6 Easy Meal Prep Ideas For Indian Kitchen

These 6 easy meal prep ideas are just perfect for any Indian kitchen. They make planning everyday Indian meals so much simpler, especially during the busy weekdays. A little planning and prep work on the weekend will set you up to eat healthy daily, save money, and reduce your stress through the week. These easy meal prep ideas do not require hours in the kitchen and are so easily adaptable. 

How To Plan Everyday Indian Meal?

If you have ever drooled over the elaborate Indian meals on my Instagram feed, then I must share a secret. Meal Prep is the key to eat a home-cooked delicious meal every day. By following these easy meal prep ideas like me, you can make a variety of Indian food recipes throughout the week despite being busy. Think and plan the menu for the week in advance, prepare your grocery shopping list and write down meal prep notes for each dish. At first, you might feel like it’s a chore, but I’m betting once you get going, and you see how effortless it is not to worry about dinner/lunchbox/breakfast during the week, you’ll look forward to it!

Tips for getting started with meal prep:

Take Baby Steps: Start with one meal that pains you the most. It could be either breakfast or packing lunchbox (check out lunchbox ideas for adults). Later, slowly move to plan all meal of the day. 

Set Reminder: During the first week of meal prep you need to set a lot of reminders to get it into your routine. Like, if you are starting with breakfast set a reminder for Sunday night or mid-week to do prep work for the breakfast. 

Handpick Recipes: Make sure initially you pick Indian food recipes that are easy to follow. Over a period, you can select more elaborate recipes and plan their execution like an expert.

Plan Small: Try not to meal prep for the entire week in a single day. That’ll be too much work. Start by planning for the first three days of the week and then on Wednesday night, do the prep work for the rest of the weekday meals. 

Few of my staple meal prep tools, hope you also find them useful:

Glass Box Set: They are just awesome to store anything from boiled lentils, salad, chopped vegetables to fruits. 

Mason Jars: They are perfect for storing salads, fruits, overnight oats or anything you just want to grab and go. 

Free Weekly Meal Plan: Download a free printable weekly planner. 

Ziplock Bags: They are the life-saver when it comes to storing chopped onion, garlic,  fruits for smoothie or green vegetables. 

30 Everyday Indian Meal Ideas:  Use these meal ideas to plan a weekly menu for breakfast/lunch/dinner.These easy meal prep ideas go hand in hand with these 30 Indian Everyday Meals and these 16 Lunchbox Ideas For Adults.  

Click Here To Download Free Printable Weekly Menu Planner

Here are 6 easy meal prep ideas for Indian kitchen:

1) Freezer Friendly Indian Curry Paste: 

Making an excellent Indian curry after a long working day is a sort of challenge. It requires hours of labour if your start from scratch. Hence, with these gorgeously good DIY Indian curry paste sitting in the fridge, you can make your favourite Indian curry in 30 minutes. This is exactly how I plan my dinner throughout the week. These curry paste can be quickly prepared over the weekend and stays fresh in the fridge for up to a week. These curry paste are one of my ideal easy meal prep ideas for an Indian kitchen. 

Here are my 4 everyday Indian curry paste that is naturally gluten-free and utterly simple to prepare. 

2) Chop Fruits & Vegetables: 

For making any Indian meal, we require a lot of chopped onion, tomato, vegetables, and greens. It is always best to chop a small batch of onion, tomato, and store in the fridge. Or peel and chop vegetables required for the first few days of the week and store them in ziplock bags. This really expedites the cooking process during the weekdays. Similarly, I dice mangoes, banana, strawberries or other fruits for the milkshakes and stash them in the freezer. Whenever required, bring out your favourite fruit and prepare a creamy milkshake. Or if chopping is too much, use a fabulous food processor to do the job for you. 

3) Cook Big Batches & Store:

It always not bad to cook big batches of dishes and enjoy throughout the week. I always boil a large batch of potatoes and keep them handy to make a variety of Indian breakfast (see 10 best Indian breakfast ideas). Or never hesitate to boil lentils, beans, and legumes in large quantities and season them with different tempering each day. The big batches of Indian desserts are a huge hit in my family.

Over the weekend, I make either kheer or seviyan, and we relish them for dessert for the first few days of the week. A small portion of homemade dessert post any meal retain our excitement even on a boring weekday. If you have a growing kid in the family, it is always best to make a few teatime snacks over the weekend and store them in the fridge. This way one never has to snack on junk food or store-bought munchies. 

4) Takeaway Salad Jars: 

They are the best when it comes to eating salad, fruits or drink smoothies while on the go. On Sunday night, layer up all the salad ingredients in a mason jar, pack the dressing separately and keep them in the fridge. Each morning pick a salad jar and rush to the office. This way you can save a lot of time cooking office lunchbox and eat healthy homemade lunch even on a busy day. Not only salads, but you can also pack milkshakes, overnight oats, wholesome soups or just anything in a jar and keep them handy for a takeaway. 

You might like to see – 4 Overnight Oats Recipes

5) Ready To Use Condiments: 

We use a lot of herbs, spices, and chutney in an Indian kitchen. To save time I keep a bag full of peeled garlic, ginger, green chili, washed and cleaned coriander leaves in my fridge. And not to forget the multi-purpose ginger-garlic paste. These easy meal prep ideas save a lot of time in the kitchen and help me cook even fantastic meals in no time. These days peeled garlic and onion are easily available in any supermarket as well. On the first Sunday of every month, I make big batches of homemade spice powders such as garam masala, coriander powder, curry powder etc. Mostly, they last more than a month, add so much flavour to the dishes, and save a lot of money as well. 

Try ==> Best Indian Chutney Recipes

6) Use leftovers:  

Who says leftovers are always bad? Like leftover steamed rice can be easily transformed into a delicious pot of fried rice or lemon rice. If you have roasted chicken sitting in the fridge, then use it to make sandwich stuffing or salad. There are zillion creative ways to use leftovers plus they are the best way to put a check on food wastage. One more thing I learned from using leftovers is they make meal prep work reduced to half and add so much variety to the table. 

Leftover Recipes: Chicken Biryani, Tawa Pulao, Chilli Idli Fry

If you also have any easy meal prep ideas please do share with us in the comments below .Don't forget to give this post a star rating below! This helps us grow and reach many other food lovers like you, who are looking for tried and tested meal prep ideas.