A busy dad shares his simple meal prep routine that saves time and costs about $2 per meal

• Tim Laielli, 34, freezer-preps 16-portion meals for his family to save time and money.
• Frozen food last a lot longer, and a chest freezer allows him to store many different meals at once.
• Buying ingredients in bulk is cheaper, and freezing gives his family more flexibility with meals.

For many parents, cooking for their family often involves some form of meal-prepping — making multiple portions of lunches and dinners for the week.

It comes with some challenges. Cooking enough to feed a family of four for dinner and have leftovers usually requires preparing multiple big meals a week. Then there's the issue of pleasing everyone: someone might tire of eating the same meal every night and beg for takeout instead.

Traditional meal-prep didn't work for Tim Laielli, a wedding photographer in Texas who also creates food content, or his wife and two daughters, now a freshman and a 7th-grader. It was impractical when his kids had different schedules. "They have activities virtually every single night," Laielli, 34, told Business Insider. To accommodate everyone, they would have to all eat dinner at 3 p.m. or 10 p.m.

Their routine transformed when Laielli devised a new system, making even bigger batches of food and freezing them instead.

"Right now, there's probably about six different things that they could grab from," Laielli said. They can pick out soup, green curry, or chicken teriyaki, all homemade. If their kids want to pack soup or chicken and rice for school, the meal usually thaws by lunchtime and they can microwave it for a few minutes.

Freezer-prepping not only gives his family more flexibility on when or what they eat but also saves Laielli money and time to pursue hobbies — a luxury for a busy parent.

These days, he is running, weightlifting, and reading more. He also gets to spend more time with his family, like watching movies together. "It allows me to attend all of my kids' practices, games, and recitals without having to worry about what's for dinner," he said.

He's received "overwhelmingly positive" reactions from parents, who see his method as a way to prepare home-cooked meals without feeling exhausted.

He makes a big batch at least once a week

Laielli cooks eight to 16 portions at least once a week. The family eats the meal together that night, and then he freezes the rest "for them to grab at some point over the next year on a chaotic day."

Freezer meals last a lot longer — up to a year — and taste fresher when reheated compared to refrigerated leftovers.

Depending on what he makes, Laielli will either use plastic deli containers, glass, or vacuum-sealed bags to store the meals. While glass reduces the use of plastic, the other two methods are less susceptible to freezer burn, he said.

He also has a $200 chest freezer in his garage, which gives him lots of extra storage space.

He saves money in a few ways

Laielli said his freezer-prep meals cost around $2-$3 per serving and often include quality ingredients like locally raised meat. For example, a batch of breakfast burritos cost him $29.40 total in ingredients. He spent $4.90 on 18 cage-free eggs, $5.75 for 16 grande tortillas, $3 for cheese, $7.50 for 2 lbs of breakfast sausage, $5.25 for tater tots, and $3 for bell peppers. At 16 burritos, the cost came down to $1.83 per serving.

He said he saves money by using a lot of dry goods in his cooking, like beans. He also said buying a larger volume of meat — 15 pounds of chicken is usually cheaper per pound than grabbing a pack of chicken breasts at the store.

He also saves by not having to order takeout when his kids crave something different for dinner. "It's just so much more affordable than having to swing through a burger joint on the way home from a practice," he said. Instead of spending money at Taco Bell, they can reheat a burrito at home.

It's a lot less time-consuming

Cooking larger portions adds about 50% more to his prep time. If a four-serving dinner normally takes 40 minutes to make, multiplying the portion size adds around 20 extra minutes.

Still, he said he saves a lot of time each week by getting most of his cooking done in one go. "If somebody were to do this once or even twice a week, they could truly only cook once or twice that entire week," he said.

To reheat the meals, he defrosts the burritos and sears them on a skillet for a few minutes. For spaghetti and meatballs, he freezes the meatballs and sauce and boils the pasta when it's time to eat. The same goes for any meal requiring rice: he takes 20 minutes to make a fresh batch to go with his Thai curry or gochujang chicken.

"Each dish is going to have a different reheat process," he said. "But the more you do it, the more familiar you get with it."