- Hi, I'm Erica, I am a personal chef,
otherwise known as a professional meal prepper.
I'm at Angelique and Ryan's apartment,
and I'm going to do a vegetarian meal prep.
(upbeat music)
- [Angelique] Our fridge is pretty sparse.
Some cheese, um, soy chorizo,
which really freaks my husband out.
Eggs, we can both make scrambled eggs or hard-boiled eggs.
And some beef franks for my husband to eat.
But not much here, not a lot of
cooking happening in this house.
- So my goal today is to make them a menu
that appeals to both of them, satisfying for Ryan,
but delicious and veggie-centric of Angelique.
I'm doing a sweet potato and black bean chili
with some cheddar cheese and chives on top.
I'm gonna do a soba noodle salad that has
delicious roasted veggies.
I'm doing roasted red peppers and shiitake mushrooms.
The oven is preheated, that's great.
Finally, I'm gonna do a white baked ziti,
some more mushrooms, and some green veggies as well.
I'm gonna make three to four portions of each item,
which will give us about 10 total portions.
I'm doing it in a composed meal prep style
so that they can just grab and go out of the fridge
If they come home from work at the end of the day
and they don't wanna have to think about things,
they can just whip them out of the fridge
and enjoy a meal together.
The groceries arrive from FreshDirect.
They're in the fridge, I'm gonna unpack them
and get to cooking.
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As with any meal prep, my goal is to have something
on my cutting board, in the oven,
and on the stove at all times.
I have my veggies in the oven,
some water going on the stove for me,
I'm working on chopping an onion on my cutting board.
When it comes to feeding vegetarian food
to an omnivore or a meat-lover,
I've always found that trying to get them
to enjoy something like tofu or tempeh
or any other meat substitute is a little bit of
a lost cause, just because if you do eat meat,
a lot of times you wanna eat the real thing
when you're eating it.
So the menu that I designed today is more about
incorporating really great vegetable-driven proteins
that are not tofu, tempeh, or like, meat replacement-based.
So we've got some good beans, we've got some protein
coming from the buckwheat noodles in the soba noodle salad,
and of course we have cheese, dairy,
and some delicious pasta, which I find
appeals across the board.
So I am getting the chili onto the stove,
and what I have here is just my pot with peppers
and onions sizzling away, and I'm gonna get
my chili seasoning in there, and what you're doing here
is called blooming the spices.
So you're getting them into a relatively dry pan
and then you're cooking, woo, some steam!
You're cooking the spices a little bit
just to get them to release a lot of their aromatic nature.
(upbeat music)
These are gluten-free noodles,
and with any gluten-free noodle,
the best thing to do is get them into the water
and, until the water comes back up to a boil,
you wanna be stirring.
This helps prevent them from sticking.
Once they're up to a boil, you are in the clear.
Even if you do this trick,
you might end up with some clumps.
It's okay.
Just pull them apart.
So it's been about an hour and 15 minutes, I think,
so I'm plating up the soba noodle salad
and getting that outta the way.
I work a lot with my hands, they're a tool,
so I always am sure to make use of them
and I'm always sure to make sure that they're clean.
So no rings, I don't paint my fingernails.
They get rinsed many, many times
throughout the course of cooking.
I've got the chili almost done,
it's just simmering away back there,
and now I'm gonna focus on the pasta.
I'm a huge fan of cheese.
I don't think anyone in this family is lactose intolerant,
so we're loading this up with cheese,
which is a good source of protein.
We've also got the white beans in the pasta together
to make a nice complete protein in this dish,
along with lots of good veggies,
so we're still getting all that plant goodness.
Now these are gonna go in the oven
with a little mozzarella on it, mm.
Okay, now I'm setting everything up to take a quick picture.
I just like to document everything.
And I really enjoy making food that
looks as beautiful as it tastes,
so that's what we're working with now.
Let's see.
(mellow music)
Okay, I just finished up my cleanup
here at Angelique's and Ryan's,
and I'm taking out the trash and then headed out,
and that is it for the vegetarian meal prep.
Follow along with me on Instagram @fresh.erica.
My website is fresherica.com.
- [Ryan] I just got home, it smells amazing.
Let's see what it looks like.
Oh my god, there's so much food.
- We really loved the white beans in the pasta,
which made it really hearty, even without any meat.
So that was definitely a crowd-pleaser.
We liked the quinoa in the chili,
it was also really nice.
It's definitely something that we would consider
trying again ourselves, once we get the recipes.