My easy meal prep ideas make planning everyday Indian meals easier. These planning and prep work tips will help you eat home-cooked meals daily, save money, and reduce stress throughout the week.
How To Plan Everyday Indian Meal
If you have ever drooled over the elaborate Indian thali meals on my Instagram feed , then I must share a secret. Meal Prep is the key to eating a delicious home-cooked meal every day.
Following easy meal prep ideas, you can make various Indian food recipes throughout the week despite being busy.
- Think and plan the menu for the week (follow my 30 Everyday meal calendar )
- Write down meal prep notes for each meal
- Prepare your grocery shopping list
- Finish your grocery shopping over the weekend
At first, you might feel like it’s a lot to do, but once you get going and see how effortless it is, you don’t have to worry about dinner/lunchbox/breakfast throughout the week.
How To Start Meal Prep
Take Baby Steps: Start with one meal that pains you the most. It could be either breakfast , dinner or packing a lunchbox (check out lunchbox ideas for adults ). Later, slowly move to plan all the meals of the week.
Set Reminder: During the first week of meal prep, you must set a few reminders to get it into your routine. Like, if you are starting with breakfast, set a reminder for Sunday night to do prep work for the weekly breakfast.
Handpick Recipes: First, pick Indian food recipes that are easy to follow and execute on weekdays. Over a period, you can select more elaborate recipes and plan their execution like an expert.
My favourite meal prep tools, I hope you also find them useful:
Glass Box Set : They are fantastic for storing anything from boiled lentils, salad, and chopped vegetables to fruits. Mason Jars: They are perfect for storing salads, fruits, overnight oats or anything you want to grab and go.
Free Weekly Meal Plan: Download a free printable weekly planner.
Ziplock Bags : They are the lifesaver when storing chopped onion, garlic, and fruits for smoothies or green vegetables.
30 Everyday Indian Meal Ideas: Use these meal ideas to plan a weekly menu for breakfast/lunch/dinner.
Meal Prep Ideas for Indian kitchen
- Freezer-Friendly Indian Curry Paste: Making an excellent Indian curry after a long working day is a sort of challenge. It requires hours of labour if you start from scratch. Hence, with meal prep-friendly DIY Indian curry pastes in the fridge, you can make your favourite Indian curry in 30 minutes.
You can make them over the weekend, and they remain fresh for up to a week. These curry pastes are one of my favourite easy meal prep ideas for an Indian kitchen.
You can get my debut cookbook for The 100 Best Indian Curry Recipes to use these curry pastes in a hundred creative ways.
- Cutting & Preparing Ingredients: For making any Indian meal, we require a lot of chopped onion, tomato, vegetables, and greens.
- Chop a small batch of onion, ginger, and tomato. Store them in the refrigerator.
- Peel and chop vegetables like bottle gourd, pumpkin, carrot, cauliflower required for the first few days of the week.
- Clean green leafy vegetables like fenugreek, spinach, kale, lettuce, mint, and coriander. Store them in ziplock bags.
- Cut and freeze fresh fruits like mangoes, bananas, strawberries, kiwi for smoothies or milkshakes .
These small meal prep steps expedite the cooking process during the weekdays. You can use a food processor or a handy chopper for the purpose.
- Cook & Store: A few cooked ingredients and side dishes can help you sail through the week.
- Boil a big batch of potatoes. Keep them handy to make Indian breakfast , curry, sandwiches, and snacks.
- Boil and store lentils and legumes like chickpeas (chana), red kidney beans, and brown chickpeas (kala chana) for making salads and Indian main course dishes .
- You can always cook and store side dishes like matar pulao , jeera rice , or plain rice to serve with dal and gravy dishes.
- Make a little extra serving of dishes like dal fry or Rajasthani Kadhi to reheat and eat during busy weekdays.
- Make spinach puree and store it in the refrigerator. Use it for making poori , paratha, or spinach egg curry .
- Marinate proteins like paneer , tofu, chicken , cauliflower , and prawns to make quick stir fry or tikka during the week.
- And, of course, you can always boil and store noodles, pasta, couscous, quinoa, or brown rice to make a variety of multi-cuisine dishes .
- Prepare whole wheat dough for chapati or paratha and store it.
