If you’ve ever spent your Sunday prepping chicken, rice, and broccoli only to dread every bite by Wednesday, this one’s for you.
Meal prep doesn’t have to suck. You don’t have to sacrifice flavor to hit your macros, and you don’t need to live off tilapia and Tupperware to make progress.
In this guide, we’re pulling insights straight from a Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Podcast episode featuring Barpath Fitness co-founder Heather Hamilton and Cooper Cordero, founder of Barbell Quisine. Cooper’s a mechanical engineer turned culinary experimenter who blends the art of cooking with fueling for performance. Together, they unpack how to make meal prep easy, enjoyable, and actually sustainable.
These are the meal prep tips for beginners that will change the way you think about cooking forever.
Want to listen instead? Check out the podcast episode here.
Why Most Meal Prep Fails
Everyone starts meal prep with good intentions. You want food that tastes amazing, reheats well, packs a solid protein punch, and doesn’t take up your entire Sunday.
So why does meal prep fail so often? Usually, it comes down to three things: boredom, lack of flavor, and overcomplication.
Boredom
Let’s be honest, most of us have been there. You start with good intentions: grilled chicken, steamed veggies, and a sweet potato. But by midweek, the food looks sad, tastes worse, and your motivation tanks.
Most people start with numbers, not flavor. They focus on macros before thinking about what makes food enjoyable. That’s a fast track to burnout with your meal prep.
Lack of Flavor
Somewhere along the line, “healthy” got mistaken for “tasteless.” People overcook their protein, skip the salt, and wonder why everything tastes like cardboard.
Cooper sees this all the time:
“The biggest difference for me was realizing that bland meal prep isn’t a requirement; it’s a choice. You can have flavor and hit your goals at the same time. You just have to give your food a little love.”
Overcomplicated Recipes
Then there’s the flip side: the overachievers who think meal prep means buying 18 ingredients and four types of chili powder.
As Cooper laughs:
“Some recipes tell you to buy 40 spices just for one meal. You’ll use a teaspoon and never touch it again.”
If your meal prep feels like a chemistry experiment, you’re doing too much.
The goal is to make it simpler, not harder.
About Barbell Quisine
Barbell Quisine (yes, with a Q) started as Cooper’s personal solution to a universal problem: food that fuels your goals shouldn’t taste like punishment.
“I loved training, but I dreaded eating. I wanted to find a way to look forward to my meals without losing sight of my macros. So I started combining my love of BBQ and culinary techniques with what I knew about performance nutrition.”
What began as backyard smoker experiments turned into a YouTube channel, recipe site, and soon-to-launch Denver meal prep service focused on food that’s flavorful, functional, and fun.
His guiding principle? You shouldn’t have to choose between your gains and your taste buds.
How to Add Flavor Without Sacrificing Nutrition
Techniques
Cook to temperature, not time.
If there’s one hill Cooper will die on, it’s this: get an instant-read thermometer.
Learning proper internal temperatures is one of the most valuable skills you can develop for cooking meat. Cooking times will always vary depending on your oven, grill, or tools, so use a thermometer instead of the clock to guide you.
Brine your meat.
A brine (salt + water) changes the game for meal prep longevity. It keeps food juicy for days. Think of brining as giving your meat a head start on seasoning. The salt has time to move past the surface, locking in moisture and flavor all the way through. Understanding how to make a brine can help add tons of flavor to your meal prep.
Flavor your rice.
Rice doesn’t have to be plain. Use stock instead of water. Add salt. Add aromatics or tomato base for jambalaya-style flavor.
“I ate my jambalaya every weekday for over three years. That’s how good it was,” he laughs.
Mise en place (everything in its place).
Set yourself up before you turn on the stove: pre-cut veggies, seasonings ready, containers lined up. Cooking becomes smoother, faster, and way more enjoyable.
Seasonings
- Use kosher salt, not table salt.
Fine-grain salt over-seasons fast. Kosher salt lets you season generously and evenly. - Salt as you go.
Season your onions while they sauté, not just at the end. Each layer builds flavor. - Experiment with spice blends.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Pre-made rubs are great and save time. Rotate them to prevent boredom. - Swap your oils.
Replace seed oils with avocado oil for high-heat cooking; it’s stable, mild, and macro-friendly.
Meal Prep Tips for Beginners
Shop in bulk
Wholesale or restaurant supply stores (like Costco Business Center) are gold for bulk proteins and pantry staples. Vacuum sealing and freezing can be really helpful for meal prep. Buy in bulk and store in your freezer to save money. Additionally, if you understand how to break down a larger cut of meat, you can get much better deals. Learning how to debone a chicken can help save time and money as well as use the entire animal. Save the bones for stock!
Organize your freezer
If you want to stay organized, feel free to label everything. Cooper uses painter’s tape with item names and quantities on the inside of the freezer door to keep track of quantities. Also, be sure to label meal prepped food with dates so you know how long you’ve had something in the freezer or fridge.
Make smart substitutions that make sense
Don’t turn lasagna into a cottage-cheese-protein-zoodle tragedy. Start with the real recipe, then make tweaks:
- Reduce oil or fat sources as needed.
- Use arrowroot or tapioca instead of flour to thicken if you want something gluten free.
- Swap avocado oil for seed oils.
“You’re not going to enjoy a high-protein ‘dessert’ that tastes like chalk,” Cooper jokes. “Start with what you actually crave and make it fit your goals.”
Salt. Kosher salt.
Homemade food rarely has excessive sodium. Don’t fear salt; it’s essential. Traditionally, diets that are high in sodium tend to be due to consumption of overly processed packaged foods, not kosher or table salt alone.
Find your go-to recipe
Every good cook has one dish they can make blindfolded. For Cooper, it’s chicken jambalaya.
“I’ve probably made it a thousand times,” he says. “I never got sick of it until year four.”
Find yours—a recipe that’s balanced, flavorful, and easy to scale.
Learn knife skills early
“People waste the most time chopping slowly or wrong,” Cooper says. “A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. Grip the blade, not just the handle. Commit—like a box jump.”
Good knife control makes veggie prep much faster.
What’s Next for Barbell Quisine
Cooper’s bringing his method to life with a Denver-based meal prep service that takes all this know-how and turns it into ready-to-eat, macro-balanced meals.
“If you love flavorful food but hate spending your Sunday doing dishes, I’ve got you covered,” he says.
If you’re not in Denver, you can still get his monthly meal-prep recipe drops, complete with macros, tutorials, and videos on Barbell Quisine. You’ll find categories like:
- Meal prep favorites
- Dairy-free & gluten-free options
- BBQ and smoker techniques
- And an upcoming sourdough series
Meal Prep Doesn’t Have to Suck
Meal prep is about making food that fits your life and your goals. Start small, learn the basics, create flavorful recipes, and enjoy the process.
Salt your food, cook to temp, and say goodbye to bland chicken forever.
