#320: Easy Plant-Based Meal Prep with Rip and Carrie
Think plant-based cooking takes too much time? Rip and producer Carrie Barrett are here to prove otherwise. In this energizing mini-episode of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, the duo dismantles one of the biggest myths around a whole food, plant-based lifestyle—that it’s complicated and time-consuming.
With a mix of personal stories and practical strategies, Rip and Carrie show how to make plant-based meals fast, fun, and family-friendly. From the “bowl build” method to frozen food shortcuts, they reveal how simple tweaks can transform cooking into an easy, joyful part of your day.
Here are some of their top tips:
Build, don’t cook. Forget fussy recipes—create vibrant bowls by layering grains, frozen veggies, beans, and a tasty sauce. Here are bowl builder ideas for breakfast, supper, salads, and sandwiches
Stock the freezer. Frozen fruits, veggies, and grains like quinoa or brown rice are nutritious, affordable, and ready in minutes.
Batch cook the basics. Make steel-cut oats, beans, or quinoa in an Instant Pot to save time during busy weekdays.
Transform familiar foods. Pizza and tacos become plantstrong with pre-made crusts, simple sauces, and colorful toppings. Enjoy this pizza guide and get creative on your next meal!
Set yourself up for success. Prepping ingredients or setting them out in advance helps you overcome inertia and makes cooking effortless.
Beyond the kitchen strategies, Rip and Carrie talk about the psychology of cooking—how small, manageable wins build confidence until you feel like a true “plantstrong ninja warrior” in your own home.
Their message is clear: you don’t need hours in the kitchen to eat this way. With simple prep, a few shortcuts, and a willingness to experiment, plant-based cooking becomes a joyful, sustainable lifestyle.
As Rip reminds us at the close: the hardest part is just getting started. Once you take that first step, the path to easy, delicious meals opens wide—and it’s always, PLANTSTRONG.
Episode Resources
Bowl builder ideas for breakfast, supper, salads, and sandwiches
Enjoy this pizza guide and get creative on your next meal!
To stock up on the best-tasting, most convenient, 100% PLANTSTRONG foods, including our all new chilis, check out all of our PLANTSTRONG products HERE
Learn more about our 2025 Plantstrong Retreat in Black Mountain, NC - Nov 9-14, 2025
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Full Episode Transcription via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
[0:05] If you think that plant-based cooking means hours in the kitchen, I want you to think again. In this mini episode, my producer, Carrie, and I bust the it's too time-consuming myth, and we share some simple, realistic ways to help you make healthy meals in minutes. We'll have some of these tips right after these words from PLANTSTRONG.
[0:32] This November, I want to invite you to join us for six restorative days in Black Mountain, North Carolina. You're going to be surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. You'll be nourished by whole PLANTSTRONG meals and you will be supported by a community that truly gets it. And at the PLANTSTRONG Retreat, we're going to be moving our bodies, we're going to calm and center our minds, and we're going to rediscover what it means to feel alive and aligned. We're going to have all kinds of expert speakers. We're going to engage in deep conversations. We're going to find time to breathe. But this is your chance to come home to yourself. If you're a physician, a physician assistant, nurse, or nurse practitioner, you will earn continuing education credit as part of the registration fee.
[1:32] I want you to know that space is limited, and this experience, it always fills up. But visit liveplanstrong.com to join us in November, and I hope to see you on the mountain. I think that one of the biggest reasons that people tend to shy away from a whole food, plant-based lifestyle is because they're convinced that it is going to eat up all their time. And, you know, I kind of get it because if you're coming from the standard American and ultra processed food diet, the idea of having to prep vegetables, cooking from scratch and learning all kinds of new recipes, it can feel daunting and. That's what today's episode is about. My producer, Carrie, and I were going to reveal in this mini episode that it doesn't have to be time-consuming. And in fact, once you get into a rhythm, plant-based cooking can be faster and tastier than your old routine. So let's dig into some of these time-saving tips for PLANTSTRONG cooking.
