Full transcript of “How to prep high-protein meals for the week in under an hour”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 This is how I prep healthy high protein meals with less than 1 hour of cooking time, minimal washing up, an endless variety of different dishes to keep you healthy and energized during the week. I've just been to the shops. The first thing I do is get all my ingredients out. And we're going to start prepping them. Promise it's less than an hour. This is an example of all the ingredients I get for my protein bowl formula. proteins, plant-based proteins, greens, colorful veg, a base, and I've got some miscellaneous items here for the sauces that I'm going to be using for this week's meal prep. Starting with proteins, I'm using chicken thigh and chicken breast this week. I've got firm tofu that's in water that requires pressing, but you can also get extra firm tofu that doesn't require the extra step. And I've got proteins that will
0:46 keep in the fridge later on. Smoked tofu will last for weeks. Eggs, obviously, you can boil, scramble. These are great to keep in the fridge for when you need something quick and easy. Plant-based proteins are phenomenal adding extra fiber and they're just super easy to use. I won't actually prep these today. I'll use them during the week. Look for these packs of precooked lentils. And I generally always have a frozen plant-based protein like edomame. These are my plant-based proteins. The greens this week are kale and spinach, but you can use things like rocket or arugula for American friends are also really useful. Colorful veg. I like the look of these peppers today. I've got some radish that a lot of people don't realize you can roast and some onions are always great to have in the fridge. These are my colorful vegetables. The base this week is going to be quinoa,
1:33 but I always recommend having these packs of grains. Throw them in straight from the packet. I'm going to use sauces to add variety and diversity to my meals throughout the week. Let's put the timer on. 60 minutes. Step one is we're going to prep our proteins. When you're meal prepping, you always need Tupperware. I really don't like the plastic ones because they can leech microplastics into the food. You can't cook in them either. So, the good thing about these, they're tough enough to use in the oven, which means no washing up. Popping in some chicken thigh into one of them. Little bit of oil. We're going to keep the flavoring minimal because the sauces, they're going to do the heavy lifting of the flavor building. The second bit of prep is our tofu. We're going to crumble this. Tofu really needs
2:20 flavor. We're going to hit this with loads of soy, bit of sugar. I'm using a bit of maple syrup, dash of olive oil. We're going to use a heavy dose of paprika. That sound is the oven at temperature now, which is perfect because we've literally just prepared all of our ingredients. Pop these in the oven. Yeah, buddy. Trying to get under 60 minutes here. They're going to be about 35 minutes or so. In meantime, we're going to do our colorful veg. These peppers were looking great. And our washing up counter is zero. You don't need to do any fancy techniques of chopping. We're just going to throw them in. Bit of oil. Bit of salt. That's our peppers. We're going to do radish. Now, a lot of people eat
3:07 radish raw. Actually, roasting it makes it a lot sweeter and tastier. Again, we're keeping this super simple. No crazy flavors. Radish done. Next, we're going to do some onions. I'm not going to do anything fancy with these guys either. I'm literally just going to wedge them. I just want to keep it super simple on a Sunday. Bit of salt. Top tip for flavor. And we'll use this in some of our sauces. Roast a garlic, man. You don't need to peel your garlic. When you roast it and it becomes soft and gooey inside, you can literally just ooze out the flesh. Nip the top off here. So, we're exposing just the top ends of the garlic like that into our onions. So, they're going to get like a garlicky flavor. Bit of olive oil. Easiest way to use edame, pop them in a tray. Might use a little bit
3:54 of soy instead of salt. Everything goes in the oven for around the same amount of time, about 20 minutes. So, they're going to be cooking with our protein. At this point, our washing up counter is What's next? Brains. So, I'm using quinoa because it's high in protein, high in fiber. Going to put in probably around 250 g of quinoa stock cube. Honestly, I do it by eye, but it's similar to white rice, a one one method. And I'm using the absorption method. So, at the end of cooking, all the water should have been absorbed by the pseudo grains. Tiny bit of oil. That would take around 18 20 minutes. This is where these pre-cooked
4:39 packs of grains really do come into their own. We're going to get on with our greens. I use these pre-washed kale from a time point of view, these are really, really efficient. Just going to massage this kale. Not only is it great for breaking down the cell walls, making the nutrients slightly more absorbable. You know, just taking a moment, squeeze your kale. It's good. So, we're going to pop this into Tupperware. Washing up counter still one with greens. All I'm going to do is just put some kitchen towel in the bag. So, this is a bag of already pre-washed, ready to go spinach leaves that we're going to use during the week. Now, just putting some kitchen towel in there will trap any moisture that can occur when you've kept it in the fridge for longer. And that's our greens done. Proteins are going to be
5:25 ready. I can smell them. Dfu chicken thigh. Veg will take another 5 minutes or so. Everything is cooked through. You'll see the tofu here. This has got like a lovely crispy edge on the top. We're going to pop these to one side to let these cool whilst I finish the rest of our meal prep. Let's take these up. Why I've been using a tea towel this whole time? Two at a time now. All right, proteins are cooked, vegetables are roasted, greens are prepped, quinoa is going. All we need to do now is get saucy. A big bunch of coriander. One lemon. Good gug of tahini. Bit of seasoning. Bit of water. I'm going to blend this up. This is exactly how I want it. Zingy.
