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Get It Together: The 14 Best Meal Prep Tools for More Organized Weeks

Yep, you’re about to start cooking with convenience.

By
Summer Rylander
Summer Brons Rylander Serious Eats
Summer Rylander

Summer Rylander is a freelance food and travel journalist based in Germany. Her work has appeared in Food & Wine, The Kitchn, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Salon, HuffPost, and more.

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Published October 23, 2024
A glass food storage container on a marble surface

Serious Eats / Eric King

Meal prepping is a touchy topic. Devotees insist that learning how to meal prep changed their lives. Opponents scoff at the idea, convinced that meal prep means eating the same sad, boiled chicken breasts and soggy broccoli for a week straight. But as with most things heavily debated on the internet, a happy medium lies between two extremes: Effective meal prepping just means being prepared to, well, prepare a meal. 

Imagine facing the Tuesday afternoon’s what-are-we-going-to-eat-for-dinner dread with the blissful realization that you decided on Nigerian Beef Suya two days ago and everything you need is already in your fridge. Imagine getting ready for work on Wednesday morning and having a packed lunch ready to go—kids included, if you’re responsible for feeding any. That is the kind of meal prep we’re talking about.

And because we’re big advocates of having the right tools for the job, of course we’re eager to share our favorite meal prep gear. Whether they’re storage solutions or clever timesavers, these products help us get through busy weeks well-fed with time to spare.

A Fast and Accurate Digital Scale

We’ve tested a lot of kitchen scales, and OXO’s is one of our favorites. (Many of our editors use it at home, too.) It’s super reliable and the pull-out display makes it easy to read no matter what’s on top of it. While a digital scale is a useful tool for all cooks and bakers, it’s especially handy for consistency in meal prepping. Whether you’re portioning out a family-sized pack of ground beef or rationing quinoa salad for the next three days, weighing food eliminates the pesky inconsistencies of eyeballing.

A bowl of flour on a digital scale

Serious Eats / Ashlee Redger

Food Storage Containers Aplenty

Even if you’re not into meal planning, leftovers and loose ingredients will always need to go somewhere. Good-quality food storage containers—whether glass, plastic, or silicone—will keep food fresh and safeguard against leaks and weird fridge smells. In our tests, Rubbermaid’s Brilliance line took the top spot in both glass and plastic categories thanks to their leakproof, tight-fitting lids with secure latches. We also appreciate the clear sides that let us see exactly what’s inside. For a more portable, easily stowable option, Re(zip) containers are great at securely containing food while taking up minimal space.

upright reusable storage bag on a fridge shelf

Serious Eats / Madeline Muzzi

Reusable Food Wraps

Instead of plastic wrap or aluminum foil for covering bowls, wrapping cheese, or hoping that half-avocado stays at least semi-green until tomorrow morning, try a beeswax food wrap. Not only are they reusable, but they’re breathable too, which means your expensive wedge of Parmesan cheese won’t taste like plastic the next time you chip off a shard in the middle of the night. Great beeswax wraps should stay sticky—even after washing—and adhere easily. In our review, both Trifecta Living Co. and Abeego wraps proved sturdy, easy to crimp onto bowls, fruits, and more, and were easy to hand-wash with soap and air-dry.

trifecta beeswax wrap on a bowl

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

A Slow (or Multi) Cooker

A slow cooker may feel like a relic of yesteryear, but these appliances have been around for decades for a reason: They get the job done. Throw in a few ingredients before work and come home to a hot meal. GreenPan impressed us with its quick heat-up time and effective browning abilities. It also stays cool for the duration of cooking, making it an especially safe option for households with kids or pets. For versatility beyond slow cooking, we love a multi-cooker like the Instant Pot for its ability to function as a rice cooker, steamer, pressure cooker, and more. It’s a great pick for small spaces or bang-for-your-buck budgets.

An Instant Pot multicooker in use

Serious Eats / Russell Kilgore

Coffee Delivered to Your Door

No one said meal prep has to be all about solid food. For many of us, coffee is a critical part of each morning, and few things are more unpleasant than going about your morning brewing ritual only to realize you’re out of coffee. Enter: coffee by mail. Trade Coffee Club isn’t just a subscription service to keep the good stuff coming to your door; it’s a portal to coffee from around the world. It's a great option for dipping a toe into specialty coffee (there are over 450 options to choose from). You might as well sip on something new during all that extra time you’ll have thanks to meal prepping, right?

a person pouring from a thermal carafe into a coffee mug

Serious Eats / Will Dickey

A Good Knife (or Several)

A quality chef’s knife—one that’s sharp, well-balanced, and comfortable to grip—is the backbone of any kitchen. It’s the reliable all-rounder you’ll need for slicing, dicing, chopping, and every other cutting verb. And while a chef’s knife will suffice for just about everything, if variety is the spice of life, consider a knife set to give yourself more options (or to put someone else to work, too). Sets aren’t usually our preferred way to purchase knives, but they can be an efficient and budget-friendly option for widening your arsenal.

