Cheap, Healthy, Efficient

12 Apr, 2025

I was in my early twenties, grinding as hard as I could at Meta. Needed food that was cheap, healthy, and took as little time as possible to prepare.

When COVID hit, we couldn't go into the office for free meals anymore so my roommates and I went through a bunch of different options until we discovered our holy grail.

Option #1: Bulk Ordering Chipotle

Might sound a little dumb but I actually ordered and froze ~20 Chipotle bowls at once to save on delivery costs. Each meal, I'd scoop out the lettuce (doesn't reheat well) and blast the rest in the microwave.

Pros:

• Kinda healthy - On paper it was healthy but I don't remember feeling that great
• Good protein - Solid macros since everything was portioned out
• Efficient - Almost no prep time needed

Cons:

• Low value - For ~$18 per meal, it felt a little wasteful
• Repetitive - The food gets boring eventually

Option #2: Fresh Meal Prep /w Roommates

Eventually I got tired of ordering Chipotle. Since there were four of us living together all with the same food problem, we decided to band together to cook large batches of fresh food.

Pros:

• Healthy - It was all fresh and we could pick the ingredients
• Good protein - We could pick exactly how much protein we wanted
• Tasted good - We'd change it up and cook food that tasted good

Cons:

• Time consuming - It took forever to cook enough food for all four of us. Even with all the burners running at the same time

Maybe also dumb, but our first thought to make it faster was to buy three giant instant pots and run them at the same time.

I still have nightmares about those instant pots burning our food since we loaded them up too full. Eventually, we discovered a much better option.

The Holy Grail: Baking and Freezing Bags of Chicken Thigh

Hear me out, it sounds simple but it's the perfect solution:

• Tastes good - Chicken thigh freezes and reheats well. You can also season it in any way you want giving you variety
• Efficient - You can bake ~1 months worth of meals in just an hour
• Healthy - You control all the ingredients, and can control your macros so each bag is exactly what you need
• Cheap - It's just chicken thigh which on the cheaper side of protein options out there

My roommate typed up some instructions at some point since we eventually had someone help us with the chicken batches. Here it is:

Chicken meal prep instructions:

- Preheat oven to 425
- Put aluminum foil on tray
- Fit as many chicken thighs as you can on it
- On one side, season with a reasonable amount each of
    - Salt
    - Black pepper
    - Garlic powder
    - Coriander
    - Chili powder
- Flip the chicken thighs over and season the other side
- Repeat above instructions with additional trays until there are no more chicken thighs (usually I can fit 15-20 lbs on 4-5 trays)
- Bake for at least 15 minutes, check with meat thermometer to check if cooked through (should be 165 F internal temp)
- After baking and before bagging let cool for a few minutes (just so they aren’t super hot going into the bags)
- Put 2-3 chicken thighs (2 or 3 based on size of each individual piece) in ziplock bag
- Bag all thighs and put them in the freezer, preferably in the bottom left compartment

A little unconventional but it works well. I still haven't found a better cheap and healthy meal prep system where you don't really need to cook.