How to Meal Prep & Best Containers to Use
In today's busy world, meal prepping is extremely important to many home chefs and commercial cooks in a variety of restaurant and foodservice operations. Nearly everyone wants the convenience that meal prep offers.
How to Get Started
Meal prepping has an essential set of steps that are important for beginners.
Sourcing the food and the containers is one step. Understanding how much you’ll need to meal prep within any given time is another. Then there is the logistical process of prepping and storing the food.
After that, you’re off to the races! Imagine all the sweet and savory packages that you can enjoy any time of day. Grain/green bowls, sandwich artistry, hearty soups –just to name a few. Some home cooks like to experiment with culinary fusion and alternative proteins, too.
No matter what you’re prepping, you can trust us on the best way to meal prep.
Containers Used for Meal Prep
You might say that meal prep is about the food. Obvs. In another key sense, though, meal prep is all about containers.
In other words, you have all of these food ingredients that you want to prep and eat later, but you need a way to keep them safe and sound.
That's where food prep containers come into the picture. We have some of the best meal prep containers around, and other tools you need to start an excellent meal prepping campaign. If you want the best reusable plastic items that can go in the dishwasher, we've got you covered!
What to Consider When Buying Containers
Of course, as you’re “plotting your meals spectacularly”, you'll need to know what size of containers you'll need.
As you look at the volume of food that you want to put into each container, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anything else, you can also think about whether you want a single open container unit that's getting very popular these days for full meal prep storage.
You can also think about the shape of your containers this way – we suggest that when you're putting hot food away to cool, you get much better results with thinner, flatter, and wider containers than you would with a kind of cube design.
Remember to look at the materials that manufacturers use for your containers.
If you are getting plastic meal prep containers, make sure that they are BPA-free. Also, some of these containers might be okay at room temperature but are dangerous under high heat, so look for dishwasher-safe, oven-safe, and microwave-safe containers.
Food Prep Containers and The Seal
High-quality meal prep containers present good functionality.
Some meal prep containers feature neat grips and clasps that seal the lid to the bottom of the container - which can help when handling.
Conclusion
Then, with these containers in hand, you're ready to prep. Look at your food in terms of a ‘meal pyramid’ – maybe not the outdated one from the 1970s - but one that portions out vegetables, meat or proteins, carbohydrates, and grain or dairy products in ways that are deliberate and planned.
The sky's the limit, and we have everything you need to put together your most delicious moments with meal prep that works for you. For all of your containers, cooking tools, bakeware, cutting boards, and absolutely everything else, check out Chefs’ Toys, where we are “for chefs, by chefs” and have actual commercial kitchen experience. We have put together one of the best supplier catalogs around with all of the resources that help our clients, commercial chefs, and home cooks alike, to thrive. Happy shopping!
