Hi I'm Ali and welcome back to Haven's Kitchen
today I'm going to be talking about the magic of meal prep
something that we get asked all the time at Haven's Kitchen is like what's the best way to
set myself up for an easy week of cooking without a ton of work without spending a lot of time every
night doing it? and we always say that there are just a few simple things that you can do over the
weekend or when you have some time that will set you up for success for the rest of the week
we like to think of our sauces as flavor building blocks and sort of that like last mile that you
need to get from like what do I do with this chicken? to like wow I made an amazing dinner
so we generally suggest that you think of it as sort of like I have a grain or a vegetable
or a protein and then I have a little bit of something like fun special different and then
I finish it all off with a sauce so when you're thinking about grains that could be rice that
you make on a Sunday that you use Monday or Tuesday it could be beans that you cook
or a can of beans that you have in your pantry it could be naan or frozen pizza dough or flatbread
just to kind of ground the meal with a starch then when we talk about protein yes of course you
can make your own meatballs you can do a really quick shrimp saute or you can use a store-bought
rotisserie chicken and kind of have it for two or three different meals during the week and then of
course for the vegetables it's a really good idea to stick with what's growing what's seasonal what
are you craving what do you really feel like your body could use all of our sauces finish
almost everything that we've talked about in one way or another so some nights you're feeling like
something herby and punchy we would go with the Chimichurri some nights you're feeling a little
something more like earthy and nutty we would go with the Tahini some nights you're looking
for like a wow kind of tang a little bit of flavor that's when we go with our Tangy BBQ
so a lot of people ask us what are some of the recipes that we use with our sauces that you can
make on a Monday night and have you know leftovers to kind of keep you going for the rest of the week
one of our favorite recipes to suggest is our Roasted Chimi Chicken with cabbage it's just
a really simple roast chicken that's smothered in our Chimichurri sauce and you have sort of
wedges of cabbage that sit and absorb all of the beautiful cooking liquids from the chicken it's
great the night of but believe me it's amazing the next day and if you wanted to you could reheat
the cabbage with some rice or even make like a chicken sandwich with the cabbage on the side
I also think another great sort of make it and then eat it for the next day or so recipe is
any of our slow roasted salmon recipes especially the slow roasted tangy barbecue salmon we serve it
with an avocado salsa that probably won't be great the next day but what you do is you kind of keep
some of the salmon reserved without the avocado salsa on it and it's a great filling for tacos
or it's great into like a fried rice or a stir fry the next day with some more of the Tangy BBQ
or even the Gingery Miso one other really easy way to prep for success is just when you see you know
making two servings of lentils make four keep two of them for the next night or two and then
incorporate them into a stir fry or throw them together with some vegetables in our Tahini sauce
it's that easy and you can just take leftovers and make them into an amazing meal what you really
need is the sauce the tricky thing about meal prep can be just not quite being sure how to store
things for freshness so it's a really good idea to have airtight glass containers it's a really
good idea to keep your greens nice and crisp by wrapping them in a wet paper towel and storing
them in the fridge it's also a good idea to kind of label things if you can so that you know this
rice has been in there for four days it's probably past its prime it is really helpful to just come
home at the end of a long day to a fridge full of things that can be thrown together to make a great
dinner whether that's raw vegetables that you've already washed and cut and stored for yourself
or you could make a couple of sheet pans of roasted vegetables especially if you're
starting to see that they're kind of on their way out sheet pan roasted broccoli cauliflower carrots
even asparagus have them roasted so that during the week you can either warm them up or you can
just cut them up for a room temperature salad when most people think about meal prep they think about
roasted sweet potatoes that they have in their fridge ready for action when you get home from a
long day of work sweet potatoes are our teams like I'd say top five for everyone and we actually love
a good sweet potato with pretty much every one of our sauces so one thing we would suggest is to cut
it into even cubes get your oven nice and hot toss those sweet potatoes with a little olive oil and
salt and either some of our Gingery Miso sauce some of our Harissa some of our Tahini even the
Chimichurri the sauces add a little bit of flavor and they keep it from getting boring alright so
there you have it the Haven's Kitchen approach to the magic of meal prep if these tips and tricks
were helpful to you please be sure to like this video and subscribe for all of our future cooking
tips and tricks videos to check out all of our Haven's Kitchen sauces and how they can make you
a more confident joyful cook click the link below thank you so much for watching and cook happy