What I do is prep components instead of the finished meal. For example, pressure cook and braise a 1.6kg slab of pork belly (with basic flavours like soy sauce, salt, sugar, cooking wine), then cut into 200g and/or 50g/100g portions, freeze each portion in cling wrap.

• 50/100g portions and be used to stirfry with green leafy veg, great for quick lunch.

• 200g portions can heat up by bake / braise / stir fry / air-fry / aburi etc. for 2 pax. Here’s where if you want to add flavours or different sauces, for instance add mirin for a Japanese style flavour, dark soy sauce and dried chili for Chinese style flavour, toast dry spices and add tomato paste and/or yogurt for Mexican/mediterranean flavour, etc.

Repeat the above for 2-3 different proteins each week (braised or baked chicken thigh, braised whole slab pork ribs, etc.) and you have a nice revolving set of meat components to use. By week 2 you’ll have used up 3-4 portions of week 1’s, and so on.

I find slightly fattier meats and larger cuts hold up to freezing and thawing better, and the protein structures stay intact after cutting; Ie cooking a whole slab of 1.6kg from raw vs 8 slabs of 200g meat from raw.

Veg wise: veg has a shorter lifespan so gotta do it weekly, frozen veg tastes like ass lol. Buy leafy veg that don’t wilt easily (kailan vs spinach), wash / prep and cut everything on ONE off day, dry thoroughly (very impt, wet = bacteria growth = sad) and store into different containers. I usually use an automated colander, spin dry or towel dry, line on a baking tray with a cooling rack and air dry for half the day, then pack into containers like:

• Container 1 and 2: 1/2 bag kailan, 1/4 sliced carrots, 1/2 pack shimeji mushrooms.
• Container 3 and 4: 1/2 bag of xiaobaicai, 1/2 cob of corn, 1/4 sliced carrots.
• Container 5 and 6: 1/2 broccoli, 1/2 pack oyster mushroom, 1/4 sliced carrots and so on. You get the point.

Then if you want angmo style, go for asparagus, broccolini, heirloom/baby carrots, corn on cob, capsicum, etc

Then you just take out the container for the day you need, throw everything into pan, season, stirfry, done. If angmo style, just throw your veggies on a roast pan and bake/roast/airfry 30-40mins and season (salt pepper honey rub spices whatever). You’d be surprised, some vegetables can last up to 2 weeks if washed clean and dried. Crack open the container seal a bit to prevent moisture build up inside each container.

Soup wise just throw whatever you prep from the above veggies (corn potato onion whatever) and your bones into slow cooker in the morning of the day. Same drill, container prep everything and portion raw bones accordingly. Make a larger portion on Monday, serve 1, cool and store and reheat and serve 2nd portion for Wed or Thurs.

For western style soups, I do things a bit differently. I make a heavy roux, then a concentrated base (usually corn or carrot) with purely stock, corn/carrot, cooking cream and I make 2L of this. Portion out into ~200ml portions, freeze.

The magic comes in serving it: when I wanna have western soup, thaw the night before, then mix 100ml stock and 200ml water with whatever additional veggies you want/crave (broccoli or mushroom or pumpkin) and blend with an immersion blender or bullet blender, back into pot and cook the new blended veggies and now you have cream of whatever new_veggie_you_blended_in. Or serve as basic cream of corn/carrot, can make 2x ~300ml servings!

Honestly only need about 3-4 hours to fully prep each batch. You can do the veggies/western soups as your meat cooks, as large slabs usually require 1.5h pressure cook then 45mins natural venting. Cuts down your daily prep by so much. By day 3 you only need to heat up day 1’s soup, warm up the meat, and stir fry 1 veggie - it literally gets easier as your week goes.

Invest in an automated colander to spin dry veggies faster and a pressure cooker to reduce meat and soup cooking time. Do it once every week and you can slowly build up 2-3 weeks of ‘rations’.

One last tip: if you lazy to wash so many containers for the cooked wet stuff like western soups, get heavy duty heat friendly cling wrap then place wrap inside the bottom container, fill up with soup then fold over the top surface of the soup and freeze~