[2:46] Carrie, we're back. Ripper. Another episode of the PLANTSTRONG podcast, mini version. Yes, yes. We're still coming up with a title for these. So if anybody has any suggestions, I would love to hear that feedback. But I think our goal with these mini-sodes is to address a lot of the concerns and questions and barriers that people have to making this whole food plant-based lifestyle sustainable for them. And the common objections that we hear are ones that we all experience.
[3:21] So that's why we wanted to bring these episodes to you is just we're all in this together and I think we can benefit so much from your experience, Rip, from my experience for doing this now almost 17 years and also crowdsource some ideas from people. We would love for people to chime in on the community page on Facebook. We'll link to that in the show notes, of course, to give your ideas to some of these objections. And today we wanted to talk about another big one that we hear a lot is that people don't feel like they have the time to cook from scratch or they feel like meal prep and batch cooking. It feels overwhelming to them. And so for some reason, Rip, and I think that this is just a myth we need to bust right out of the gate. For some reason, people think that eating a whole food plant-based diet is more time-consuming than eating the standard American diet. Well, I think that whenever you're...
[4:24] Learning something new, there always is going to be a little bit of a learning curve that's involved. So if I was used to making just a typical American meat and potato diet, I could see how this, like, what am I going to make? And oh my God, it's going to be expensive. And how am I going to shop? And then how am I supposed to cook this stuff? So I get that. However, as is the case with so many things in life, once you dive into it, you realize, oh my God, this is like a piece of kale, right? This is really easy. And so I think that you and I both would agree, when you actually get down to it, the nuts and bolts of meal prep and cooking and chopping and doing everything, it's really no more time-consuming than how people are currently cooking. Unless you're just throwing a lean cuisine in the microwave, and then I get it. Right. Or driving through a drive-thru for dinner every night. Yeah. Then yeah, you are going to take a little bit more time than you normally would take. But as you said in a previous episode, that is part of the adventure.
[5:43] To me, learning how to use a knife properly learning how to peel avocados and i mean it's great you know how to what i have found is like how to cut an onion yeah how to how to properly cut a bell pepper like seed it you know take out the kind of the guts a little bit and then turn it the right side up so that you can slice through it quickly. It's almost meditative too.
[6:13] But I don't want to get away from the fact that it really is not time intensive. And the thing is, you know, our whole philosophy is bowl build. Don't make huge recipes from scratch, especially when you're just starting out. When you're starting out, you want this to be absolutely drop dead simple. Yes. And convenient. And part of that convenience does include frozen vegetables. It does include frozen fruit. If you are going down the frozen food aisle to get tater tots or whatever you would normally get going down the frozen food aisle, find the vegetables. Find the ones that you like. Even if it's just corn, frozen corn is so great over salads. It's so great over taco night or even on pizzas. So these things, these quote unquote normal foods that everyone eats, tacos and pizza, you can plant strongify them by heading down the frozen food department. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because there's almost nothing that you cannot buy.
[7:24] In a frozen version that is just as healthy, just as nutritious as its fresh version. So cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, kale, black-eyed peas, mango, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, tropical mixes. And then when it comes to whole grains, it's amazing now. You can go to Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Kroger, any of these places. And you can get these frozen brown rice packs or frozen mixed grain packs or quinoa. You throw it in the microwave for literally three minutes and you have got a hearty thing of rice that can serve as your base in your bowl for just about any dish that you can imagine. Yep. Or, you know, you're probably already cooking pasta because that is part of the standard diet. And if you just switch to a whole grain pasta or a bean-based pasta, and you're still spending the exact amount of time that you would be by eating the old way.
[8:34] Well, that's a great point. And same thing with pizza. We have pizza night usually one day a week, and we use a whole grain pizza crust kit. And then we put on our red sauce and then we basically have frozen corn. We've got sliced onions. We have mushrooms. We have black beans. And sometimes when we have it around, we have sun-dried tomatoes, we always have tofu, and then everybody customizes their half or their whole pizza, and then we throw it all in the oven together.
