Guides & Checklists
Start-here checklists for meal prepping in the US. Each one curates the best picks across our guides for a specific situation.
Meal Prep Starter Kit
Build your first meal prep setup with our top picks for containers, portion control, glass storage, and mason jars. Start prepping smarter today.
Glass Container Set
Go plastic-free with the best glass meal prep containers, full storage sets, and mason jars. Oven-safe, stain-proof, and built to last for years.
Freezer Meal Prep Kit
Freeze meals the right way with the best freezer containers, silicone bags, egg bite molds, and organizers. Stop freezer burn and stay batch-ready.
High-Protein Prep Kit
Fuel your macros with the best portion containers, kitchen scales, egg bite molds, and shaker bottles. Prep high-protein meals with precision every week.
Lunch On the Go Kit
Take meal prep anywhere with the best bento boxes, insulated lunch boxes, food thermoses, and lunch bags. Fresh, portioned lunches wherever you go.
Batch Cooking Appliance Kit
Batch cook faster with the best instant pots, air fryers, slow cookers, and rice cookers. Make a week of meals hands-free with these countertop workhorses.
Prep Tool Essentials
Speed up prep day with the best chef knives, cutting boards, vegetable choppers, and food processors. The core tools every meal prepper reaches for.
Kitchen Organization Kit
Organize your whole kitchen with the best pantry containers, fridge organizers, freezer organizers, and glass storage sets. Prep from a tidy space.
Salad and Veggie Prep Kit
Keep greens crisp with the best salad containers, mason jars, mandoline slicers, and veggie choppers. Prep fresh, ready-to-eat produce every single week.
The Batch Cooking Appliance Kit
Batch cooking lives and dies by your appliances. The right machine cooks a mountain of food while you do something else, which is the whole point of prepping a week ahead instead of scrambling every evening. This kit brings together the four workhorses we lean on hardest: a multicooker for beans, stews and shredded proteins, an air fryer for fast roasted vegetables and crispy proteins, a sous vide setup for perfectly even batch proteins, and a toaster oven for the sheet-pan work that a full oven makes wasteful. We picked appliances that pull double duty and hold up to heavy weekly use, because a machine you run every Sunday needs to survive years of it. Start with the multicooker if you are building from nothing, then add the others as your routine grows. Each guide below breaks down capacity, ease of cleaning and which models actually earn their counter space.
The Freezer Meal Prep Kit
A well-stocked freezer is the quiet superpower of serious meal preppers. Cook a double batch, freeze half, and future you eats a home-cooked meal on the busiest night of the month with zero effort. But freezing well is a skill of its own: air is the enemy, portioning matters, and the wrong container turns good food into a freezer-burned brick. This kit covers the gear that keeps frozen meals tasting like the day you made them. We built this around sealing and storage first, because that is where most freezer meals go wrong. A vacuum sealer pulls the air that causes freezer burn, quality freezer bags handle soups and flat-frozen portions, and dehydrating gives you shelf-stable ingredients that free up freezer space entirely. Add a dependable multicooker for the big-batch cooking that fills the freezer in the first place, and you have a system that runs for months.
The Beginner Meal Prep Starter Set
Starting meal prep does not require a kitchen full of gadgets. It requires a handful of things that do their job well: something to store food in, something sharp to cut with, a way to keep portions honest, and a little guidance so you are not staring at an empty cutting board on Sunday. This set is deliberately small. Everything here earns its place, and none of it will sit in a drawer unused. We chose beginner-friendly gear that grows with you rather than gets replaced. Good glass containers survive the microwave, dishwasher and years of reheating. A solid chef's knife makes the actual prep faster and safer. Portion scoops turn guesswork into consistency, and a good cookbook gives you a month of meals so you are cooking, not deciding. Nail these basics and you will know exactly which appliances are worth adding next.