How to meal prep a week's worth of lunches with just three ingredients

Just an hour of prep can save you a whole lot of money
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Life is busy, and because of this we often end up buying our lunches during the working week.

But this money adds up and there’s a simple solution to help you put that money in savings instead: meal prep.

Meal preparation means taking an hour or two out of your Sunday to prepare meals for the week ahead. In this series, we’re looking at lunches you can prepare ahead of time so that in the morning you just need to grab them out of the fridge before work and go.

Below we’ve detailed one of the easiest meal preps you can do, and the best thing about it is how versatile it is.

Roast sweet potato, kale and chicken salad

Yields 5 servings.

Ingredients

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped

600g of chicken breast, chopped

1 large bag or bunch of kale, washed and stalks removed

Winter warmer recipes

1/3

Method

Turn the oven to 180 degrees and put a little olive/coconut or vegetable oil on a roasting pan.

Put the sweet potato chunks on the pan and spread them out as much as possible. If you have garlic, finely chop a couple of cloves and sprinkle these over the potatoes for extra flavour. Drizzle with a little more oil and season with turmeric.

Place this in the oven, they should take around an hour to roast so make sure you’re moving them around every 20 or so minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the chicken in a pan (either have it plain or coat in your choice of seasoning) and you can either add the kale to the hot pan at the end so that it wilts or have it fresh.

Once the chicken is cooked, put it aside to cool. You know the sweet potatoes are done when they are soft in the middle. Take these out to cool too.

Mix all the ingredients together and separate into five containers. And just like that you have a delicious, filling salad that will last you the week.

Variations

As the same lunch day in and day out can get boring, some ideas for variations or add-ons to this include putting the ingredients in a wrap with avocado and peppers, adding brown rice and feta, bulking up the salad with more roasted vegetables and leafy greens like spinach and rocket or simply eating it on its own.

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