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The Best Dump and Go Meals for Youth Sport Families

TrueSport

May 1, 2023 | 3 minutes, 52 seconds read

The Best Dump and Go Meals for Youth Sport Families

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If you’re a busy parent, dump-and-go meals should be your best friend when it comes to getting nutritious, filling, and even budget-friendly meals ready in minutes. The concept is simple: You dump your ingredients together, hit a few buttons, and come home to a just-about-ready-to-serve gourmet meal. All it takes is a little bit of preparation and a pressure cooker or a slow cooker.

Here, TrueSport Expert Kristen Ziesmer, a registered dietitian and board-certified specialist in sports dietetics, shares a few of her favorite tips and tricks for mastering dump-and-go meals, as well as customizing them for your picky (or hungry) athletes.

5 Tips to get you going

  1. Invest in a pressure cooker. While a slow cooker is a great tool most of the time, if you’ve forgotten to defrost dinner, a pressure cooker can have your frozen chicken thawed and cooked to perfection in under an hour. And since pressure cookers also have a standard slow cooker setting, they’re the perfect multi-tasking kitchen tool. Ziesmer says that no busy family should be without one of these!
  2. Pre-organize your ingredients. If you’re really short on time on weekdays, Ziesmer suggests a new kind of Sunday afternoon meal prep. Rather than cooking your dozen chicken breasts, she suggests using gallon-sized bags (plastic or silicone) to pack all of your ingredients together: Your choice of protein, vegetables, beans, spices, sauces, and any other additions all get added to the bag, which can go in the fridge if it’ll be cooked that week, or stashed in the freezer if you’re meal prepping for the month.
  3. Play with your spices and sauces. The gallon-bag strategy is a great way to meal prep because you can set up the bags in a row and prep them with similar proteins and vegetables, then mix up the spices and sauces so you’re not always eating the same exact meal. Chicken and vegetables can have a Mexican, Thai, Indian, or Italian flair, depending on what seasoning and sauce you use—so you save money by buying your proteins and vegetables in bulk, while maximizing nutrient density.
  4. Take advantage of easy, cheap alternatives like canned beans for protein and frozen vegetables versus fresh. With inflation on the rise in every aisle of the grocery store, get creative with your meal prep by analyzing which is cheaper: fresh or frozen vegetables. You may also want to buy in bulk whenever possible, especially with ingredients like rice that are used often.
  5. Get creative with your serving strategy. Most dump-and-go meals are served over rice or pasta (or with rice or pasta cooked directly in). But you can vary your serving style to make meals a bit more creative. Shredded chicken can be served over a baked potato, while pulled pork could go on a sandwich or top a rice bowl, says Ziesmer. And almost any meat dish made in a slow cooker can be converted to a nacho platter by topping tortilla chips with the meat and vegetables and smothering them with salsa and guacamole.

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