Free Meal Prep Portions calculator with clear step-by-step results.
Meal prep planning fails on the shopping list, not the cooking. Portions are specified per meal in cooked weight, and the raw protein figure divides by cooking yield because meat loses roughly a quarter of its weight to moisture - the single biggest source of under-buying.
Meal count
Meals = people x meals per person per day x days
Raw protein required
Raw grams = meals x cooked protein per meal / cooking yield
Food safety guidance: cool cooked food quickly, refrigerate below 5 C within two hours, and reheat thoroughly to 75 C. Rice and cooked poultry are particularly time-sensitive.
Around 70-75% for roasted or pan-cooked meat, 80-85% for poached chicken and over 100% for rice and pasta, which absorb water. Set it above 100 for those.
Three to four days refrigerated for most cooked dishes, or three months frozen. Prepping five days means freezing the back half of the batch.