Meal Planning 101: Make a List of Go-To Meals

It may seem obvious, but be sure to do this before you meal plan.

Do you have your meal plan list of go-to weeknight dinners?

Key to a successful meal planning strategy is having a list of go-to meals that you enjoy to eat. Why?

First, narrowing down the thousands of meals you could eat for the week into a curated list of meals that you, and your people, like to eat makes meal planning decisions even faster. Imagine if you sat down with a stack of cookbooks to meal plan each week. That’s such a big pool of recipes to choose from. You could sit there for hours just looking at recipes. And if you start with Google or on Pinterest, it can be even worse! Too many options.

By starting without a list, you may meal plan recipes you’ve never tried. You may add something to the plan you don’t know if you - or your eaters - even enjoy. That’s ok on occasion but shouldn’t be a regular habit. All those new, unfamiliar and untried recipes will likely lead to a long, frustrating week and defeat the whole point of meal planning talked about in the last post in this series. The curated list helps you meal plan more efficiently AND it guarantees that you are regularly eating meals you enjoy and are low effort to make.

Second, once you have this list you can identify common, essential ingredients with which to stock your kitchen pantry. And, you can make a master grocery list for these meals. This curated list of your go-tos will help you create a meal plan and grocery list for the week - or month - all that much faster.

Learn from my mistakes here. For a long time I kept this “list” of our favorite meals in my head. Sadly, I had grouped these meals as “good” and “bad” meals. For example, my husband and I both enjoy a good hamburger. But, I had categorized them as “bad” and avoided them. This caused extra decision fatigue when grocery shopping. I tried to only choose the ingredients for “good” meals. Yet there I was in the grocery store, gazing longingly at hamburger meat and rolls but forcing myself to “be strong” and wheel past them to ingredients I was deeming “good.” (Which really just distracted me from my actual grocery list and I often forgot items I actually needed.) You know what else? Often we’d end up going out to eat and not make what I had planned, because I was still craving that burger. So much stress and mental exhaustion!

First, I started to adjust how I looked at food. As I shed the unnecessary and self-imposed guilt and moral judgment over food, I was able to be more intentional around food choices. And then I finally sat down with pen and paper and wrote the list of go-to meals that should have been guiding my meal plan. As soon as I wrote down our list on actual paper, meal planning became even easier. From this short, curated list of meals we enjoy and recipes I find easy to make, I was able to quickly pick meals for the week. I hung that list on our fridge and used it every time I sat down to meal plan. It helped me tremendously, and it will help you too.

Step 1: Choose a day to plan. Step 2: Make your list of go-to meals that you, and your people, enjoy to eat.

Making Your List

So what goes on the list? Keep it simple:

Meals you (and your people) enjoy eating
Meals you feel comfortable making (even better if they don’t require a recipe)
Meals you can get the ingredients for with relative ease
Meals that you enjoy eating again as leftovers

Are you cooking for others? If so, your list should include meals they like to eat as well. And not just a general idea. An actual, specific list. When I first wrote our list, what I had actually written was my list. When I took it to my husband and asked what he thought, I learned so much. By the end of the conversation, I had an even longer, better list and greater clarity on our Venn Diagram of meals (his favorites, my favorites, and mutual favorites). P.S. Burgers are on our list. We actually eat them less now that I’ve dropped the food rules and welcomed them onto our list of go-to meals. And we enjoy them 100% of the time, guilt free. So ask your people, including your children, what their favorite simple-to-make dinners are and add them to the list.

How long is the list? That depends on you! Start small and build capacity over time if you want to. I started with about 12 items. As I’ve learned new recipes over the years, my capacity has grown. You can see our current list below, it’s about doubled in size.