- Similarly, you can make dosa batter, dal chilla or besan chilla batter and store them for a week in the refrigerator.
- Takeaway Salad Jars: On Sunday night, layer up all the salad ingredients in a mason jar, pack the dressing separately and keep them in the fridge. Each morning pick a salad jar and rush to the office or eat them for lunch.
This way, you can save a lot of time cooking an office lunchbox and eat healthy homemade lunch even on a busy day. Not only salads, but you can also pack smoothies, milkshakes, overnight oats , wholesome soups or just anything in a jar and keep them handy for a takeaway.
- Ready To Use Indian Condiments: We use a lot of herbs, spices, and chutney in an Indian kitchen. To save time,
- Keep a container full of peeled garlic, ginger, and washed green chilli in the fridge.
- Clean, wash and pat dry fresh coriander leaves. You can use a salad spinner to drain all the water from the coriander. Store in a ziplock bag or an airtight container lined with a paper towel. While cooking, you can chop and add it in an instant.
- Prepare and store a few condiments like green chutney , coconut chutney , tomato chutney , pickled onions ( sirkey wala pyaaz ) to serve with snacks and breakfast. Or make multi-purpose dips like hummus , salsa , and store them.
- Make a big batch of multi-purpose ginger-garlic paste and store it.
- Homemade condiments like garam masala or chai masala add a lot of flavour to the dishes and save money.
These easy meal prep ideas save a lot of time in the kitchen and help me cook wholesome, nourishing meals in no time.
- Recycle Leftovers: There are zillion creative ways to use leftovers; they are the best way to check on food wastage and reduce your grocery bill.
- Leftover plain rice can be easily transformed into a delicious bowl of fried rice , coconut rice , or lemon rice .
- If you have roasted or grilled chicken in the fridge, use it to make sandwiches, salads , or biryani .
- Use leftover idli from breakfast to make chilli idli fry or idli manchurian .
- Similarly, leftover paneer tikka can make a colourful tawa paneer pulao .
- Use all those leftover vegetables in the refrigerator to make vegetable sto ck.
- Use leftover yellow dal to make Punjabi dal paratha or missa paratha .
Use Meal Prep Resources
How To Organize Indian Kitchen Cabinet
30 Everyday Indian Meal Calendar
20+ Indian Chinese Fusion Recipes
25+ Indian Breakfast Recipes
25+ Office Lunchbox Ideas
20 Indian Thali Ideas
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Hello, I’m Hina Gujral
I am the cook, voice, stylist, and photographer (in short, the creative force) behind Fun FOOD Frolic and a full time Instagrammer .
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This chocolate brownie recipe will give you perfectly moist, cakey cafe-style brownies at home. Be sure to watch the video!
Chocolate Brownies are undoubtedly the dessert that disappears most quickly at home. It’s only on rare occasions that a pan of brownies lasts more than 24 hours.
After trying and testing many brownie recipes, we finally zeroed down to this one.
This failproof simple brownie recipe always yields results near perfection. The fudgy, gooey, dark chocolate brownies are the result.
Ingredients Required
Butter: The unsalted butter gives the brownies a rich texture and taste. Make sure it’s melted and at room temperature.
Chocolate : Use Unsweetened or bittersweet, or semi-sweet DARK CHOCOLATE . Stay away from milk chocolate for making brownies.
Eggs: If you are looking for an egg-free brownie recipe, try my eggless brownies .
Cocoa Powder: Use unsweetened cocoa powder mainly used for baking (not drinking cocoa or chocolate). Here are my fudgy cocoa brownies .
Sugar: I always use powdered white sugar or caster sugar for making brownies. Do not use granulated sugar for this brownie recipe.
Vanilla Essence: It gives a sweet aroma and flavour to the brownies.
Flour: Use regular all-purpose flour and not cake flour.
Salt: A pinch of salt enhances the flavour of the chocolate.
Add-Ons : Few of my favourite add-ons for a chocolate brownie are – chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, pecan nuts, peanut butter chips, or caramel pieces. They make each bite of brownie so delicious!
Brownie Making Process
Chocolate: Melt chocolate in a microwave or double-boiler to a smooth liquid.
