(soft, jazzy music)
- Hey HealthNuts, welcome back to my channel.
Now I know you guys love my meal prepping videos,
so today I thought I would switch things up a bit
and share with you guys my seven must have meal prep hacks.
These are things that I do in my kitchen every week
that have really changed the way I meal prep and cook
and it just kinda streamlines things
and saves you so much time.
You guys need to know these,
so today I am sharing my meal prepping secrets with you
because I love you and I just wanna share them with you.
I don't wanna hold them all for myself.
So before we hop in, I want you guys to take a moment
and hit that red subscribe button down below
so you are subscribed to my channel
and you don't miss out on a future video of mine.
I post Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so lots of content
for you guys to binge watch in the new year.
And yeah, let's hop right into the video
and I will share with you guys
my seven must know meal prep hacks.
Hack number one is to quarter your lemons.
Now I use lemons pretty much every single morning
for my water, cooking, smoothies,
you get it, I love my lemons.
And when you quarter them
you actually get more juice out of them
when you squeeze them with either by hand or lemon squeezer.
And another reason why I like to pre-chop my lemons
is just to go ahead and store them in a large mason jar,
seal it up and then you can have this
ready to go in your fridge, and I'm telling you
something as simple as pre-chopping lemons
when you know you're gonna be using them
a lot during the week will save you so much time.
In the mornings all you have to do
is just pour your cup of water,
squeeze some lemon juice in it,
and it just makes things that much easier.
And that's why I love this simple hack.
Meal prep hack number two
is to pre-chop your onions and garlic.
I'm telling you when you prep these ahead of time
it just makes weeknight dinners that much easier,
especially if you just find it annoying
to peel and chop onions.
I'm gonna show you a really easy hack to do it.
And when you have these ready to go in your fridge
it just, I don't know, it makes a world of a difference
and I just feel like I don't spend my days
chopping up onions and garlic anymore.
I'm gonna go ahead and peel and quarter my onions.
And then for the garlic, you guys know this hack.
You take a knife, kind of smoosh it on one end
and it just makes the peel come off really easy.
So for the onions I'm actually just gonna place them
into my food processor.
I think food processors are so underrated.
I use mine almost every week.
They're really easy to clean.
They come in handy for chopping, processing,
grating, lots of things,
but you can see that the onion is just nicely chopped.
No tears went into cutting these onions.
And then I'm just storing these in another large mason jar.
You wanna use something that's glass
so it doesn't absorb the smell of the onion.
So just pop on the lid, throw that in the fridge,
and you have pre-chopped onion for soups, stir fries,
anything you need onion for, you got it.
For the garlic I'm pretty much doing the same thing.
I'm just throwing them into,
I have a smaller food processor here.
I like this for smaller jobs like garlic.
And I'm just gonna throw them in whole and just process them
until I have a nice, fine minced texture.
Same thing, I'm gonna pop this into a smaller mason jar
and you will never have that tedious job
of chopping onion every single day.
I don't know, maybe I just eat a lot of garlic,
but I find this hack very handy
when it comes to my meal prep.
My next meal prep hack is to soak your grains.
Now I like to use hardy grains
like steel cut oats and brown rice,
but sometimes they can take longer to cook,
so I have a really easy hack.
All you're gonna do is the night before
you're gonna put your grains or your steel cut oats
into a bowl and cover it with water.
This is not only gonna speed up your cooking time
when making these the next morning,
but it's also just gonna make it easier to digest.
Usually steel cut oat or brown rice
can take up to 40 minutes to cook, and in the morning
or maybe even when you're trying to make lunch,
you don't have time for that.
So I like to soak them to cut that cooking time
pretty much in half.
Same thing goes with brown rice.
I just like to presoak it
and that way when I am cooking it for dinner the next day
it's gonna cook in way less time.
It's like magic, but it's just a simple thing
you can do the night before,
just to help things run a little smoother,
or faster in this case.
Now it's no surprise I love me a good smoothie.