What do you mean by a go-to meal? Dinners you want to eat and can make at home. That’s it. Don’t overthink it. Spaghetti and meatballs. Hamburgers. Nachos. Tuna casserole. Trader Joe’s frozen Chinese food. Grilled cheese. Set the food rules aside and think about what you want to eat for dinner. That’s what goes on this list. This is what Kenda Adachi, The Lazy Genius, calls “planning your hot dogs.” If you want a deeper dive on this topic, check out her podcast episode on identifying your Brainless Crowd Pleasers. Sure, your list might be simple. But if you’ve already made the decision, you don’t have to think about it again. It’s not complicated, don’t make it so. Meal planning is to help you kick the stress out of your kitchen, don’t invite it back in.

Where do you keep the list? You may want to keep it somewhere easy to view when meal planning. I kept mine on the fridge for about 6 months until I wasn’t referring to it any longer. Now, it’s in my folder of recipes (pictured below!) and I refer to it when I sit down to meal plan and need help with direction for the week. You could certainly keep it in a digital file, perhaps the Notes app on your phone.

What about recipes I want to try but don’t know if I like yet? They are great to have, but they don’t belong on the list! Keep being inspired to learn new kitchen skills and try new recipes. But don’t add a recipe to the list of go-tos until you feel comfortable enough to make them with little to no reference of the recipe. And be sure your people have confirmed that they like the new meal enough that it has earned a place on the list.

Tip: keep a Pinterest Board or “Saves” file on Instagram/Facebook for recipes you want to try so you can find them again but don’t have to make them immediately. I keep a short list of new-recipes I want to try on my meal plan. This helps me remember recipes I was inspired to make but relieves the pressure of feeling like I have to make it now. If I have time during the week I can certainly pivot to one of these if I have the ingredients, but I don’t have to. This strategy has helped me stick to the plan and maintain my grocery budget while still trying new recipes and having fun in the kitchen!

Quick clarification on favorites v. go-to meals : your go-to list should be dinners you enjoy AND are easy to make. That likely is different than choosing your absolute favorite dishes. For example, you may love steak and lobster with baked potatoes. But that’s a special treat or something to order out, not a week night go-to. So focus on the meals that are easy for you to make, and if they are also favorites you’ve got a win-win situation. But keep the favorites that require more work to make as a special treat or for weekend cooking.

This is my actual list! The checks represent mutual favorites. Make a list of your favorite, easy to make dinners and start using it today to make meal planning even easier.

Stock Your Pantry & Make a Master Grocery List

How many times have you written a grocery list from scratch in your life? A few hundred times? A few thousand? We’ll talk more about how to hack your grocery shopping next week. Once you’ve written down your list of go-to meals, think about the ingredients needed to make them. Are there common ingredients? Keep your pantry stocked with these.

Your go-to list should help you be more efficient when it comes to meal planning. Go make yours!

Our Go-To Dinner List

Shepherd’s Pie

Salmon with Roasted Veggies over Grains

Tuna Casserole

Enchiladas

Fish Tacos with Creamy Cilantro Slaw

Chicken Broccoli Casserole

Cacio e Pepe

Coconut Curry Shrimp/Fish

Potato, Spinach & Sausage Hash w/Eggs

Chili with Cornbread

Cauliflower & Potato Balti Bowls

Chicken Vindaloo

Gingery Chicken and Coconut Soup

Risotto

Spaghetti Squash & Meatballs

Burgers

Bagers & Mash

Fried Rice

Cilantro Lime Chicken

Mediterranean Salad

Amatriciana & Bucatini

Nachos

Carnitas (as featured in What We’re Eating 1/31)

Pesto Pasta tossed with Roasted Veggies & Chilies

Want more?

We’re talking Kitchen Essentials at The Wandering Hearth this year. In this series we are focusing on Meal Planning 101. And if you want to learn more right now, I’ve got a free meal planning template to get you started. It includes:

A quick start guide on how to meal plan
A planner template
A sample week of meal planning from my kitchen
Directions on how to write a detailed (block) plan
The lazy version of meal planning (no judgement here, we’ve all got more important things to do than worry about meals three times a day!)

Grab your copy below by joining The Hearthside mailing list.