Liquid Ingredients: Combine melted butter, powdered sugar, eggs, chocolate, and vanilla. Whisk nicely to form a smooth, well-combined base for the batter.
Dry Ingredients: Add sifted flour, cocoa powder, and salt to the batter. Gently cut and fold to make a smooth, lump-free batter. Do not mix the chocolate brownie batter for too long in a food processor or using a hand mixer.
Add Ons: Once the batter is ready, add chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, or any other nut of your choice. Fold into the batter.
Bake Brownies: Bake for 20 – 25 minutes in a greased baking tin. Later, insert a toothpick and test for doneness.
Watch Brownie Video
My Tried & True Tips
Follow the exact ingredient measurements for this chocolate brownie recipe. The cup measurement may differ. Hence, it is best to stick to the ingredients’ weight (gram) measurement.
Do not expose chocolate to very high heat. Moderate heat using a double boiler or bowl full of hot water or microwave is fine. It should melt into a smooth, lump-free liquid.
Make sure melted butter and chocolate liquid are not piping hot as eggs might scramble.
Use only powdered sugar or caster sugar for this chocolate brownie recipe. The granulated sugar changes the texture of the brownies.
The chocolate brownie batter is of a dropping consistency. Add 1 – 2 tablespoons of room-temperature milk if it seems too thick.
Do not over-mix the batter . Once combined well, STOP mixing. Over-mixing will result in complex and tough brownies.
Overbaking a chocolate brownie is a sin . It is always best to check the brownies after 20 minutes if you want them gooey and moist. No one likes dry and over-baked brownies.
In my 52 liters OTG, I bake them in the middle rack for exactly 25 minutes.
Allow chocolate brownies to cool down completely or at least lukewarm before cutting them into squares. After a few minutes of cooling, the flavour of the chocolate enhances, and the top layer has a nice crust.
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If you try this recipe and love it, please leave a comment and a rating. This helps us grow and reach other food lovers like you.
Ingredients
1 teaspoon = 5 ml
- ▢ 125 gram unsalted butter, melted
- ▢ 125 gram powdered white sugar or caster sugar
- ▢ 3 eggs, at room temperature
- ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- ▢ 125 gram dark chocolate, melted
- ▢ 60 gram all-purpose flour (maida)
- ▢ 11 gram unsweetened cocoa powder
- ▢ ¼ teaspoon salt
- ▢ 30 gram coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)
- ▢ 60 gram chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
Instructions
- To make a chocolate brownie, preheat the oven at 170° C. Line 7 inch square tin with parchment paper and grease it with little butter.
- Melt butter and chocolate separately in a microwave or double boiler. The chocolate takes 40 – 50 seconds at High heat to melt in a microwave.
- Once melted butter becomes lukewarm, add powdered sugar and whisk for 20 – 30 seconds to evenly combine. Add egg and vanilla. Whisk again for 1 minute to incorporate air in the batter.
- Add lukewarm or room temperature melted chocolate to the batter. Whisk for 1 minute to evenly combine in the batter.
- Add sifted flour, cocoa powder, salt to the batter. Gently cut and fold them into a smooth, lump-free batter. Add chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, and mix the batter one last time.
- Pour the brownie batter into the greased tin. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes in the middle rack of the oven. Insert a toothpick and if it comes with fewer crumbs, the brownie is ready.
- Bring brownie out of the oven. Let brownie sit in the tin for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack and let it cool down or till they become lukewarm. Cut into squares.
- Serve Chocolate Brownie with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.
Recipe Notes:
- Do not expose butter and chocolate to very high heat.
- Use only powdered sugar or caster sugar for this brownie recipe.
- Before adding eggs make sure melted butter and chocolate liquid are not piping hot.
- The chocolate brownie batter is of dropping consistency. If it seems too thick, add 1 – 2 tablespoons of room temperature milk.
- Do not over-mix the batter. Once combined well, STOP mixing.
- If you like brownies with melted centers, extra gooey then bake only for 20 minutes. If you like cake-like brownies then bake for full 25 minutes.
- Allow brownies to cool down completely or at least lukewarm before cutting into squares.
- You can store chocolate brownies at room temperature for 2 – 3 days. Store them in the refrigerator for a week.
Nutrition
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