How to Prep Veggies for the Week: 7 Ways to Meal Prep Vegetables

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Learning how to cook for meal prep can feel overwhelming at first. But when it comes to mastering how to prep veggies for the week, here’s the good news: once you know a handful of cooking techniques, you can easily keep your favorite meal prep vegetables tasting delicious all week long. In this beginner-friendly guide, you’ll learn 7 different ways to meal prep vegetables for your weekly meal plan — as well as some tips to keep your veggies fresh even after a few days in the fridge.

Jump To:

• Roasting
• Sautéing
• Steaming
• Boiling
• Braising
• Grilling
• Pickling
• Tips for meal prepping vegetables

1. Roasting

Roasting is a cooking method that exposes food to indirect, dry heat. Like baking, roasted foods are cooked in the oven for a longer period of time. However, roasting is usually done at higher temperatures than baking, around 400 degrees or more.

As someone who preps veggies every week, roasted vegetables are some the best meal prep vegetables you can cook. Not only does roasting keep them tender and crisp, but the higher temperatures help caramelize the sugars in the vegetables to give them a subtle charred sweetness.

Broiling is a cooking method similar to roasting that uses high temperatures to produce a dry, radiant heat from above. Broiling is a great way to quickly caramelize and char the tops and edges of your veggies.

2. Sautéing

If you want to know how to prep veggies for the week quickly and easily, I highly recommend getting comfortable with sautéing. Sautéing is another dry heat cooking method that involves using a shallow pan with a small amount of oil or fat.

Because sautéing cooks foods at a higher heat, it quickly tenderizes and caramelizes vegetables to brings out their best flavor. Sautéing works especially well for vegetables that taste best when crisp-tender, like asparagus, green beans, and peppers.

3. Steaming

Steaming is a moist heat cooking method, meaning that it uses extra moisture to cook the food. When you steam vegetables, boiling water vaporizes into steam, which then cooks the vegetables through indirect heat.

When I was first learning how to meal prep, I would rely a lot on steaming because it was one of the easiest hands-off methods for cooking vegetables. Plus, steaming is a relatively gentle cooking method, which means that your vegetables are more likely to retain most of their original nutrient content.

4. Boiling

Boiling is a direct moist-heat method that involves immersing your vegetables in water or another liquid to cook them. Some people prefer boiling because, like steaming, you can avoid using fat or oil while cooking. However, the trade-off is that boiling may have a bigger impact on the loss of certain nutrients, especially vitamin C.

In addition to boiling, there are two similar cooking methods that can be used for veggies: parboiling and blanching. Parboiling, or a “partial boil”, is usually done before another cooking method, like sautéing. Blanching involves cooking an item in boiling water for a short time, then immediately immersing it into ice water to stop the cooking process.

5. Braising

Braising is a dry- and moist-heat technique in which you sear vegetables in oil or fat first, then cover them with a small amount of liquid to continue cooking them. While braising is often used for tough cuts of meat to help tenderize them, you can also braise veggies to caramelize them and bring out their deep, rich flavors.

If you’re new to cooking and just learning how to prep veggies for the week, you might not even consider braising as an option. However, braising can make almost any vegetable taste great, especially hardy choices like onions, turnips, greens, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage.

6. Grilling

Some of the best meal prep vegetables I’ve ever tasted were grilled in the middle of summer, on a hot day, on the barbeque. Grilling is a popular dry-heat method that involves cooking vegetables on a rack using direct, radiant heat, usually from above or below the food.

Grilling your veggies can achieve that signature caramelized, smoky “char” — a flavor that’s truly hard to beat. And while most people have their favorite vegetables to throw on the grill, just about any veggie tastes good grilled, from tomatoes to mushrooms, and more.

7. Pickling

Pickling is a method of prepping food that uses an acid, salt, or alcohol to preserve the ingredients. Pickles veggies are popular in almost every culture around the world, and it’s very common to see them enjoyed as a side dish in many countries (think kimchi, sauerkraut, torshi, and tsukemono, for example).

While pickling generally takes days to do, quick pickling is a type of pickling that takes a much shorter amount of time (usually a few hours). By the way, if you’re not comfortable pickling your own vegetables, many different grocery stores sell pickled vegetables and sides for you to enjoy.

Tips for meal prepping vegetables

Cooking vegetables for weekly meal prep is a lot easier once you know some of the ways to bring out the best flavor and texture in your veggies.

However, when it comes to prepping vegetables for meal prep, the way you cook your veggies can also affect how well they store in the fridge. So, before you create your next weekly meal plan, here are a few meal-prep friendly tips for the techniques I’ve shared in this guide:

• roasting and grilling helps to remove moisture, which makes veggies less likely to get soggy during the week
• sautéing vegetables until tender can help them maintain some of their crispness throughout storage
• boiling can make some veggies soggy, while blanching can help just-cooked veggies retain their crispness
• braising and slow-cooking vegetables in soups and stews is a great way to prep vegetables without losing taste and texture
• raw vegetables taste best when stored in an airtight container (like Prep Naturals glass containers), which reduces the likelihood of them drying out or spoiling faster

One last meal prep beginner tip: after prepping your vegetables, place them on a sheet tray and allow them to cool before putting them in their containers. Doing this will help avoid excess moisture, which can make your veggies soggy.

And that covers 7 different ways that you can meal prep veggies for your next weekly meal plan — including some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you dive in. Did your favorite cooking technique make the list or is there another technique that you prefer to use when prepping vegetables? Feel free to share in the comments below!

By the way, if you’re looking for some ideas for ingredients to prep alongside your favorite vegetables, check out my list of 25 of the best foods to meal prep.