So to help your smoothie making
run a little bit more smoothly, no pun intended,
I love to make smoothie packs.
Now I've mentioned these way back before on my channel
but these are just freezer smoothie packs
you can prep on Sunday night or throughout the week
and just kind of fill them up with different things.
Now what I love about these is you can really customize them
for different members in your family,
or just to switch things up so you have variety.
Add in your greens, your fruits, your veggies,
protein powder, nuts, seeds, whatever you want in there
and it's ready to go.
Just pop it into the freezer and then the next day
you just have to put it into your blender with your liquid,
blend it all up.
It is so quick there's no excuse not to make a smoothie
when you have this hack.
Next up is a new hack that I've recently been trying
and I love this.
So we're gonna be making some flavor ice cubes
using fresh herbs, olive oil, and a little bit of garlic.
So you're gonna first chop up all your fresh herbs.
Now I don't know about you but when I buy fresh herbs
they don't last that long
and I never know how to use them all up in time.
So now I love chopping mine up
and adding them into an ice cube tray.
You can make different flavor combinations
for when you're making chicken, fish, veggie stir fries.
Whatever you want,
you can make your own custom flavor cubes,
ready to go when you're making dinner.
Next I'm adding in that minced garlic
that we already made earlier.
See, it comes in really handy!
Taking that fresh lemon juice that we already quartered
and I'm gonna squeeze that over top.
And then fill them with some olive oil.
I like to do them about halfway
'cause my ice cube tray is pretty deep,
but you can just add as much or as little as you would like.
So not only are we infusing these flavors into the olive oil
but we're also gonna freeze them,
so they are already ready to go in the freezer
when you wanna add them to a meal.
Once frozen I just like to store them
into one of my stasher bags and then when I'm ready to cook
I just gonna one into a hot skillet
and just kind of let it melt and sizzle
and the flavor that comes out if this is insane.
Your whole kitchen just smells so good
and all you did was just pull out an oil infused cube.
It's genius.
So I'm just cooking up some green beans here,
but you can add this to anything you want.
They are magical.
My next meal prep hack is a snack pack.
I love that that rhymed.
Whatever snacks you like,
you just put them into a little snack pack
and you have them ready to go.
So no more getting hangry on road trips, commuting,
heading to the gym, wherever you need to go you got a snack.
Last but not least, this is something I've been doing
for the entire past year, online grocery shopping.
This is not sponsored, this is the best thing ever.
Matt and I basically do our weekly grocery shopping
now only online.
It saves me so much money and time.
Yes, money.
Because I'm not going to the grocery store hungry,
buying things I don't need.
I can have my grocery list right in front of me,
know what I'm gonna be making for the week,
and just sort it all out online
and have it shipped to me the next morning.
I will see if I can get a coupon code for you guys
and link it down below,
but honestly it has just really just changed
my shopping experience.
There you have it, HealthNuts,
those are my seven must know meal prep hacks.
I know you guys are gonna love them.
They're seriously gonna change the way
you cook in your own kitchen.
Also, because I know I'm gonna get so many questions
about all the tools that I used in today's video,
if only there was a place
that you could find them all in one spot.
Oh right, we have an online wellness shop.
In case you guys didn't know, we have a shop where we sell
eco-friendly kitchen items, self-care things,
lots of awesome products on there.
You guys can check it out down below
and a big thank you for sticking to the end of this video,
you can also use the code MEALPREP
until the end of the month
to receive 15% off your entire purchase.
So take advantage, get your meal preppin' tools.
We also have the cutest bento boxes
which I didn't feature in today's video,
but they are so cute.
They're made out of recycled rice husk
so they are sustainable, eco-friendly, they're reusable
and we just love them and they're our top sellers.
We cannot keep them on the shelves.
They may be sold out when this video goes live.
But enjoy the discount, get your tools ready for 2019,
and be sure to subscribe!
Hit that red subscribe button down below
so you don't miss out on any future video of mine.
And I will see you guys in my next video.
Happy meal prepping.
Bye guys!