Paleo Dave Method: Techniques to Master Weekly Meal Prep!

This video is meant to help you overcome one of the greatest obstacles to efficient and enjoyable cooking: dull knives. Working with a dull knife is not only a royal pain, but can actually be downright dangerous. If you are struggling to make cuts and having to force the knife through the ingredients that you are working with, then you increase the likelihood of accidents—not to mention all the unnecessary wasted effort and frustration. As you will see, maintaining a sharp knife doesn’t take much, and without question, is certainly worth the little bit of extra effort.

Aside from keeping your knives sharp, learning some basic knife skills is one of the best ways to make the process of cooking more efficient and enjoyable. With just a few adjustments to your technique, you can improve your cutting ability, which will make you feel more confident and capable in the kitchen. I highly recommend that people take the time to spend a little more energy developing their relationship to one of the most important tools in the kitchen: the knife.

This particular video walks you through the process of making your own bone broth. In truth, the utility of this particular ingredient cannot be overstated. Not only is bone broth incredibly nutritious, but it also makes a very flavorful addition to any dish. I use it constantly as a base for sauces, soups, a cooking liquid for meat and veggies (i.e. braising liquid), and as a delicious way to deglaze the pan when sautéing or stir frying. The process of making bone broth couldn’t be simpler, and it’s a fantastic way to utilize vegetable scraps and the left over bones from other food projects that you would otherwise throw away.

This video is a guide to making two of my favorite ingredients for enhancing the flavor of any dish, which are both staples of my weekly culinary repertoire. The process of making them is very easy and once you have them made, they can save you a lot of time throughout the week as you prepare individual meals. Instead of having to peel and cut garlic or onions every time you want to boost the flavor of a particular dish, you can instead quickly add a couple scoops of either one, or both, of these flavorful ingredients and then keep on cooking without missing a beat. Besides, the process of roasting really adds a tremendous depth of flavor to both of these ingredients that can’t be gotten otherwise.

This video is a guide to using cuts of meat that can be quickly cooked at a moments notice, particularly when you don’t have other proteins already cooked off, or you simply need to get a good meal on the table in a hurry. As you watch the video, you’ll notice that the technique of cooking each cut of meat is essentially the same—season, sear, and finish in the oven at high temperatures for just a few minutes. Once you have a grasp of the technique, and a good idea of the kinds of meat that will work with it, you can use what you’ve learned over and over again with a variety of different meats, which will keep you, and you’re loved ones, from getting bored.

In this video, I demonstrate the process of putting together three really simple, quick, and yet, very flavorful vegetable dishes. Ultimately, the particular vegetables used in each dish are interchangeable, and the point of the video is really to highlight the three different techniques that I use—the marinade, the quick braise, and the basic sauté. Again, as I said with the video on quick meats, understanding how the technique works will give you a basis for experimenting with a wider range of different ingredients, which will ultimately make the dishes that you cook more interesting. Since vegetables play such an important part of a healthy diet, it’s really good to have a diverse repertoire of techniques for cooking them.

The basic methods of searing and baking fish are covered in this video. The techniques that I demonstrate here are some of the quickest and easiest out of the entire series. Every example that I include in this video can be prepared in under 20 minutes, which is why this set of recipes is included in the quick cook techniques category. Knowing how to prepare several different fish recipes is a great way to keep variety in your weekly meals, particularly when you need a healthy protein source in a hurry.

This is one of my favorite techniques for cooking vegetables for 2 reasons: 1) I love the particular flavor and texture of roasted vegetables and 2) It’s a really convenient way to cook a large amount of vegetables all at once. It’s advantageous to utilize the roasting technique because you can fit so many more vegetables on baking sheets than you ever could in a sauté pan. So it’s a great way to knock out a lot of weekly prep all in one session. This is one of those techniques that I like to do at least twice a week in order to stay ahead of my weekly prep. And the roasted vegetables go really well with a huge variety of different dishes.

Although the techniques that you will see in this video require longer cook times, the actual effort needed to put these things together is really quite minimal. The three techniques that I feature here are braising, brining, and roasting. These are techniques that go best with larger and typically, more economical cuts of meat. The final product achieved by each of these methods is, in my opinion, some of the best tasting meat that you can get. And if you’re strategic with the particular times of day that you prepare these recipes, then the fact that they can be left alone for several hours after they have been put on the heat will really be convenient when you’re trying to get other stuff done (For instance, I like to brine meat overnight and then, set it on the heat just before leaving the house in the morning). And when they’re done cooking, these recipes will leave you with a mountain of fantastic tasting protein that will last you throughout the week.

All I can say about this video is that I truly believe there is no better way to cook chicken than to roast the whole bird in the oven at high temperatures. Without a doubt, this method produces some of the juiciest and most tender meat of all the ways to prepare chicken. And once you know how it’s done, you’ll be shocked by how easy it really is. As a bonus, you’ll also get some super flavorful and nutritious juices that are released from the bird during the roasting process, which can be used in sauces or soups, and the carcass, which can be used for making bone broth.

In truth, I included this recipe not because it represents a fundamental technique in my repertoire but rather, because so many of my clients fervently requested that I add it to this video series. This is, by far, one of the most popular, as well as nutrient dense dishes that I teach people how to make. Initially, some people are put off by the inclusion of liver, but after they’ve tasted it, they’re hooked. It’s easy to make, it only takes a handful of ingredients, and when you’re done, you’ve got 6 to 8 portions of pure comfort food heaven, which I should mention stores great in the fridge or freezer, and is super easy to reheat when you need it most.