Helpful Meal Prep Storage Tips from Elyse Kopecky
New year, new meal prep skills: This week, Elyse is covering storage.
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A key component of successful meal prep is knowing the best ways to store your food so all your hard work doesn’t go to waste (literally). Watch Elyse cover her favorite products, tips, and tricks.
Part of the Mastering Meal Prep with Elyse Kopecky video series. See tips for storing muffins and waffles here.
Read transcript, below:
ELYSE KOPECKY:
So some of my favorite storage containers are these Oxo glass lock containers. I love that they come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. What’s great about these is they can go straight into the freezer, so you can freeze soups and you can freeze sauces and everything directly in these containers. But these glass storage containers are really convenient and easy to use, so that’s definitely one of my go-tos.
And then I also love having Mason jars. I use Mason jars for so many different things. I have an entire shelf dedicated to Mason jars. A lot of people think that they can put any style of Mason jar in the freezer, but it’s really important that you use freezer-safe Mason jars only in the freezer. I’m going to explain the difference.
This type of Mason jar can not go in the freezer; it has a rounded lip on it. And if you fill it up with liquid and freeze it, it’ll burst. But freezer safe Mason jars have the straight edges. So these are my go-to sizes for freezing soups and sauces. I love the smaller half-pint jars because they thaw a lot faster. So I use these to freeze smaller stuff like sauces in individual portions, which is perfect for quick lunches and dinners. I like the bigger size for freezing like bone broth and soups; it just holds more. This one, because it’s not freezer safe, I more use these for smoothies.
For liquid ingredients and things that I need to reheat in the microwave, I use glass, but for bakery foods and things like waffles and muffins and treats, I just use these easy plastic containers that are BPA free, and can go in the freezer. They can’t go in the microwave, but with items like this, I can store all of my muffins in one container. So it’s really convenient for freezing or for stashing in the fridge. These containers are the Sistema brand, but there are a lot of other options out there that work great that are just different brands. But I like having a variety of sizes for freezing all of my baked treats.
One of my other favorite storage containers for convenience of taking big treats to-go or snacks to-go are silicone storage bags. This brand is Stasher, but there’s lots of other brands out there that you could check out as well. I love how easy these open and close and seal, and that they can go from freezer to fridge, to your backpack for school lunches. They also come in a bigger size and I use the bigger size ones for freezing ingredients for smoothies, but I’m trying to avoid the plastics that zipper bags because these are better for the environment and reusable. You can have some of those plastic Ziploc bags on hand for emergencies when you’re out of other storage containers and try to reuse them as much as possible, but in our house, we’re trying to avoid using any plastics that are disposable, which is better for the environment.