With a little planning and prep, you can make several days of meals using just a few recipes and one grocery trip. You can even cook everything at once and store the meals in single‑serve containers, so you have easy grab‑and‑go options all week. 

Diabetes Food Hub can be a great tool for meal prepping! Learn how to use our recipes, meal planner, and grocery list to make planning, shopping, and preparing healthy meals a snap! 

Chicken is a meal‑prep favorite because it’s easy to cook, works in lots of dishes, and stores well for the week. You can use cooked chicken in a salad or sandwich for lunch, then shred it, and add it to tacos, soup, or pasta for dinner. 

Here are three recipes to make with one chicken:

1. Main Recipe: Cook Sunday Night

Budget-Friendly Cilantro Lime Roasted Chicken

Try something a little different with this sweet and tangy roasted chicken! You can roast the chicken whole or cut the whole raw chicken into 8 pieces (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, and 2 wings). You can ask the butcher at your grocery store to cut it into pieces for you or buy a whole chicken that is already cut into pieces. Eat some chicken for dinner Sunday night with rice and a salad, or save it all for other recipes.

2. Follow-Up Recipe: Lunch Prep

Brown Rice and Pinto Bean Bowl with Chicken and Pico de Gallo

This recipe makes 6 bowls, perfect for packaging and storing for lunch all week. Save enough of the Cilantro Lime Roasted Chicken to make 2 cups of shredded chicken for these bowls. If you are feeling ambitious, you can start with dry pinto beans, and save the rest for other meals. Canned pinto beans work just fine as well. Either way, you’ve just prepared a week’s worth of lunches in a snap.

3. Follow-Up Recipe: Weeknight Dinner

Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Long Leaf Wrap

Here’s a quick weeknight meal for one! Since you are starting with leftover Cilantro Lime Roasted Chicken, you can skip the first step, meaning this recipe will come together in less than 10 minutes. If you have leftover pinto beans from the Brown Rice and Pinto Bean Bowls, you can use those instead of garbanzo beans in this recipe.

Don’t forget about food safety!

Leftovers can be stored in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days or in the freezer for 3-4 months. Be sure to date anything that you store in the fridge or freezer. When reheating leftovers, make sure they reach 165 degrees F.

Want more meal prep ideas?

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