Meal Prep Equipment

Meal prepping dozens to hundreds of meals in a weekend is how you save time and money. You will save weeks worth of time per year. You will save thousands of dollars per year. I like more time and more money, so I meal prep.

The style of meal prep I promote is an unconventional one. Unconventional styles requires unconventional equipment. Invest in high quality cooking equipment that will last you forever. The money saved from meal prep easily covers the cost of high quality equipment.

Beginners often ask me where to start with meal prep equipment. Below are the equipment I think is critical for large scale meal prep.

Chest Freezer, 7.1 Cubic Feet —  Chest freezers are key to meal prepping dozens of meals at once. Chest freezers are the most economical way to store hundreds of meals.

The exact freezer or size is up to you. 7~ cu ft freezers are a good size that will last you awhile. For scale, you could store about 500 of my marinara wraps or about 150 Fit Packer containers in a 7~ cu ft freezer. Also, consider checking your local Costco or hardware store for better deals.

A cheap way to organize your meals inside a chest freezer is to use paper bags. Fill a paper bag with all of the same meal. Stack the paper bags vertically on top of each other.

They also have containers with compartments to separate your food.

Anova Culinary Sous Vide — Sous vide cooking is a newly trending style of cooking perfect for meal prep. If you enjoy moist chicken, perfectly cooked steak, or cooking dozens of pounds of meat at once, then get a sous vide.

A sous vide requires vacuum sealing the food and putting the bag into hot water. The bags are rated for cooking so don’t worry about chemicals in your food. Think of a sous vide as the ultimate slow cooker because it cooks food at the perfectly precise temperature and it is not limited by the size of a crockpot, which are often small.

When you are meal prepping, you need to think big and scalable. Sous vide cooking can scale to infinitely large spaces as you can use it for cooking inside a cooler or large tote. My record was cooking 50lbs of chicken simultaneously in a cooler thanks to a sous vide. There is no way I could have done that efficiently with a crock pot.

A FoodSaver is a vacuum sealer. It synergizes well with a sous vide for meal prep as it is necessary equipment.

FoodSavers also work well when you find meat on sale. If you know what meats you cook with often, purchase them in bulk when they are on sale. Vacuum seal them and freeze them until you are ready for a big meal prep.

Instant Pot 7-in-1 Pressure Cooker – I don’t cook with slow cookers often, but when I do, I prefer an Instant Pot. I am not a fan of generic slow cookers that cost around $10-40. Their sizes are usually 3-5QT, which is way too small. Small cheap slow cookers’ problems are:

• Too small and easily overflow trying to make more than 10 meals
• Overtime the non-stick surface scratches and burns because of low quality temperature control
• Lacking versatility for such a bulky kitchen item

If you are new to meal prep and not sure how much you want to invest, then you can try a cheap crappy slow cooker to see if you enjoy that life style of slow cookers. Eventually though, you will probably find yourself in my shoes where you prefer to use a much larger slow cooker.

The Instant Pot 8QT is a smarter choice for large scale meal prep. Sizes do not get much larger than 8QT for slow cookers. It is an investment worth making if you want to large scale slow cook. I own two of these. The benefits of the Instant Pot are:

• Much larger size
• Stainless steel is more durable and will last longer than non-stick coats
• The pot’s taller/narrower shape reduces the chance of overflow compared to the wide shallow slow cookers

The Instant Pot has many other functions available compared to typical slow cookers. I don’t personally use these functions often, but they include:

• Pressure cooker
• Steamer
• Rice Cooker
• Saute inside the pot

A pressure cooker can cook meals at a much faster rate than traditional cooking methods. For example, a recipe that requires simmering for a few hours could be done in 10-20 minutes in a pressure cooker. It’s a whole new style of learning how to cook. If you don’t do much meal prep, but you often want to cook a fresh meal quickly, then a pressure cooker is a good way to go.

One unusual benefit of the Instant Pot is you can “all-in-one” cook in the Instant Pot. You can saute and pressure cook inside the same pot and not need to have multiple pots/pans requiring cleaning. You only clean the single Instant Pot afterward since you can do all your cooking in one pot.

Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl — There is no such thing as too many mixing bowls when you are doing large scale meal prep. You will find yourself constantly needing temporary storage space for cooked and uncooked food.

These are the largest bowls available and can store hot food. Most mixing bowls are much smaller than this one. Small mixing bowls are not as useful in large scale meal prep. Most of your mixing bowls should be large.

Plastic Mixing Bowls — If you cannot afford multiple stainless steel mixing bowls, then having a mix of cheap plastic mixing bowls is a good compromise. You cannot use these for hot food, but you can use it to store freshly chopped vegetables or cold raw meat. Trust me, there is no such thing as having too many mixing bowls on hand.

Cutting boards (large) — Extra-large cutting boards are incredibly helpful when doing large scale meal prep. When you are cutting up 20lbs of chicken or chopping 8 onions, you will appreciate the extra space.

Carefully note the dimensions of this cutting board to make sure it’s practical for your kitchen. Not all kitchen storage can handle such large cutting boards.

Cutting Boards (pack) — Having a few extra normal sized cutting boards is a good back up. I don’t normally prefer “packs” of kitchen utilities, but just like the mixing bowls, there’s no such thing as too many cutting boards when meal prepping.

Chef’s Knife — This is a generic all-purpose high quality chef’s knife.

Sauté Pan — This is a great all-purpose sauté pan. It is extra deep and perfect for cooking large volumes of food.

Large Stock Pots — For large scale meal preps, I recommend at least a 16qt stock pot. Sometimes a 12qt will work if you cook less than a few dozen meals at once. If you think you will to a large amount, purchase a 16qt or 20qt stock pot.

I do not recommend purchasing stock pots that are much larger than 16qt or 20qt. Quality tends to go down for extremely large pots and they become difficult to store and clean. Instead, find quality stockpots in the 12-20qt range and purchase multiple of them for large scale meal prep.

Folding Tables — There is no such thing as too much countertop space when doing large scale meal prep. Trust me, unless you have an incredibly large kitchen, you will run out of countertop space. I often need to set up 1-2 extra folding tables during large scale meal preps.

The spoons are long and narrow, which is easier for scooping inside spice jars. The cups have spouts, which helps avoid dripping on the sides.

I own two sets of both spoons and cups because I often find myself running out of measuring spoons when I am cooking 100-200 meals in a weekend.
Pyrex Measuring Cups — Sometimes I need larger measuring cups. I prefer Pyrex because it is incredibly durable and easy to clean. In particular, it helps with oily sauce mixes. The oil slides right out and washes right out in a breeze. Plastic measuring cups do not clean as easily as Pyrex. Invest in long term cooking equipment that will last you forever.

Ozeri Food Scale — A food scale is essential for many recipes. Food scales are also incredibly helpful for learning how to track calories. Everyone should practice the skill of “guesstimating” the weight of your food. You should be able to eyeball how much 3oz of meat is. You should be able to eyeball how much 100g of potatoes is. You should be able to eyeball the weights of multiple types of food. Once you master this skill, it makes entering food into MyFitnessPal much faster and more accurate when you’re in a rush.

To master this skill, make a guessing game out of it:

• When you are cooking food, feel some different objects of food in your hand. Feel how heavy it is.
• Guess how many grams or how many oz it weighs.
• Place it on the scale and check your answer
• BONUS: Also guess how many calories it is and check your answer in MyFitnessPal

If you practice the above steps every time you cook, you will master guesstimating weight and calories quickly.