6:11 It's got a lovely body to it. And those fresh green herbs. Delicious. That's sauce number one. This is kind of where the washing up counter does go up cuz you got to wash the same blender. I will use the same dirtied blender with the next sauce that I'm making. As long as the flavors don't clash, but because we're keeping myself honest, I'm going to clean this. So, it's two now. Got some harissa and cottage cheese. Just going to add these two ingredients together. All right. Four creamy. This is going to pair so beautifully. We're not going for any Michelin stars here. Or are we? No, we're not. Sauce number two done. You know what? I'm going to check on my quinoa, actually. That quinoa is looking beautiful. All that water has been absorbed. With
6:58 quinoa, you want a tiny bit of crunch to it. And you can see it's almost like these little tails come out of the quinoa. Oh man. I actually like to keep it in the saucepan. But if you need your saucepan during the week, then just pop it in another Tupperware. For the last sauce, we're going to be using some of this beautiful roasted garlic. We're going to pop out one of the garlic cloves and we're just going to mash this. Should be nice and squidgy like you can see here. Going to add a little bit of salt and we're going to pour in probably a half pack of this yogurt. And then we're going to mix this with some tahini. Mix this together. So, this is going to be a delicious tahini garlic yogurt sauce. Sauce number three. Done. You see this? What does it say, Mitch? I can't actually tell. It says 2 minutes 46. There's been under
7:44 an hour. I let everything cool in the Tupperware, put the lids on, and add labels to each of them before stacking them in the fridge, ready to use for the remainder of the week. We're going to use our tofu and chicken at the start of the week, and then use quick to prep proteins midweek to keep everything nice and fresh. So, eggs are really quick to use, and tofu you can use this straight from the pack as well. Just a quick reminder, we're going to be using our protein bowl formula. So, we're going to start with a core protein. In this case, it's tofu. a plant-based protein partner, edamame, green, which is kale, colorful veg, which is red onion, a base of quinoa, and the sauce is going to be green tahini. Grab a mixing bowl. Having all these ingredients to hand gives you ultimate flexibility during the week to cook up whatever you fancy whenever you fancy it. Using this protein formula
8:31 means you get variety, a decent dose of protein, and plenty of fiber to tick off all your health needs without having to eat the same meals over and over again during the week. This is a quick tahini kale protein bowl. I'm going to use some extra mix nuts if you want. Optional obviously. It's packed full of protein from tahini, edamame, and obviously the tofu that we've prepped. And it comes together in minutes. Another bowl can be a chicken harissa protein bowl. Super simple. We're starting off with our protein. Just going to show you how you can make this into like a cold salad bowl. Chop this up. Pop this into the bowl. We use some of our peppers. Harissa cottage cheese sauce. Pop this on the base. Bit of quinoa on the side. We've got our
9:18 spinach. I'm just going to roughly chop some of these. Some people like to have the leaves just as they are, but I just feel like no one wants to be munching on a leaf like this. This is why having plant-based proteins are so useful in jars is they're going to boost the protein content of you, but also the fiber content as well. Tiny gug of olive oil. And this is where you can use one of the extra lemons that you've got as well, just to add a little bit of extra flavor. Another high protein bowl in minutes. Third bowl is going to be a garlic, yogurt, chicken, and rice protein bowl. I've got a stainless steel pan. And if you want to know about some more non-toxic materials that we have in our kitchen, check out this video in the
10:03 caption down below as well. I'm using half a pack of this trickle jasmine rice. Pop this into a dry pan. I'm going to take one of our chicken breasts. So, pop this in here. Pop the lid on and just let it cook for around 4 to 5 minutes until it's heated through completely. If you do feel like it's getting a little bit dry, then just add a little gug of water on the side. While that's heating up, I'm going to show you how to build the rest of the bowl. This is our tahini garlic yogurt. This is going to be the nice base for our chicken and go with some red onions, some pi lentils, roasted radish. Pop that into the side, bit of kale. So, we have our chicken and rice. So, our rice has got a little bit of like crispy edges of the rice, which is really nice. I'm going to add a little bit of rice here. chicken.