[9:13] And it's actually a really fun family mealtime event, but that usually is on a weekend. Yeah, and I know that we have, and we will share in the show notes, these invaluable resources for you. I know that we have both a pizza building kit that shows – it illustrates dozens of different combinations that you can do and make it fun, as Rip was saying. And then I know that I will also share in the show notes a bowl building guide that also talks about your bases, the greens that you might want to put on top of it, the toppings extravaganza, the sparks that you put on it, the sauces. And none of that requires, really, if you're buying a lot of frozen food, none of it requires that much preparation or that much time. You are truly assembling at that point and not cooking anything from scratch. From a bulk perspective and from a batch cooking perspective, I can say from personal experience, I batch cook oatmeal about every three or four days because, like you, Rip, I think I was a horse in another lifetime. And so I eat a ton of steel cut oats and I do batch cook those in, uh, I use an instant pot and I use an instant pot really for, and it's an appliance that everyone is so afraid of, but I really use it a lot for those bases, my grain. So I do quinoa in the instant pot.
[10:42] I do brown rice in the instant pot, potatoes and oats. Like those are my standards that I pretty much cook every week or two.
[10:51] That's so interesting because I have not even ventured in that direction yet. And if those of you that have been listening to the podcast for a while probably know that...
[11:01] Three years ago, I swore that I would start using the Instapot, and I haven't. But I really want to. I really want to. I need to make that happen. But what I love doing with oats is I either make steel-cut oats, and I just take the time to make them, 15 minutes or whatever it is, or I love doing overnight oats with old-fashioned rolled oats, And I throw in those with mango bananas, chia seeds, some cinnamon, and then typically one of our granola mixes, like the chocolate. And I'll sprinkle that in there with different layers.
[11:42] And then I fill it up with typically almond milk, put it in the fridge the night before, and it is like lickety split. I am out the door with it and, you know, it's so easy. Yeah. Did you say chia seeds in there? Yeah. Yeah. And I love what chia seeds do to overnight oats. If you put enough milk in it, it sort of gives it that pudding consistency because those chia seeds expand and they become a little bit gelatinous in there, but it puts meat on your bones. Yeah. So I do love a good overnight oat. And quite honestly, it's also one of the reasons why you started the PLANTSTRONG Food Line was to make this lifestyle sustainable and help make it convenient for you so that you can succeed and not spend an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen. Yeah. And so not only is it nutritious, not only is it delicious, but these are also kind of foundational, for the most part, foundational ingredients that will make this life super convenient. So we obviously, we offer pizza crust kits. We offer pancake and waffle mixes. You just add water or milk of your choice, stir it up, and you're ready to go.
[13:01] As long as you've put your skillet on, you know, medium-high heat or medium heat, in three minutes, you've got pancakes going. It's why the cereals, you just add milk and you're out the door. Yeah.
[13:15] I think the epitome of convenience food that we have created are our chilies and stews. Oh, home run. So we have 10 chilies and stews. Each one, each packet serves, it's supposed to be two servings. It's one for me, but it depends upon your appetite. But literally, you just tear off the perforated top, pour it into a microwave-safe bowl or a skillet if you're freaked out by microwaves. And then you put it over a bed of arugula, chopped up kale, leafy greens of your choice, or baked potatoes. And then you've got a meal in less than three minutes. Yeah. Less than three minutes. It is. And we made some the other day when we were at your house doing some filming. You were filming what I eat in a day. And you, I don't know, over that four or five hours that we were filming, you probably made eight or nine meals. That's how quick a lot of the prep went. Well, it was actually three and a half hours. Was it three and a half? Okay. And you made a ton of food. You made a ton of meals. Yeah. And then like one of the things we did, we took the leftover arugula, sweet potato, and chunky chipotle chili, the leftover, and then we made it into quesadillas. Yes. Yes. Sweet potato, chunky chipotle, quesadillas.
[14:39] And so you learn little ways to maximize and almost upgrade your leftovers into meals the next day. Yeah. And I think the thing that I want to hone in on here is that it doesn't take any more time. And it shouldn't be overwhelming.
