1:00: Clean up and label Everything in the fridge gets a day label. Stick a list on the fridge door, or check it in your app.
What to prep (and what not to)
Prep ahead:
- Chopped hard veg (onion, carrot, capsicum, celery)
- Marinated meat and tofu
- Cooked grains and rice
- Sauces and dressings
- Roast veg
- Boiled eggs
Leave for the day:
- Anything crispy (it goes soggy)
- Cut avocado and apple (they brown)
- Delicate herbs (chop just before serving)
- Seafood (buy close to cooking)
Food safety matters: cool cooked food quickly, keep prepped food in the fridge, and use cooked rice within a day or freeze it. Food Standards Australia New Zealand has good guidance on storing food safely.
Make it a family job
Food prep goes faster with helpers. Even small kids can wash veg, tear lettuce or put labels on containers. Leo is currently in charge of carrying the carrots from one side of the kitchen to the other. He takes it very seriously.
If your family uses a chore chart, food prep is a great one to earn tokens with.
Where My Tomte helps
When a recipe in My Tomte has prep steps (marinate overnight, chop the veg, soak the beans), they turn into tasks for the night before, or they batch onto Sunday, so the prep is planned alongside the meals. Nobody has to remember that Wednesday’s chicken needed to go in its marinade on Tuesday.