Prep can ease weeknight meal agony

Steps taken ahead of time will make daily meals less of a chore

As lovely as the idea of eating food cooked from scratch “a la minute” for every meal sounds, it is entirely out of reach for all except the most privileged in terms of time and/or resources. But all is not lost for the rest of us. You might be familiar with meal planning, but a close relative is meal prepping, which involves crossing a few tasks off the week’s cooking to-do list to make getting food on the table in the days that follow much simpler — and in many instances more flavorful.

While you are certainly welcome to plan out what you want to eat for the coming week, there are general tasks you can do ahead of time that will set you up for success no matter what you ultimately choose to make. Perhaps you’re the type of cook who starts every dish by sauteing a diced onion. Maybe you are planning to have a salad or grain bowl tossed with your favorite dressing for lunch every week. Or perchance you’re of the know that whenever there are cooked beans at your disposal, dinner can be mere minutes away. If so, taking care of chopping a bunch of onions, mixing a batch of salad dressing or simmering a pot of legumes one afternoon will get you one step closer to your goal.

Meal prep is all about increasing efficiency to make the most of your time in the kitchen. Here are 10 tasks you can complete to help feed your household with ease.

Make salad dressing:

Salad dressings are a simple way to add pizazz to not only greens and lettuces, but also grain bowls, cooked vegetables, proteins (such as grilled chicken breasts or steamed fish) and more. Sure, a basic vinaigrette requires only a handful of ingredients and a quick whisk (or my preferred method: a few shakes in a Mason jar), but why do it more times than you need to? Make one batch and pull it out of the fridge whenever you want to toss a salad or add an extra punch of flavor to your plate.

Roast veggies: Roasting is by far my favorite way to prepare vegetables. I love when they get nicely browned or even a bit charred in spots so much that I could eat — and have eaten — roasted veggies straight off a sheet pan as my meal. But be