10:50 Bit of lemon. Put this over the greens. Little bit of pepper. This takes less time than to heat up a ready meal. Sometimes I'm just feeling toast. I don't want a protein bowl builder all the time. And whether you're eating this for lunch or dinner, you can still use these pre-repped ingredients. Let me show you how. I've got a pan on. I'm going to make some scrambledish eggs. As we're using a stainless steel pan, we want to make sure that we are experiencing the leaden frost effect, which is put a little bit of water in. It's essentially where the pan is so hot that the water underneath is steaming it and it's being recycled underneath that. The next thing I'm going to do is actually take this off the heat and just allow it to cool down because if I was to put oil in this pan, it will burn the oil. This gives me enough time to toast
11:36 my toast, which I've already done. I'm going to crack a couple of eggs into the bowl. We're going to use some of the harissa. This is going to be a lovely base to our sourdough. Bit of our massaged kale over the top. Going to add plant-based partner. Scoop to one side. And move the eggs around. We got some beautiful, beautiful looking eggs. That is a perfectly cooked omelette in 30 seconds. At the end of the week, when you've eaten the tofu and chicken that you've cooked at the start of the week, fear not. We have smoked tofu for this reason. I'm going to make a quick rice stir fry using some of the leftover ingredients that we've got. Red onion is going to go in the base of this. I'm just going to quickly chop this cuz I don't want them in wedges. I kind of want them to blend in with the
12:22 stir fry. At the end of the week, they're going to be a bit soggy and sorry for themselves. And a stir fry will bring them back to life. I'm also going to use some of this roasted garlic. Quickly slice up the garlic here. I'm going to chop the tofu into cubes. I'm going to reuse some of the red peppers. Again, they might be a bit soggy by the end of the week to bring them back to life. And we're going to be using some of the pre-cooked rice that we have from a packet. Got some extra condiments, soy sauce, and brown rice vinegar. I'm going to finish it with peanuts that everyone should have in their pantry. Let's get this party started with edame. I'm putting the edomame in first because I'm doing it straight from frozen cuz I haven't had time to let it thaw. Your edetamame is nice and soft. I can actually try one. Perfect. Let's go in with the red onions and the red pepper. Again, these are
13:09 cooked in a little bit of oil, so we won't need to add much more oil. Some rice. Same rice that we used earlier in the week. Brown rice vinegar for extra seasoning. Again, straw covered staples. Some tofu. Our protein. This is where we want to throw in our spinach. We're going to take everything off the heat now cuz everything should have cooked through. Going to let that spinach wilt. Going to chop some peanuts. Nice little tip is to just touch the stir fry with a bit of toasted sesame oil. Again, a pantry staple. Far quicker, far healthier, and you're using those meal prep items that we made at the start of the week. Dig in. This is
13:55 the power of the protein bowl formula. It makes the whole week feel so much easier. If you're interested in healthy, high protein breakfast options, we've done a video right here about three breakfasts that you need to know how to make. Just click right there.
