How to meal prep vegetables for the week sounds much more organised than what I’m actually doing here.

Basically, I had a lot of vegetables.

Carrots, broccoli, potatoes, green beans and corn this time. But other fall vegetables work just as well. If you’re wondering what else you could use, have a look at what I’m still harvesting in my late autumn garden.

And instead of cleaning and cutting vegetables again and again during the next days, I just prepared a bigger amount at once.

Nothing fancy. But it works really well for us.

First, all the annoying work

I actually like cooking.

What I don’t like so much is washing, peeling and cutting everything when we are already hungry.

So this is the part I try to get done before.

I peel the carrots and potatoes, cut the broccoli into smaller pieces and clean the beans. The corn doesn’t need much attention, obviously.

Then everything is ready.

And honestly, once you have five different vegetables cleaned and sitting there in front of you, you already feel like most of the work is done.

Water works. Broth is better.

Then I cook the vegetables.

Sometimes just in salted water, but very often I use chicken broth or beef broth.

I started doing this simply because I had broth anyway and thought, why not?

And I really like the vegetables this way.

They get some extra taste from the broth, but they are still just vegetables. I’m not making a soup or some complicated side dish out of them.

Especially carrots and potatoes are really good like this.

Of course, I don’t throw everything into the pot at the same time and hope for the best. Potatoes and carrots need longer. Broccoli needs much less time.

I just take things out when they are done.

Not very scientific. I poke them with a fork.

Then I let everything cool

After cooking, I drain the vegetables and let them cool.

This is usually the point where my kitchen looks slightly ridiculous because there are vegetables everywhere.

But now I’m basically finished.

Once everything has cooled down, I put the vegetables separately into glass containers and into the fridge.

I don’t mix them.

That’s actually quite important for how we use them later.

Why I keep everything separate

If I make one big vegetable mix, everybody gets the same thing.

And that’s exactly what I don’t want.

• Maybe today someone wants potatoes and corn.
• Tomorrow broccoli and carrots.
• Or beans with potatoes.

For the kids I sometimes just put several vegetables on the table in seperate little bowls. A kind of mini vegetable buffet.

They choose.

I like that much more than making one big vegetable dish and then having a discussion about the three pieces of broccoli hiding between the potatoes.

And for me it means I have several vegetables already waiting in the fridge.

How long I keep them

I usually prepare enough for the next few days, not for the next seven days despite the word “week” in meal prep.

For cooked vegetables, I stick to around 3–4 days in the fridge.

I let them cool after cooking, but I don’t leave them standing around half the day. Then they go into closed glass containers (like my favorits from Amazon.com) in the refrigerator.

That’s enough time for us to eat quite a lot of vegetables without me having to start with peeling carrots every single day.

This time: five vegetables

For these photos I prepared:

• carrots
• broccoli
• potatoes
• green beans
• corn

But there is no real recipe here.

That’s kind of the point.

Use the vegetables you have. Fresh from the garden is wonderful, of course, especially now in fall. But vegetables from the shop are vegetables too.

Cook them in water or broth, let them cool and keep them separately.

Then you have something ready when you need it.

And sometimes that is all I want from meal prep. Not seven perfect lunch boxes for the whole week.

Just less work later.

FAQs About How to Meal Prep Vegetables for the Week