Save time and money by prepping vegetables ahead of time for super easy meal-making and healthy snacks! In this post I break down exactly how I prepped a week’s worth of vegetables in 90 minutes.
Welcome to my first in what I hope will be a series of posts about how to make your life easier!
There’s a lot out there about meal prep, but as much as I like to save time, I’ve never been a big meal prepper. Making salads for the next few lunches and batches of chili is about as far as I’ve gone.
I’ve always preferred to ingredient prep – just like I did with these roasted sweet potato chunks. The fridge of my dreams is stocked with containers of raw vegetables, lentils, rice, and sauces so that putting together meals and snacks can be done in as little time as possible.
This idea may seem simple (I mean who doesn’t know how to chop up vegetables and stick them in jars), but I want to give you a lot of information in this post, including:
- what I prepped
- how much it all cost
- how much it all weighed
- how long the prepping took
- what a serving of vegetables is
- how many meals this can all make
- how to store vegetables to make them last
So let’s get into vegetable prep!
WHAT I PREPPED
I wanted to buy about as much as one vegetable-loving person might eat in a week, maybe a little more. So I choose seven of my favorite vegetables.
- bell peppers
- broccoli
- carrots
- cauliflower
- celery
- green beans
- parsley
There are other veggies I love (hello mushrooms and Brussels sprouts), but I wanted to use produce I normally prep and store in containers (which I don’t normally do for mushrooms and Brussels sprouts).
The vegetables in this post are just an example based on my own tastes and what I thought could store well.
Tip: Chop up bell peppers in long slices or small pieces for stir-fries or chili, and discard the insides and seeds.
How Much It All Cost
In total, I spent $14.56 on all of these vegetables. Pre-chopping, they weighed a miraculous 9.98 pounds! I hadn’t even been aiming for a specific total weight, but it’s so close to 10 pounds I feel comfortable calling it that.
Obviously, costs will vary depending on where you live and where you shop. Some of these vegetables could even be free (or just the cost of seeds) if you grow them yourself.
This is what I paid here in NYC, probably one of the more expensive cities in the world, so take that into consideration.
- bell peppers: $2.17
- broccoli: $2.50
- carrots: $2.04
- cauliflower: $2.50
- celery: $2.50
- green beans: $1.16
- parsley: $1.69
I bought all of this at two different grocery stores.
The bell peppers, carrots, and green beans were all priced per pound. Red and yellow peppers are also good, but green tend to be slightly cheaper. I did not buy organic.
The broccoli, cauliflower, and celery were a flat price of $2.50 each. Normally, the cauliflower is $5.00 a head, but it was on sale, and I got the largest head I could find.
The celery at one store was cheaper but wilted, so I spent a little more at the store where it looked fresh.
The green beans aren’t really in season now and didn’t look amazing, so I got just a few decent-looking ones.
The curly parsley was $1.69 a bunch. Parsley is great in soups (recipe to come)! I love curly parsley, although it has apparently gone through an “uncool” phase.
HOW MUCH IT ALL WEIGHED
I weighed all of the produce prior to and after chopping to get a sense of how much I was getting rid of (i.e. carrot peels, the ends of celery, etc.). It turns out I got rid of 22% of it. This might be higher than it needs to be, but I’ll break down what I did and why.
| vegetable | gross weight (lbs.) | net weight (lbs.) |
| bell peppers | 0.96 | 0.83 |
| broccoli | 1.40 | 1.24 |
| carrots | 2.08 | 1.63 |
| cauliflower | 3.44 | 2.45 |
| celery | 1.21 | 1.02 |
| green beans | 0.40 | 0.36 |
| parsley | 0.52 | 0.27 |
Total net weight: 7.80 lbs.
Tip: Keep those celery leaves (assuming they’re green and not yellow). They’re great in stir-fries, soups, and salads.
HOW LONG THE PREPPING TOOK
As I prepped the vegetables for this blog post, I timed how long all of the washing, chopping, and storing took. It might not be exact because of all the stopping to take pictures (and sometimes I’d forget to start the timer again), but I am confident saying that prepping these 10 lbs. of vegetable took me 90 minutes.
I spent the most time on the cauliflower (it was BIG) and the parsley – I like to remove all of the stems. Some people are fine with stems, in which case it should not take you as long as I took.
Tip: Rip off the cauliflower florets to save time and food – using a knife can result in more crumbs. Although slicing the florets can also work and may result in more even roasting.
WHAT IS A SERVING?
