How to plan a week of meals and a prep day

“What’s for dinner?” is a small question that takes up a lot of room. A short weekly plan answers it once, for the whole week, and cuts down on extra trips to the store. A prep day takes it further by doing most of the cooking in one go.

You don’t need a perfect system. You need a routine you’ll do most weeks.

Pick a planning day

Choose one day to plan and shop. Many people use the weekend. The plan takes about 15 minutes once you’re in the habit.

Before you plan, look at the week:

• Busy nights. Late work, practice, a trip. These get the easy meals.
• Nights out. No need to plan dinner if you won’t be home.
• Leftover nights. Plan them on purpose. They’re free meals.

Plan dinners first

Dinner is where the stress lives, so start there. A few tips:

1. Repeat what works. Many households rotate a short list. That’s fine. Keep a list of the ones everyone likes.
2. Cook once, eat twice. A big pot of chili on Monday is lunch on Tuesday. A roast chicken becomes tacos.
3. Match meals to nights. Slow cooker on the busy day, the fun recipe on the slow one.
4. Leave a gap. Plan five or six dinners, not seven. Something always comes up.

Then fill in breakfasts, lunches and snacks if you want. Many people keep those simple and repeat them all week.

Build the grocery list from the plan

The plan is only half the value. The other half is a list that comes from it.

• Go recipe by recipe. Write down what each meal needs.
• Check what you have. Look in the pantry and fridge before you write it down.
• Combine duplicates. One onion for Monday and two for Thursday is three onions.
• Sort by aisle. Produce, meat, dairy, dry goods. You’ll be in and out faster.

What a prep day is

A prep day is a block of time, often two or three hours, where you cook or prepare food for several meals at once. It’s sometimes called batch cooking.

What you do on a prep day depends on how much cooking you want later in the week:

• Light prep: wash and chop vegetables, cook a pot of rice, marinate meat.
• Medium prep: cook proteins and grains, make a sauce or two, portion out lunches.
• Full prep: cook whole meals and store them ready to reheat.

Running a prep day

1. Pick recipes that share ingredients. Two recipes with peppers and onions means one round of chopping.
2. Start the slow stuff first. Get anything in the oven or slow cooker going before you chop.
3. Use the waiting time. While something bakes, chop for the next recipe.
4. Cool before you store. Let food cool before it goes in the fridge, and follow standard food safety guidance on how long cooked food keeps.
5. Label what goes in the freezer. Name and date. Mystery containers don’t get eaten.

Keep it going

• Reuse last week. If a week went well, copy it. Change two meals and you’re done.
• Keep the list shared. Whoever is at the store can shop from it.
• Don’t plan perfect weeks. A plan you follow 80 percent of the time beats a plan you abandon by Wednesday.

How Tagged helps

Tagged, our household app, has a Meals section that replaced the recipe app we used to pay for.

• The week at a glance. Each day has Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snack. Add a recipe, or type a note like “Leftovers.”
• Move things around. Press and hold a meal and drag it to another day.
• Repeat last week. One tap copies last week’s meals.
• A prep day. Under Meals → Prep, add recipes and pick which meals they cover.
• One shared grocery list. Add the rest of the week to Groceries at once. The list is sorted by aisle, adds up the same item across recipes, and leaves off what’s already in your Pantry.
• Works in the store. The grocery list works with no signal; changes send when you’re back online.
• Recipes like a cookbook. Type one in, pull it from a web link or scan a cookbook page. Scale from half to triple, and use cook mode for big text and a screen that stays on.
• Today’s meals on Today. What’s for dinner shows at the top of the Today view.

The weekly plan how-to in the Tagged help center has the steps. Tagged’s Windows desktop app is free with no subscription. Sign-in is invite only for now.