[15:02] I think sometimes we just don't want to do it. Like there's the inertia. Like you just don't want to do it. Like some days I just don't want to exercise, but what step, what small step in this process can you make tomorrow that's going to make this obstacle just a little easier for you to get over? Is it, is it buying one of the chilies and stews and putting it on a sweet potato and just seeing how that works for you? Yeah. See, see how quick that was. It might be just getting that instant pot out of your cupboard, which I know it's in everybody's pantries, probably gone unused for years, but like try to make a batch of oats and see how that feels for you. One little thing at a time. Well, and what I love about that is it. So one of the things that my wife always does in the morning, if we know that we're going to be having pasta that night, she will, before she leaves the house in the morning, she will fill up that four-quart pot with water almost to the top. She'll put it on the stove. She'll have the lid there, and she'll have the pasta that she's taken out of the pantry and put right there.
[16:15] And then it's amazing how all of a sudden the decision-making is so much reduced and it's not as overwhelming and the inertia, therefore, doesn't set in. So one of the reasons why every night before I go to bed, so I make it easier for myself to go to swim practice in the morning, I will lay out all my clothes for the day. I will lay out exactly what I'm going to step into so that I don't have to do it in the morning when I'm tired and fumbling around in the dark. So I step into my whatever it is, my sweatpants, my Birkenstocks. I've got the clothes I'm going to wear in my backpack. And I'm literally, I brush my teeth and I'm out the door.
[16:57] Like maximum efficiency and ease. You've set the environment up for the type of day that you want to have. Or as I know Adam said, has a great phrase for it. It's like, create the environment that you want to be in. Yeah. Yeah. Have your environment look like your goals. There it is. That's the phrase that he says that is so spot on for me. And I think we know that it's not hard. We know that this is not anything harder than you ever have done in life. If you've given birth to children, if you've sent them to college, if you've had to deal with divorce or job changes in your life, trust me, you have navigated things in life that are way more difficult than making oatmeal for the week. And, and so I just think the get over that, you know, if we could just get over that fear, that inertia, that one little thing that's like, that's stopping you. I think you're well on your way, but it's just kind of taking that first little step. And then what's going to happen is you're going to take that first little step.
[17:56] And then what's going to happen you're going to have a success you're going to have a victory that is going to start to compound and before you know it you're going to be this, PLANTSTRONG ninja warrior that is just you've got all these different systems in place you've got habits in place and you are kicking this thing into goal every day and every week and every month. And before you know it, it's just, it ain't no thing. It's just part of who you are.
Overcoming Time Barriers in Cooking
[18:26] Exactly. Make it part of who you are. And thank you for sharing some of your tips, Rip. I like your wife's tip about leaving the pasta out in the morning and already filling that bowl so that all she has to do is just turn pasta in and turn the heater on, turn the burner.
[18:47] I call it a heater. Carrie. So I think that that was a lot of great information right there. And I hope that people understand that when it comes to time, um, There really is no more time. It's just you got to get out of your head and actually start implementing. And I think you'll realize it's it's drop dead simple. And then the other thing is.
[19:18] Make understand the you don't need to be a Julia child and start creating these really fancy recipes from all of the whole food plant based. Vegan chefs that are out there. Start by making super simple, no recipe recipe bowls. And before you know it, you're going to have an amazing collection of recipes that you own, that you like, that are customizable. They're going to work for you and your life. You got it. And we'll put those resources of the Build-A-Bowl and the Build Your Pizza in the show notes, along with some of these other tips that we've been riffing on for the last, what, 15 or so minutes. And again, thanks for letting me be a part of this. I get to hear all this great information. And it's a blast for me to be able to sort of pipe in my two cents. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's great having to be part of it. And I look forward to the next one. You got it. PLANTSTRONG. PLANTSTRONG, baby.
Simplifying Plant-Based Cooking
[20:26] The biggest hurdle is always just getting started and i'm telling you once you put that, first foot in front of you it is gonna get easier and you're gonna find yourself cooking faster eating better and feeling stronger and then before you know it you'll be a full-on PLANTSTRONG ninja warrior in the kitchen. So if you've been hesitating because you think that it means hours of chopping and cooking, this episode is your permission slip to make it simple, fun, and make it always, always PLANTSTRONG. Yeah. The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich and Ami Mackey if you like what you hear do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones you can always leave a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and while you're there make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode as always this and every episode is dedicated to my parents Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.