We post our meal prep often (mainly on Instagram Stories and Facebook!) and get many questions regarding what tools we use (especially the storage containers!). This is a list of tools that we use ourselves. We've had most of these for many, many years so they are definitely worth the investment.
As you probably know by now, sometimes we consider ourselves minimalist. We *try* to only purchase items that we know we will use. Sure, you could also get a veggie spiralizer and a million other gadgets but we didn't include those because we don't think those are necessary in order to get started. :)
We are doing a series of these posts in order to answer the questions we frequently receive. If you haven't already, check out our post on clean eating pantry staples and sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss the next helpful post!
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Essential Meal Prep Tools for Clean Eating Food Prep
A kitchen scale is probably what we use most often. We're pretty good at being able to eyeball servings of protein and carbs but peanut butter and pistachios are a different story. Without a food scale, we could easily consume 2-3 servings at a time.
I really think that a kitchen scale is something that everyone should have in their kitchen, especially those just getting started. You might be surprised at how large some servings are and how small others seem!
We use a meat thermometer every single time we grill chicken or bake it in the oven (for things like turkey meatloaf muffins or monster meatloaf). Meat thermometers aren't expensive and it's worth the piece of mind to know that your meat is fully cooked. Many recipes you find online (ours included) may have cooking times that vary so it's important to learn the cooking times on your own oven and the easiest way to do that is by using a meat thermometer and checking the temperature of your meat.
Previously we used random plastic meal prep containers but recently invested in great quality glass food prep containers and we LOVE them. I've listed them below for you. We have the one compartment and two compartment containers. It's very easy to portion everything out and just grab and go in the mornings. It also keeps our refrigerator much more organized than the previous random sized containers everywhere!
We started with a slow cooker. Many of the recipes on our site use a slow cooker and are some of our most popular (see: Apple Cinnamon Overnight Oats and Chicken Tortilla Soup)! We now have an Instant Pot too but still use the slow cooker as well.
We bought our Instant Pot years ago and it took us 16 months to actually take it out of the box and use it but we love it! We use our Instant Pot for things like chili, to boil eggs, and to make rice and quinoa!
We actually have two blenders. We have a small one, a Ninja, and we also have a Vitamix. We use both of them on a daily basis. The small one we use for things like protein shakes and the Vitamix we use to make juice and occasionally make our own nut butter. It took us awhile to bite the bullet and buy the Vitamix because of the price tag but it has been so worth it! We've had it for almost seven years.
A lot of our food prep we do on the grill (see: Zesty Grilled Chicken). We have a tabletop gas grill (that we purchased from Costco) and also a Kamado Joe. I knew Scott was looking for a Kamado Joe grill when we moved into our new house so I looked on Facebook Marketplace and found one an older couple was selling that was practically brand new and came with a table! We've used it way more than I ever thought we would!
If you don't have room for an outside grill, a George Foreman works great! We make our Italian Turkey Burgers on ours!
Do you have anything that you would add to this list? Let us know if there's a tool you use that we should know about!
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