If you can’t beat them, join them! The ultimate guide to homemade ready meals

A colleague once shared her rigorous and scientific technique for dodging pre-prepared meals on delivery apps, yet she still managed to fail. Despite believing she had successfully avoided every trap, the delivery she received was yet another pre-prepared meal. “At that moment, it was hard not to completely lose it.”

While my friends are fiercely opposed to encountering pre-prepared meals in takeaways or restaurants, they are very positive about my home-made version. I often have friends forward me articles about ready-meals, saying, “This reminded me of your home meal prep.”

Indeed, if you can’t beat them, join them—it’s a perfectly valid strategy. Since so many people have asked, I thought I’d share my logic and guide for home-made pre-prepared meals with you all.

I. A Meal Prep Journey that Started with Cat Food

As for the later period when vegetables became unavailable across Shanghai and beyond, and freezers sold out entirely, that is another story of an overly convenient coincidence.

At first, it was just cat food: mixing different meats in specific proportions, chopping them up, and steaming them. But doing this every day meant a workload greater than feeding myself. So, I started buying meat in bulk during major online sales (at the peak, I’d buy 25kg at a time), spending a whole day chopping and portioning them into the freezer. After that, I only had to take one portion out to steam each day.

After a few rounds, I began to appreciate the benefits of bulk processing ingredients: reducing repetitive labour and saving time and energy.

Thus, a lightbulb went off: if I could make pre-prepared meals for the cats, why not for myself? It would be double the time and effort saved!

I started with bread, as it can be sliced and frozen after baking, then simply reheated before eating to restore it almost exactly to its fresh-from-the-oven state, with hardly any loss in texture.

Previously, every time I made bread, it took an entire day, most of which was spent waiting for fermentation and observing the dough.

For me, these were rare moments when my mind stopped racing. While kneading, I focus on the development of the gluten; during fermentation, I imagine the yeast eating until it’s full and burping. My mind is busy yet relaxed. Not only does my brain enter a flow state, but pressing my fingers into the dough feels therapeutic—similar to why some people love playing with squishies.

Doing these kinds of problems as a child made me think: how wonderful to complete several tasks in one go—it’s like getting extra time! Later, when I started cooking, I subconsciously applied this problem-solving mindset, running through all the steps in my head first. Since the water purifier is slow, I start filling the water while blanching bones; while soaking greens in baking soda to remove pesticides, I start the rice; I process the vegetables before cutting the meat so the chopping board doesn’t need to be washed twice. In short, I refuse to stand idly by the stove watching a pot boil.

This theory is especially applicable to time-consuming, labour-intensive projects. Whether making bread, braising meat, or folding dumplings, the difference in time and energy between making one portion and ten is negligible. When averaged out, it’s effectively like it took no time at all.

Moreover, owing to the peculiar circumstances of recent years, I began to feel unsettled by the volume of waste I generate daily, fearing how it would be handled should I be unable to leave home. If a city grinds to a halt, waste collection becomes a critical problem. Since 2020, I have been composting plant-based kitchen waste at home to reduce my output (driven primarily by concerns for public health rather than environmentalism). Composting also requires its own investment of time and effort; managing waste on top of daily cooking is no easy task, at least for me. However, batch prepping and creating homemade ready-meals concentrates the time spent on kitchen waste, thereby further reducing the overall time spent on housework.

Therefore, reducing repetitive labour and saving time is my primary motivation.

2 Reducing unnecessary cognitive load

As a pessimistic action-taker prone to anxiety, there is often quite a lot to worry about daily. However, a person’s mental bandwidth is limited; beyond essential work, study, and socialising, making decisions about one’s own life also consumes this bandwidth.

Bandwidth is the capacity of the mind, comprising two abilities: cognitive ability and executive control. Scarcity reduces the capacity of all this bandwidth, leaving us lacking in insight and foresight, and weakening our executive control.

— *Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much*

This is why stay-at-home mothers often feel utterly exhausted; unlike me, they aren’t just looking after themselves. A “dutiful” stay-at-home mother often juggles the roles of nanny, tutor, cleaner, chef, accountant, cashier, and private butler. Just listing these roles makes me feel tired.

My work requires intense mental effort every day; if I also have to spend energy deciding what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it further drains my mental bandwidth, leaving me with very little to spare. When there is no longer any mental leeway, the resulting tension doubles the rate of mental exhaustion—similar to a CPU overheating—making a total crash all too easy.