A person chops a red onion using a Zwilling Gourmet 10-Piece Knife Block Set knife

Serious Eats / Russell Kilgore

Helpful Cookbooks

Cookbooks are an incredible resource. They cover the whys and how-tos of cooking and are helpful to reach for when you’re out of ideas and can’t think of a single dish, let alone a week’s worth. From essential cooking to baking, meal prep is a breeze when you have a shelf of inspiration at your fingertips. Our staff likes to line their shelves with cookbooks that teach techniques and help pull you out of boring routines.

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Serious Eats / Daniel Gritzer

A Food Processor

Full-sized food processors are great for chopping, slicing, shredding, emulsifying and so much more. Cuisinart’s 14-cup food processor is one of our top picks thanks to its effective performance, reasonable price, and surprisingly quiet motor. If a full-size processor feels too bulky or pricey right now, a mini food processor can give you the same convenience in a stowable, affordable package. This one from Hamilton Beach packs a real punch for its size and even comes with a slicing and grating disk. Go ahead and dice onions without the tears, blend up a batch of salad dressing, or pulverize stale bread into useful breadcrumbs with ease.

A person chops potatoes in the Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor

Serious Eats / Nick Simpson

Versatile Baking Sheets

Baking sheets are good for way more than just cookies—sheet pan dinners, anyone? And we love a sheet pan for meal prep. Roast a chicken, a head of cauliflower, or a batch of carrots and reap the rewards of (almost) hands-off cooking. Good baking sheets are made of heavy-gauge metal that conducts heat well and resists warping—both Nordic Ware and Vollrath tick those boxes. 

Cooked potato wedges on Nordic Ware Naturals Baker's Half Sheet

Serious Eats / Irvin Lin

A Vacuum Sealer

Vacuum sealers are handy for long-term storage like freezing sauces or fresh cuts of meat, but they’re also useful for creating a quick, forceful seal suitable for making instant pickles or sous vide cooking. We tested 24 vacuum sealers and these two from Nesco and Anova came out on top for their intuitive design and double-seal technology. 

A steak being sealed in plastic with a Nesco vacuum sealer

Serious Eats / Nick Simpson

An Immersion Circulator (Sous Vide Machine)

Okay, maybe we can’t claim an immersion circulator is essential for meal prepping, but it’s pretty useful for precision cooking. These little machines create a consistent water temperature for sous vide cooking without the need for constant monitoring. We like the Breville Joule for its fast, quiet performance and companion app you’ll actually want to use. On the budget-friendly end, the Instant Accu works so efficiently we can hardly believe it costs less than $100.

A person using a sous vide machine

Serious Eats / Russell Kilgore

A Swooshy Salad Spinner

Much like slow cookers, salad spinners seem like one of those things you’d have found in your grandma’s kitchen when poking around as a curious child. But these tools are genuinely great. They make rinsing lettuce so much easier, which means you don’t have to buy the pre-packaged stuff to get salad on the table fast. Both of these picks spin smoothly and dry quickly, and in the case of the glass-bowled OXO, the bowl itself can double as your salad serving vessel.

The OXO steel salad spinner with dry greens inside and its lid off

Serious Eats / Madeline Muzzi

A Foolproof Rice Cooker

Yes, with a bit of practice you can make decent rice on the stovetop, but real rice enthusiasts know that a rice cooker does a far better job of creating perfectly cooked rice every time. The Hamilton Beach model performed best in our tests with its simple control panel and no-frills settings, but the Zojirushi makes for a worthy splurge with well-reputed quality and fun settings (like playing different sounds when the cooking cycle is complete).

A person lifting the lid of the Hamilton Beach rice cooker.

Serious Eats / Alexander Huang

A High-Speed Blender

Powerful blenders like these don’t come cheap, but they’re so dang effective. Blenders are useful for smoothies and soups alike, and to even make your own nut butter. Vitamix has been leading the way for many years now with its professional-grade motor and clever vortex design that sucks all the ingredients down into its blades. The Blendtec is a little more affordable and excels in the smoothie department. 

Hands putting the lid on a Vitamix 5200 Professional-Grade Blender filled with fruit and vegetables

Serious Eats / Russell Kilgore

FAQs

What are the best meal prep tools on Amazon?

Cool tools are not in short supply on Amazon, but we take a slightly different approach to cooking gadgets. Instead of cluttering our cabinets with novelty equipment, we shop Amazon for smart deals on essential equipment, like our favorite Vitamix blender and a truly outstanding espresso machine.

Does meal prepping actually save time?

It can! Keeping the focus on preparing individual meal components—like whisking together salad dressing, peeling and chopping vegetables, and cooking a big batch of rice—allows you to move more nimbly when it comes time to cook and assemble a meal.

Why We’re the Experts

  • Summer Rylander is a proficient home cook and a frequent contributor to Serious Eats, where she deciphers testing notes on everything from cheese box subscriptions to portable charcoal grills.
  • The Serious Eats team has spent years testing the best cooking equipment, appliances, and tools. We regularly update our reviews with new insights and long-term testing results.

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