One cook · one kitchen

Meal prep schedule generator

Turn your batch recipes into a minute-by-minute prep day. The scheduler starts long, hands-off jobs first and fills the waiting time with chopping, so the oven and burners are never idle while you are.

Recipes in this prep (3)

Pick your batches

  • Sheet-pan chicken, sweet potato & broccoli488 kcal · 45 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    3
  • Beef burrito bowls630 kcal · 40 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    0
  • One-pot turkey chili430 kcal · 36 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    2
  • Baked salmon, quinoa & green beans593 kcal · 39 g protein · keeps 3 days · freezes
    0
  • Chickpea & spinach coconut curry with rice672 kcal · 20 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    0
  • Protein overnight oats with berries420 kcal · 22 g protein · keeps 5 days
    5
  • Spinach & feta egg muffins287 kcal · 23 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    0
  • Teriyaki chicken thigh stir-fry with rice545 kcal · 41 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    0
  • Peanut tofu noodle bowls649 kcal · 43 g protein · keeps 4 days
    0
  • Lentil & roast vegetable bowls with feta441 kcal · 23 g protein · keeps 5 days · freezes
    0
  • Roast pork tenderloin, potatoes & green beans433 kcal · 38 g protein · keeps 4 days · freezes
    0
Total time1 h 05 min
Done by15:05
Hands-on1 h 05 min
Saved vs one-at-a-time1 h 27 min

Why overlapping saves so much time

Toggle the two ways of cooking the same recipes. Oven and simmering time doesn't need you; chopping does. Stacking the two is the whole trick.

This is a classic scheduling problem. The generator uses the "longest chain first" rule: at every free moment it starts the ready task that has the most work still hanging off it.

Your step-by-step prep

Grocery list

How to run a batch cooking session

  1. Clear the dishwasher and the counter first. Prep day produces a lot of dishes; start empty.
  2. Preheat the oven and put the water on before anything else. They're the slowest to get going.
  3. Follow the timeline, not the recipes. Recipes assume you cook one dish; the timeline assumes you cook all of them.
  4. Cool before you lid. Spread food out so it drops below 4 °C / 40 °F within two hours (USDA). Shallow containers cool fastest; the last step for each recipe includes this.
  5. Label as you go. Dish and use-by day on masking tape. The storage chart has the days.

Hands-on times scale with batch size, but not in a straight line: dicing six peppers doesn't take six times as long as one, because the setup is shared. The generator scales chopping with the square root of the batch size, which matches how prep cooks estimate it.

Questions people ask

How long does meal prep take?

A typical 10-to-12 container prep of three recipes takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours when you overlap tasks, versus 3 to 4 hours cooking one dish at a time. The generator above calculates it for your exact recipes, oven and burners.

What should I cook first when meal prepping?

Start whatever takes longest and needs you least: rice, dried beans, lentils, stews and anything roasting in the oven. Chop while they cook, and do the hands-on searing or stir-frying in the gaps. Cold assembly (overnight oats, salads) comes last.

What is batch cooking?

Batch cooking means cooking large quantities of a few dishes in one session and portioning them for later meals. Meal prep usually adds the portioning into individual containers, often with macro targets per container.

Why does the schedule have only one cutting board lane?

Because there is only one of you. The scheduler assumes you can do one hands-on task at a time, while the oven and burners run unattended. Searing and stir-frying count as hands-on and use a burner.

Is Sunday the best day to meal prep?

Sunday is popular because it covers Monday to Wednesday or Thursday within the 3–4 day fridge window. For a full week, many people add a shorter Wednesday prep or freeze the Friday containers on Sunday.