Consequently, if a single decision can settle several meals, the mental bandwidth required during subsequent mealtimes is greatly reduced. The cure for mental burnout isn’t “Second Uncle”—it’s homemade ready-meals!

Could ordering takeaways solve this? In reality, the cognitive load remains just as high; after all, there are few healthy and delicious options within a budget, especially if one wishes to avoid industrial ready-meals with ambiguous seasonings, ingredients, additives, and hygiene standards. But if you are already suffocating under economic pressure, work demands, and social obligations—or simply the “996” grind—your brain lacks the energy to navigate that long list of decisions. At that point, decision-making is handed over to path dependency; ordering a takeaway becomes a means of survival, not a sign of laziness.

3 Takeaways cannot satisfy dietary needs

As a Cantonese person, I am an incredibly picky eater. It is not so much that I have many dietary restrictions, but rather that I am unreasonably particular about ingredient combinations and cooking methods. For instance, I cannot abide chive fillings, I refuse to have broccoli stir-fried with meat, I dislike greens cooked in too much oil, and while I loathe most flour-based noodles, I love *zhusheng* (bamboo-pole) noodles. I enjoy rice noodles, provided they are not too thick.

Later, through my studies of nutrition, my need for dietary diversity grew and my tolerance for ultra-processed foods declined, making it nearly impossible to find something I actually wanted to eat via delivery. I may also be someone with a very pronounced gut-brain axis; if a meal doesn’t suit my palate, my mood plummets instantly—as a child, I would wail if I were served something tasteless. If your mood also drops because of a poor meal, it is not because you are being “difficult”; it is perfectly reasonable. Treat yourself to something good.

*The Gut-Brain Axis refers to the bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system, involving complex interactions between the gut, the nervous system, and the immune system, playing a vital role in both physical and mental health.

4 Choosing freedom over control

When determining product recipes, the most important question these companies ask is: what levels of salt, sugar, and fat will maximise the food’s allure?

In fact, some experts believe that Wall Street is one of the primary causes of the obesity epidemic… “They increase the size of their packaging to ensure products are omnipresent in supermarkets of all sizes, making them incredibly convenient—even creating a sense of identity that you can eat them all day, anywhere, and in any quantity.”

— *Salt Sugar Fat: How Food Giants Manipulate Us*

My initial rejection of ultra-processed foods was to defend my freedom to choose what I eat, but I soon discovered that my body was actively rejecting them: they were too sweet, too salty, too oily. After reclaiming (some of) my food sovereignty, I realised that the manipulation of our taste buds by capital exceeds my wildest imagination.

It is a shackle composed of nested restrictions: the food industry produces cheap, fast nutrients by exploiting workers, the environment, and food culture; excessive salt, sugar, and fat tame our taste buds to crave over-processed foods, even to the point of addiction; and overwhelming workloads (physical exhaustion, depleted bandwidth) leave people psychologically dependent on takeaways and fast food, funnelling their money back into the food industry. No one is held accountable for the natural environment, their own health, or the labour of others, creating a vicious cycle of control.

One way to break free is perhaps to reclaim our food sovereignty—to cook for ourselves and snap the cycle of control.

III. A Comprehensive Guide to Homemade Ready-meals

If anyone is interested in trying out these “home-style ready-meals”, please find the following tips helpful.

1 Drawing inspiration from industrial ready-meals

It is often said that we must learn the techniques of the “enemy” to overcome them. While a home environment isn’t the ideal setting for industrial-style pre-prepared meals, if you decide to give it a go, minimally processed frozen ingredients or shelf-stable convenience foods are a great place to start. The most common options are frozen mixed vegetables, frozen shrimp, and the recently popular ready-to-eat corn cobs.

I love browsing the supermarket frozen food aisles; the ready meals there are an excellent source of inspiration. Established frozen foods have usually stood the test of the market and are generally palatable. We can use them as a blueprint to recreate dishes at home, including their level of doneness. For instance, with garlic vermicelli steamed scallops, pizzas, or glutinous rice chicken, we can buy them, deconstruct them, and figure out if they were frozen while raw, half-cooked, or fully cooked. By imitating this at home, we reduce the risk of disaster and the cost of trial and error.

The pre-prepared meal companies have already paid those tuition fees for us.

2 Keep meat and vegetables separate

Plant fibres, starches, and proteins react differently to freezing and reheating. Beyond their different freezing curves, their cooking requirements also vary. If mixed together, the difference in ice crystal formation speeds during freezing will degrade the texture, and the result after defrosting and reheating can be quite unpalatable.

