Worth My Money: Mealime Pro
A little over a year ago, I decided that I would address one of the big glaring holes in my skillset (I realize how dumb and _____ — I removed the best word for this — this sounds) and learn how to cook. For most of my adult life, I’ve taken this dumb measure of pride in not knowing how to cook. Using it as a crutch or a bit for laughs, or some other nonsense.
All of that changed for me after listening to the talk show host Jimmy Kimmel talk about how much he enjoys cooking for others on a podcast episode. He said that the primary reason for his enjoyment is that it’s actually something tangible that he can create. He as an entertainer, similar to me in my office, doesn’t actually make anything. Well, nothing physical. Sure we code, create Word documents, bang out emails and IMs — but we don’t have something physical we can hold in our hands and show it off to people. Hearing that cooking gives that to Jimmy, something real and beneficial and enjoyable to those he cares about, grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go. It finally clicked and I couldn’t not dive into the world of cooking.
But, I had a problem. A big thing that always held me back from getting into cooking was the issue of knowing how to juggle all of the various parts of a meal. It was a frustrating mystery to me on how long different things took to cook. Which things could cook without my constant direct supervision. When to start one item so that it would be ready alongside the other three sides so that the people eating wouldn’t be sitting there consuming one side at a time. It was daunting to me each time I had tried to cook a meal before.
In steps the app Mealime. I don’t remember how I found it, but it changed my whole experience and enjoyment of cooking. Instead of a list of recipes that could be cooked, it showed entire meals: main dish and sides, together. You select a healthy meal that is deliciously photographed and presented (which is huge to me), and it shows you all of the tools you need, a list of the ingredients, and then a step by step order on how to cook everything so that it is all ready at once.
This step by step portion was a game changer for me. For instance, step one may have you rinse the rice and start it on the stove, then step two will have you chop the vegetables, followed by step three seasoning the meat, and so on. Every step is designed to ensure that you aren’t just sitting around unsure of what to do or what’s next. It all works together to ensure that every part of the meal is complete by the final step.
I know, maybe you knew how to do all of that, but I also know that I’m not alone in this struggle. Many people that I’ve spoken to, yes, most of them guys, were frustrated with those aspects of cooking as well.
But that’s not the only great thing about Mealime. The app is really designed around the whole experience of creating a whole plan for your week. Yes you can look at individual recipes, but the real magic comes with planning your week’s worth of meals. You start by selecting the type of recipes you’d like to cook, including what ingredients you want to avoid (whether it’s because they are gross, like pickles, or because of allergies). Mealime supports every major type of diet out there including Paleo, Keto, vegetarian, vegan, low-carb, etc. While I did start out listing some ingredients I wanted to avoid, I found that I missed out on some great meals just because one of the sides happened to have a single ingredient that I wanted to avoid. Since then I’ve just selected “Classic” as my diet type and have had no issues. I’ve just not included ingredients I didon’t want.
After selecting your diet type, you select the number of servings you want per meal (I select 6 for my family of 4 so that I ensure that there are leftovers for me to take to work the next day). Next, go through the various beautifully laid out categories of meal types — budget friendly (you can actually select the cost per serving you want to stay around), baked dishes, grilled, stir fries, etc. They have what looks like close to a thousand recipes, and they add new ones each week. They’ve recently gotten pretty wild with their new meals, haha, but I’ve found that it’s a great way to expand your palate and try new things. If you don’t know what to pick, head over to the most popular and just choose a few. I have a system for selecting my meals each week, that I’ll cover in another article, but the app works great for whatever your strategy is.
I generally shoot for 5 meals a week, starting on Sunday, then hit Create Meal Plan. Bam! You’ve got a grocery list. Each item gets sorted automatically into the departments of the store that it can be found — deli, dairy, produce, spices, meats, etc. It tells you how many to get and provides a super simple way to check it off as you go through the store. In addition, you can click on each item and it will remind you which meal it is in and some possible substitutions if you’d rather avoid it. After creating the meal plan, I always walk through my kitchen with the grocery list and check off the stuff I already have — for instance salt is also on the grocery list since it’s needed in most every dish, but I of course already have that on hand. If you don’t want to go shopping yourself, they’ve partnered with a few of the delivery companies out there and they will have everything delivered to you if you are a paying member of those companies. In addition, you can add other items to the list that aren’t a part of your selected meals.
My two boys (10 and 12) love helping me cook the meals and I have found that the way the app is laid out on my iPad is extremely approachable for both myself and them as we cook. They do have an iPhone and Android version as well, which is what I use while in the grocery store to shop from, but it doesn’t work as well to cook from as the iPad version does.
Now, one final bit of magic about Mealime: this app is free. Yep, you can view recipes, make meal plans, get grocery lists — all for free. However, as you scroll through the meals, you will notice that about 25% of the meals have a Pro tag on it. These are reserved for the paying tier of Mealime user and I am highly encouraging you to be one of those people. No, you don’t have to pay to use the app, and 75% of the meals being free is great, but it is really nice to not have any restrictions on my options to select from. I don’t really know how they decide which meals get that Pro tag — it’s not their most popular meals, or anything necessarily special to them, but you will find that you’ll want to try a few of them, and with the barrier to the Pro tier being just $5.99/month or $49.99 a year, I feel that it is well worth your investment. There are other benefits to being a Pro user such as comprehensive nutritional information, favorite meal saving, and viewing previous meal plans, but the unlocked recipes are my main reason. That and using the app as much as I do causes me to want to support them.
Early on in my cooking journey, I used Mealime exclusively for all my recipes. These days, it still gets heavy use, but the skills that it taught me have given me the confidence and knowledge to allow me to deftly make my way through the kitchen. I’m no longer scared of cooking and it’s one of the joys of my daily life. After a long day sitting behind a computer, it’s nice to create a delicious meal that can be shared from a pile of fresh and healthy ingredients. This is immensely satisfying to me and this confidence has spread to other areas of my life.
I am not getting any type of kickback or pay from Mealime to write this article (though I’m not opposed to it!), but I just wanted to share something that you may find helpful or useful in your life — whether you’re an experienced cook or not. You can find the app in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for free.
