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Meal prep ideas for dinner

One dish, cooked in a batch and portioned into boxes for the next few days. Burrito bowls, curries, pasta and stir-fries are the favourites. Let us pick one meal prep dinner and show you the video.

Anything you don't eat?

We have 137 meal prep dinners to pick from, all cooking videos with captions, which makes a written recipe much more likely to work.

Meal prep dinners people cook

A few of the meal prep videos we pick from, each from a YouTube creator. Tap one to watch it, or use the button above to have one picked for you.

Tips for meal prep

  • Get what you have cooked into the fridge within one to two hours. Splitting it into portion boxes straight away helps it cool faster.
  • Eat chilled portions within two days and freeze the rest, then thaw each one in the fridge the night before you eat it.
  • Cooked rice needs extra care: chill it within an hour, eat it within a day, and reheat it only once, until steaming hot all the way through.
  • Keep crunchy toppings, fresh herbs and dressings in a separate pot and add them after reheating, so they stay fresh.

How it works

Tap the button and we pick a meal prep dinner at random from our cooking videos. Not feeling it? Pick again; you will not see the same video twice this visit. Happy with it? Watch it on YouTube, or tap "Get the written recipe" and sign in with Google to get the ingredients and steps written out.

Questions about meal prep dinners

What counts as meal prep here?

One dinner, cooked in a batch and split into portions. We pick from videos whose title says meal prep, and leave out videos that prep several different meals, or breakfast and lunch.

How long does meal prep keep in the fridge?

The UK Food Standards Agency advises eating cooked leftovers within two days, or freezing them. Rice is stricter: within a day. For later in the week, freeze some portions as soon as they have cooled.

Are these meal preps high protein?

Many of the creators cook high-protein meal prep and say so in the title. We have not checked the numbers ourselves, so look at the written recipe to see what goes in.

Can I pick a pork-free or vegetarian meal prep?

Yes to both. Choose "Pork-free" or "Vegetarian" and we only pick from videos chosen for that diet whose title names nothing it excludes. Vegan and vegetarian with eggs are not offered here yet, as we have too few of those videos; the lentils, chickpeas and tofu pages have more. Glance at the recipe too, as a title can miss an ingredient.

More dinner ideas by dish

More dinner ideas by ingredient

No ingredient in mind?

Let the dinner decider choose from your diet, time and the kind of food you fancy. Already found a video? Paste it into the YouTube to recipe converter.