Vegetables: leave them undercooked, and skip the defrosting

Aromatics like spring onions, ginger, and garlic, as well as vegetables like corn, peas, carrots, and celery, can be diced or chopped and frozen (following the logic of supermarket frozen veg). You can use them as needed, which helps you quickly use up surplus ingredients to reduce waste while cutting down on prep time during cooking.

For vegetables that require cooking, I don’t recommend cooking them through. Quickly blanch them until they are about a third of the way cooked—just enough to soften them. This process not only removes excess water and reduces ice crystal formation to preserve texture but also leaves some room for the final heating stage.

When using them, I suggest not defrosting frozen vegetables, or at most, letting them thaw slightly in the fridge before tossing them directly into a boil or a stir-fry.

Meat dishes: defrost then reheat

By “meat dishes”, I mean pure meat dishes, such as red braised pork. Unlike plant fibres, the texture of meat varies very little after defrosting—provided it is defrosted correctly. Ideally, move the meat from the freezer to the fridge the night before to thaw slowly. This also applies to raw meat; slowly defrosted meat doesn’t release as much purge, avoiding that unappetizing “frozen-dead” texture.

Stews are great, stir-fries aren’t

This isn’t to say that mixed meat and vegetable dishes can’t be pre-prepared; it’s just that most aren’t suitable, and there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules—it takes time in the kitchen to figure it out. However, it is quite certain that foods requiring long simmering are likely to work well as mixed pre-prepared meals. Typical examples include curries, braised dishes, and various meat broths. Extending this to Western or Southeast Asian cuisines, you could try bacon and pumpkin cream soup or Bak Kut Teh. Conversely, leafy greens that require high heat and rapid cooking are generally unsuitable for pre-preparation. Again, look to the supermarket frozen section for inspiration.

Similarly, stews are among the few foods that don’t need to be defrosted in advance; you can heat them directly, saving you the mental effort of planning your meals the night before.

3 Minimise bacteria and contamination

Don’t taste as you go

After making a pot of braised meat, resist the urge to devour a bowl of rice right there by the stove. The bacteria in your saliva will multiply rapidly, releasing unpleasant flavours that significantly degrade the taste of the meat and destroy the umami components.

If you are packing tomorrow’s lunch, please portion out the meal first before eating. The fact that leftovers often taste worse isn’t an illusion; saliva from chopsticks and prolonged exposure to room temperature both play a part.

Low temperature, low oxygen, few bacteria

Once your pre-prepared meals are ready, don’t wait for them to cool down. Instead, immediately pack them into clean (ideally heat-sterilised) airtight containers and put them in the fridge. If you have a vacuum sealer, use it. This follows the logic of industrial food processing: low temperature, low oxygen, and sterilisation maximize flavour preservation and extend shelf life.

Frozen food can still go bad, and before it does, it becomes unpalatable.

This same logic applies to preserving fresh ingredients, especially plants. An environment with low temperature, low humidity, and low oxygen inhibits plant respiration, thereby extending storage life. I’ve found that wrapping greens in kitchen roll and placing them in a sealed bag in the fridge can keep them fresh for half a month—and even a month isn’t out of the question. PS: The dried kitchen roll can still be reused.

Four: “Home-cooked meals” should not be a luxury

Finally, I hope my small amount of experience can provide some reference for those who want to cook at home, helping to reduce stress, save time, and avoid common pitfalls.

I understand that eating “home-cooked meals” and making your own pre-prepared food is, in a sense, a privilege. Spare time, mental bandwidth, the right hobbies, a bit of talent, or having family members who can provide these—in today’s high-pressure, fast-paced environment, these are almost all luxuries.

Although the first step is always the hardest, our actions are themselves a way of voting on the world around us. Rejecting delivery may be the moment the “wheels of fate” begin to turn.

Lastly, if you’ve read this far and still plan to order a takeaway, I’ll share the tips my colleague uses to avoid industrial pre-prepared meals, though in practice, they are hit-and-miss:

1. Avoid the overly cheap options.

2. Look at photos of the actual premises; choose places that are actual restaurants with dining areas, not just “dark kitchens”.

3. Avoid shops that claim to sell every type of cuisine.

4. Avoid heavily seasoned dishes like Sichuan cuisine, BBQ, or sauerkraut fish.

Foodthink Author

Dou Dou

Practitioner of sustainable living with a passion for researching non-consumerist lifestyles.

 

 

 

 

Editor: Tianle