A mother has revealed how she meal prepped 30 meals for two people for just $2.50 per serve – and the storage trick she swears by for saving space.
Australian woman Michelle posted on Facebook, where she said she manages to get 30 dishes for two people from a budget of $150, or 60 portions of food by preparing meals in advance and then storing them in zip lock bags flat in her freezer.
‘Each night I defrost a bag in my fridge and by dinner time all I have to do is fry it up or in the morning I may add to my slow cooker,’ Michelle posted.
By storing her food in freezer bags, she not only saves space in the freezer, but it also takes less time to de-frost a meal should she be in a rush.
A mother has revealed how she meal prepped 30 meals for two people for just $2.50 per serve – and the storage trick she swears by for saving space (the meals pictured)
Australian woman Michelle posted on Facebook, where she said she manages to get 30 dishes for two people from a budget of $150, or 60 portions of food by preparing meals in advance
When it comes to how she does it, Michelle explained that the first thing she does is write a detailed shopping list of what she needs to buy and where she can find it.
‘Online is better, but I find savings if I go into Coles or Aldi,’ Michelle said.
Then, when she has her food from the supermarkets, she explained she’ll set aside some time – typically around three hours – for cooking and labelling the zip lock bags.
On each bag, Michelle said she’ll write not only what the recipe is (for example, chicken curry), but what she’ll need to add to it (rice and sour cream).
This means she’s never confused as to what something is when she takes it out of the freezer.
Michelle said while online shopping can be better in many ways, she finds she saves more money if she sees what deals are on inside of Coles and Aldi (her shopping pictured)
This time, Michelle said she made meals from mince, beef, sausages and chicken.
Several meals require similar things (like spaghetti bolognese and chilli), so she’ll make her mince with the salt, pepper, garlic, onion and tomatoes in one big portion and then separate it out into the bags for a later date.
‘I also buy the cheap frozen veggie packets from Coles and I chuck a full packet in to bulk up my mince,’ Michelle said.
‘It can’t hurt to add more veggies and it bulks it up!’
This way, she knows exactly how much food she has, she never wastes half a can of something or half an onion – and all she has to do is ‘dump and go’ when she wants to cook or heat up.
Her approach sees her bulk cook meals for the month and then freeze portions in zip lock bags (pictured) so there is always a meal on hand
This isn’t the first time Michelle has wowed the internet with her novel approach to meal prepping.
Earlier this year, she shared the results of another cook-up which included chilli chicken, shepherd’s pie, soy honey garlic chicken and stroganoff – showing off snaps of the labelled bags in her freezer.
‘I prepped a bunch of family size meals. It took an hour,’ she said.
‘It’s pretty much dump and go and add whatever extra sauces/herbs etc you want to each meal.’
Thousands who saw Michelle’s approach were impressed with the idea:
‘I love this idea! I usually make bulk spag bol, lasagne and shepherd’s pie but I didn’t think to have the chicken cut and marinated already in the freezer!’ one woman posted.
‘Brilliant idea, thanks for sharing,’ another added.
If you want to try the ‘dump bag’ meal prep idea yourself, Michelle said there are a few things you should pay attention to including labelling, which tells you what you have and where
If you want to try the ‘dump bag’ meal prep idea for yourself, Michelle said there are a few things you should pay attention to.
Firstly, it’s absolutely vital that you label your bags as it’s unlikely that you’ll remember exactly what you have in your freezer and when you made it.
Secondly, Michelle added that the freezer bags ‘need to be as flat as possible’ with as little air in them as possible, as this means you can fit more food inside.
‘Mix the meals up when you lay them flat in your freezer so you don’t grab four mince meals in a row,’ Michelle said.
‘Check on them the next day to make sure they are all freezing okay.
‘Sometimes when stacked the middle one may not be frozen. I have never once had frostbite.’
She added: ‘I don’t leave a meal frozen longer than three months.’