How You Can Meal Prep in College

Meal prep. These two words can be both inspiring and terrifying at the same time. For some people, it means spending the entire Sunday in the kitchen making food you don’t even want to eat while for others it represents saving both time and money in an enjoyable fashion. As a college student, I didn’t understand how meal prepping could be helpful for me. I have little to no fridge/pantry space, barely any time to prepare large amounts of food, and I’m pinching my pennies. However, there is a way to make the most of meal prepping in college and the payout is greater than you could ever imagine.

Supplies

The first step to meal prepping is making sure you have the supplies. As a college student with little to no fridge and pantry space, I would suggest containers like these that are portioned and stackable, which can help maximize storage space.

Ingredients

The next step is having ingredients to make the meals. This step goes hand in hand with the 3rd step (having a plan). Nothing is worse than starting to cook something and then realizing you are missing a crucial ingredient so make sure you have everything you need before you start. You can order groceries online at target and pick it up for free which has saved my life in meal prepping as a college student.

Plan

Having a plan is the last step that wraps everything together. You want to be intentional with the ingredients you buy and how you prepare them. For example, if you are doing a meal with avocado in it you’ll want to make sure you purchase a ripe avocado to eat on the first two-ish days of meals and a less ripe avocado to be used in the meals you don’t eat until the end of the week. This blog has a list of meal prep recipe ideas to help you get started!

I know that the task can seem daunting, especially because there are so many popular food blogs that make it seem so. It really isn’t too complicated and keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be perfect or pretty. It is a very customizable process that can bend to your liking. Check out this podcast that I recorded that goes over the meal prepping process!