Meal Prep Portions
Free Meal Prep Portions calculator with clear step-by-step results.
About Meal Prep Portions
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.
Formulas
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
Worked example
With the default values below, Meal Prep Portions returns Meals to prepare of 20. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- People to feedaccepts 1–30
- 2
- Prepped meals per person per dayaccepts 0.5–6
- 2
- Days to coveraccepts 1–30
- 5
- Cooked protein per mealminimum 0 g
- 150 g
- Cooked carbohydrate per mealminimum 0 g
- 180 g
- Vegetables per mealminimum 0 g
- 150 g
- Cooked yield from rawaccepts 30–130 %
- 75 %
Results
- Meals to prepare
- 20 meals
- Raw protein to buy
- 4.000 kg
- Total cooked food
- 9.600 kg
- Food per container
- 480 g
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Meal count
- 3Raw protein required
- 4Meals to prepare= 20 meals
- 5Raw protein to buy= 4.000 kg
- 6Total cooked food= 9.600 kg
- 7Food per container= 480 g
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 7 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 3 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
- 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.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
What cooking yield should I use?
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.
How long do prepped meals keep?
Three to four days refrigerated for most cooked dishes, or three months frozen. Prepping five days means freezing the back half of the batch.