Do You Have a Simplified Meal Plan for Those of Us Who Don't Like to Cook or Prepare Meals?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
JJ Virgin shares a no-fuss meal plan for people who hate cooking. Build every plate with protein, healthy fats, and vegetables. Keep wild salmon and steak in the freezer, make big salads, and reheat leftovers.
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How about a simplified meal plan for those of us who don't like to cook? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Ann Marie asked recently in one of my master classes. How about a simplified meal plan for those of us who don't? And don't as in big bold capital letters, like to cook or prepare food or meals. I got you, Ann Marie Stick. Stay tuned for the answer.
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All right, Anne Marie and everybody else out there who doesn't want to spend Hours in the kitchen, I. So gotcha. Because I don't either. I mean, who does? But I also would prefer to eat at home than out because it's just better quality and I get what I like. So the trick for this is all in the prep. It's what you have on hand in your pantry, in your fridge, in your freezer, and then how you put this together that makes you able to put a meal together. Me, rather you can, too. If I can do it, you can do it. I can put a meal together in 15 minutes. So let me share with you what I keep in my pantry, my fridge, and my freezer, and then how I put it together to make the perfect plate. And then what I cook extra of. So I'll have it for the next day, too. All right. So in my pantry, and I actually exposed this, exposed my pantry on social media. I have it in Instagram. You can probably still see it in IGTV if you want to see what's in my pantry, because I was showing my prep for the pandemic. And in my pantry, I have a variety of oils. Things like extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil. Those are the main ones that I use. I also have ghee and then a ghee blend. So those are my oils. I do some walnut oil, too. I like to use that on salads. And then I have a variety of rices, wild rice and brown rice and white sushi rice. I have a variety of flours, white rice flour, brown rice flour, coconut flour, almond flour, cassava flour. I have a variety of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and little. I like the little potatoes in different colors. I have some shelf stable broth and shelf stable nut milks. I have a variety of canned legumes. I would love to say that I am the human that does dried beans, but I don't. They're a pain. I do them for lentils, but I do not do them for black beans and garbanzo beans. Then I have tomato sauces, marinaras, etc. And I have them either septic packed or in jars, not cans. Then I have a variety of pastas, lentil rice, legume. So variety of different pastas. Dark chocolate. I have a lot of dark chocolate. Let's be real. And then a variety of vinegars like champagne and red wine. A little bit of a real balsamic. But I use those sparingly because it's more of a syrup, as we know. If you've read the sugar impact diet nut butters and then my shake Mixes. And I have both my plant based shakes. I have my vanilla, chocolate and chai plant based shakes, My green smoothie cleanse and then my paleo shakes, chocolate and vanilla. And then of course my collagen and extra fiber. And then I have all my bars. And I have all my bars. So I have my dark chocolate mint and dark chocolate cherry and dark chocolate mocha and dark chocolate coconut fiber and my keto bars and my chocolate brownie bars and then also my keto chews. So that's what's in my pantry. In my fridge. So in my fridge I keep hummus, I keep siete tortillas, I keep ghee and butter. If I've opened the ghee and I've got kerrygold butter, I've got ice cream tea, I like to make it fresh. And then I buy fresh vegetables. And that's the thing that I go and get fresh vegetables and berries. Berries. If my kids are here, I tend to not, I tend to only use frozen ones in my smoothie. And then nut cheeses, almond nut cheese, the. I do both the ricotta and the cream. And then also I do some of the different shredded cheeses and sliced cheeses. All nut cheeses. All right. Then in the freezer I keep berries and cherries. I freeze green bananas, I freeze chunks of avocado. I keep cauliflower rice and broccoli rice. These are like the most amazing inventions ever. I keep some gluten free pizza crusts. I keep some gluten free almond flour, Capello's noodles and capello's crusts. And if you are not egg sensitive, these are awesome. Oh my gosh. And I keep frozen peppers and onions, frozen mushrooms, and then I keep a variety of protein that I get from butcherbox and vital choice. So grass fed meat, pastured pork and chicken and lamb, and then wild salmon and wild halibut and wild scallops and then some shrimp. So keep all that stuff around. Okay, then. And bone broth. I also have bone broth in the freezer. Okay. And then I also have some other nut milks in the fridge. All right. So that's what I got in my pantry, fridge and freezer. So here's how simple it is. I always talk about putting things together from the plate. So that means on your plate you have some protein, some healthy fats and some slow low carbs that include lots of non starchy vegetables and a little bit of slow low carbs. So when I'm making a protein for dinner, wild salmon, again, you just heard the drill. We make extra to have for lunch the next day or dinner the next day. You can always throw it into a stir fry the next day, make it simple, easy peasy. When we're making wild rice and I like to cook it with bone broth, I make extra to have for a couple nights because you can throw it into the stir fry. So one of my easiest dinners is to take wild salmon. I literally pull it out of the freezer. I then sear it on the stove and we're done. I will then take cauliflower rice out of the freezer. I'll cook wild rice with bone broth. I will take cauliflower rice. I'll make twice as much cauliflower rice, like a two to one serving serving of cauliflower rice to wild rice. And now I've got my healthy fats and protein from the wild salmon. I've got the wild rice and cauliflower rice. I've got my veggies and the cauliflower rice and the wild rice. It's my slow, low carb. And I add some ghee, so some more healthy fats. If I need a little something something afterwards, I have a little dark chocolate. You can save all of that the next day, heat it up, have it for lunch, but that is how easy it is. Another great example would be a grass fed steak. Roasting some potatoes, they're especially great the next day cooled down for the resistant starch and some steamed broccoli. With ghee, literally, we do this stuff, we put it together in 15 minutes or less. It is all about having the right stuff on hand. And if I'm making a salad, I make a salad for a couple days in a row and seal it in airtight bags so that you know it's all in the prep, right? So that I have it around and it's easy for me to have for lunch and dinner. So again, it is all in the prep and look at how you can make double and use it the next day. All right, hope that helps. So and the other thing I'd say is let's move it from I don't like cooking to I love to make healthy meals in minutes. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show or by going to subscribetoj.com.
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