Make-ahead beef, chicken bean and vegetable recipes for easy dinners - The Washington Post

Anything in the realm of advance meal prep I can do to make my life easier on weeknights is a good thing. Most of the time, that involves stockpiling finished dishes on the weekend that we can eat in subsequent days. But leftovers fatigue is real, and sometimes you want to retain flexibility for different days or different appetites.

So for those who like the idea of falling somewhere in between repeat leftovers and last-minute prep, I’m proposing a few suggestions from our archives for components that can be incorporated into a finished dish or held onto until you’re ready to improvise a bit. Best of both worlds.

Our Eat Voraciously newsletter launched with a bang this year with G. Daniela Galarza’s recipe for Picadillo, at top, the Latin American staple that consists of ground meat sauteed and simmered in a tomato-based sauce and seasoned with onions, garlic, cumin and olives. And, yes, there’s a Vegan Picadillo, above, made with lentils.

Regardless of which version you choose, you can cook a batch and then use it to make quick and easy tacos or put it on top of your choice of starch, including rice or pasta.

Chicken cutlets

While these cutlets are best in scenarios where you still get the full benefit of the crispy exterior, you can also use them in some make-ahead dishes if you’re someone who, like me, ascribes to the theory that you shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

To that end, I would absolutely use the cooked, breaded cutlets in Buffalo Chicken Macaroni and Cheese, where the coating will add extra texture to the casserole. Another idea is to riff on Spicy Chicken Parm. Follow my suggestions for turning the dish into a large-format baked dish, which you can assemble in advance or use as leftovers for a few days.

Or just make the sauce and the cutlets separately, so all you have to do on a weeknight is assemble and bake the single-serving Parm stacks.

Black beans (or other beans)

Sweet potatoes

You can save a good bit of time on dinner prep by throwing a couple of sweet potatoes in the oven to roast, especially while you have it on to cook other dishes. Follow the instructions in Ellie Krieger’s Loaded Sweet Potatoes With Chili Black Beans (where, hey, you can use the black beans from above). Or make Spiced Tahini Loaded Sweet Potatoes as your starter recipe, tossing in a few extra spuds for another dish.

Grains (farro)

Follow the instructions in Autumn Salad With Farro, Apple and Roasted Persimmon to cook farro, barley or wheat berries. Go ahead and make a double batch (or more or less, depending on what else you want to do with it) to use in other dishes. For an impromptu dinner, go for a nice grain bowl.

Get a leg up on Curried Cauliflower and Farro Bake, which starts with cooked farro and makes a hearty six servings. You can assemble the dish in advance to refrigerate for a day or freeze for a few months, as well as refrigerate or freeze any leftovers. Another possibility: Use the surplus cooked farro or barley in Curried Barley and Quinoa Cakes, which also lend themselves to advance meal prep.

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