The American Heart Association says you should aim to get 5 servings of vegetables a day, a serving equal to one of the following:
- 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables
- 1/2 cup of fresh, frozen, or canned vegetables
- 1/2 cup of vegetable juice
If I measure my food at all, I tend use a food scale rather than use cups. If you prefer to think in terms of weight, Mayo Clinic says that one serving of fruit or vegetables is about 4 to 6 ounces.
Of course, this amount depends on several factors. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states:
The amount of vegetables you need to eat depends on your age, sex, and level of physical activity. The amount each person needs can vary between 1 and 3 cups each day. Those who are very physically active may need more.
If you’re still not sure how many vegetable you need a day, ask your doctor or a nutrition expert.
I like a lot of vegetables with my afternoon and evening meals. In the past, I would include a whopping 12 oz. of vegetables in my dinner! But when I started to feel bloated more often than not, I decided to cut this down to about 8 oz. This amount seems to work for me.
Tip: Don’t throw away your broccoli stalks! Peel and slice them for extra fiber in any dish with vegetables.
HOW MANY MEALS CAN THIS ALL MAKE?
Short answer: a lot.
So what exactly is one week’s worth of meals? It varies, depending on your ideal serving size of vegetables and, of course, how many people are in your family.
My 10 lbs. of unchopped vegetables yielded 7.8 lbs. (124.75 oz.) of prepped vegetables. This could potentially make about:
- 15 meals with 8 oz. vegetables each
- 21 meals with 6 oz. vegetables each
- 31 meals with 4 oz. vegetables each
Just know that after refrigeration, vegetables should be consumed within a week. Generally, if you aren’t going to eat raw vegetables within one week, you should either freeze them or make them into soup or chili that you can freeze, such as:
Bottom line: for single people living alone (like me), 10 lbs. is plenty of vegetables for one week!
If you’re not a veggie head (like me), buy less than 10 lbs. I figured I’d go big for the blog.
TIP: Cut and store carrots two ways: stalks for snacks and smaller chunks for meals.
STORAGE
I’m comfortable storing all of the produce in this post in the fridge for a week, provided it’s been washed and stored in glass containers (plastic can also work, but I prefer glass).
Broccoli, Cauliflower, Parsley
I wash and dry these vegetables in a salad spinner and store it in glass containers lined with a paper towel.
As stated earlier, I like to chop up the broccoli stalks as well as the florets.
I don’t usually save my cauliflower stem, but I probably should one of these days. You should be able to chop this up much in the same way you can a broccoli stalk. The leaves can be added to soup stock.
I chop the stems off parsley. Like the cauliflower stem, this is optional to keep – I just prefer not to eat stems. Once the main stems are cut, I rip the leaves off the smaller stems and put them in a salad spinner for washing.
You can also keep parsley (and any other stemmed herb) in a glass filled with water in the fridge. This will help make it last. I prefer to chop mine up ahead of time because I use a lot of it in soups throughout the week.
Carrots, Celery
For carrot stalks I want for snacking, I fill the jar with water.
For carrot pieces I’ll use in stir-fries and soups, I’d rather not deal with removing small pieces from water, so I just put a wet paper towel on top of the jar to keep in moisture.
I also do this for celery. For this post, I thought I’d have three jars of celery: stalks in water, small pieces to be covered with a wet paper towel, and extra celery leaves.
Just know that even with a wet paper towel, carrot and celery may start to look a little dry on the second or third day. If it won’t be consumed within two days, fill the jar with water.
Green Beans, Bell Peppers
Chop up green beans into bite-sized pieces or keep them long. Either way, just snip off the ends of the beans and any bruises.
I keep both of these vegetables in glass containers but I usually don’t bother with a wet paper towel. They don’t dry out as much as carrots and celery.
Here are a couple of other resources for keeping produce fresh:
How to Extend the Life of Fresh Produce by the Spruce Eats
How to Keep Your Produce Fresh for Weeks by Wirecutter
The result of my prepping:
Again, this is a lot (but not too much) for one person for a week, so I’ll likely make some of this into soup to freeze. Now I know what 10 lbs. of vegetables look like! And so do you. You are welcome.
Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s anything I might have missed, in the comments. Happy prepping!
FOLLOW-UP
I ate all of this produce in eight days.
By the beginning of day eight, all I had left were most of the bell peppers, which I had not used much during the week.
I typically used about eight ounces of vegetables in each of my lunches and dinners, plus some carrot and celery sticks as snacks.
My green beans did not last the whole week as they started to look too wilted to eat. So make sure to eat those up quickly or buy ones that are fresher than mine.
I don’t normally chop up this many vegetables at once and I have to say, it was really nice not to have to do it for a week! Making meals is so much faster when things are already prepped.
If you set aside an hour or two each week to do this, you’ll definitely save time throughout the week.
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