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Cooking one’s meals is arguably the best way to eat healthy, stay on schedule, and save money, but let’s be honest: it takes hard work to pull this off. It requires discipline to embrace the meal prep lifestyle. However, as daunting as the process seems, there are ways to make it more manageable. Countless kitchen gadgets are available to make challenging meal prep more accessible than you think.
1. Rapid Egg Cooker
If you’re anything like me, the thought of cooking an egg gives you anxiety. It’s time-consuming for something so simple, and dirtying a clean pan makes the endeavor even worse. Thankfully, rapid egg cookers are here to save the day. These inexpensive cookers from appliance companies like Dash can give you perfectly cooked eggs, from poached to over hard and every temperature in between. They can seriously speed up your meal prep.
2. Avocado Slicers
Are you still slicing your avocados by hand? What year are you living in? Get with the times and buy a cheap avocado slicer; these little gadgets save time in the kitchen, regardless of whether you’re meal-prepping. In addition, they severely reduce the risk of slicing your palm with a kitchen knife when cutting avocados.
3. Avocado Saver
Avocados rapidly turn brown as soon as they’re exposed to oxygen. If you’re tired of wasting plastic zip-bags on avocados you know you’ll forget about in the refrigerator, purchase an avocado saver. It’ll help prolong the lifespan of your ‘cado, and you’ll use fewer of those little baggies. It’s a win-win proposition.
4. A Spiralizer
You don’t need to be a world-class chef to level up your meal prep, but adding a little pizazz to the proceedings never hurts. A veggie spiralizer gives your meal prep a touch of class. Which looks more impressive: a spiralized cucumber or a bland sliced cucumber? Spiralized cucumber, of course. You may not have graduated from culinary school, but that doesn’t mean your meal prep has to look second-rate.
5. Divided Skillet
While meal prep can be time-consuming, there are ways to speed up the process so it doesn’t take too much of your day, night, or weekend). I strongly recommend purchasing a few divided skillets. These reduce your cooking time effectively, allowing you to cook different proteins, veggies, and sauces simultaneously. As any home chef will tell you, food tastes better when cooked on a cast-iron skillet.
6. Citrus Squeezer
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ll never find love if you’re still squeezing citrus by hand. Sometimes, the truth hurts, but thankfully, citrus squeezers are here to save the day. Although there’s no science behind my beliefs, I feel that human hands only have a set amount of citrus-squeezing in them, so it’s best to outsource the job to a handy gadget like a citrus squeezer. Let it do the dirty work.
7. Wooden Citrus Reamer
Maybe you don’t consider yourself the citrus-squeezer type. Maybe you want to grow old with someone special and wouldn’t dare squeeze citrus by hand. That’s okay. You can just bludgeon the juice out of your favorite citrus fruits with a wooden citrus reamer instead. As we all know, brute force is often the best way to get things done, and citrus’ kryptonite has traditionally been wooden reamers. Make meal prep fun again, and take your frustrations out on all the fruits, baby.
8. Reusable Ice Packs
When I was in elementary school, my mother frequently included reusable ice packs in my lunch box to keep cold food extra cold. I didn’t fully appreciate her dedication to cool temperatures until I was older. In 2024, I believe in reusable ice packs when preparing meals. Keep these inexpensive packs in your freezer until they’re called into action. They’re the best way to keep food cold, so don’t underestimate them.
9. A Sous Vide
Like everything on this list, a sous vide cooker makes all things meal prep oh-so-simple. Nothing is easier than cooking meat, fish, and vegetables in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag submerged in boiling water. You no longer have to stand over a hot stove. Like a Dutch oven, the sous vide is the ultimate set-it-and-forget-it kitchen appliance. These machines are also cheaper than you think, making them a no-brainer kitchen purchase.
10. Smoothie Maker
I define heaven as a refrigerator fully stocked with an endless supply of post-workout smoothies. Thankfully, that ideal will be attainable in 2024. Smoothie makers from manufacturers like Ninja can be found for less than $100, making meal prep as straightforward as possible. All you have to do is dump the fruit and vegetables into it and let the smoothie maker get to work.
11. Veggie Chopper
I’ll never be a professional sous chef. I don’t have the precise knife skills to chop and slice vegetables efficiently and attractively. Regarding meal prep, however, a veggie chopper can instantly turn even an amateur sous chef into a professional. For the price of a few adult beverages from your favorite local watering hole, you can cut down the time it takes to prep veggies when planning meals for the rest of your week.
12. Herb Scissors
At first glance, I truly believed herb scissors to be the most pretentious kitchen gadget ever invented. However, upon closer inspection, I found this tool serves a significant purpose. Many herb scissors have multiple blades that can be used for different herbs. Not only will your herbs be more attractive to the naked eye, but you’ll also get a better yield (i.e., less waste) when you cut them with herb scissors.
13. Reusable Food Containers
Every meal prepper will tell you that your meals are only as good as the containers they live in. I can’t stress enough the importance of buying high-quality reusable food containers. Not only will they increase the lifespan of your meals, but they will also serve as an attractive serving vessel. There’s a big difference between eating from a classy food container and an old Chinese food container you’ve repurposed.
14. Instant Pot
Whether preparing meals for the rest of your week or looking for ways to streamline your cooking process, you can’t go wrong with buying an Instant Pot. The device lives up to its name; it cooks food alarmingly fast, making it inarguably one of the “must-have” appliances you can own. From rice to meat and everything in between, an instant pot is an investment you won’t regret.
15. Digital Scale
Meal prep can be one of two things: An easy way to ensure you have enough to eat for the foreseeable future or an ingenious way to track every nutrient that enters your body. If your meal prep resembles the latter, a digital scale is an invaluable addition to your kitchen. If you’re laser-focused on the minutiae of vitamins, minerals, and grams of protein entering your body, you owe it to yourself to use a digital scale to reach that level of precision.
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