Meal Prep Timing: How to Cook 6 Things at Once
Meal prep is a different challenge from everyday cooking. The timing complexity scales fast. Here's how to run a full prep day without losing track of anything.
Meal prep is a different challenge from everyday cooking. You're not making one dinner — you're making five. And you're doing it all in two to three hours on a Sunday, in one kitchen, with one oven, and a finite number of burners.
The timing complexity scales fast. Four things in the oven at different temperatures and durations. Something reducing on the stove that needs a stir every 15 minutes. Grains that need to rest after cooking. Things that need to cool before going into containers.
If you're doing this with phone alarms and a vague mental map, you're working harder than you need to.
A realistic meal prep session
Let's say you're prepping for five lunches and five dinners. Your menu:
- Roasted chickpeas — 35 min at 200°C (need to cool before storing)
- Baked salmon fillets — 15 min at 180°C
- Brown rice — 35 min, rest 10 min
- Roasted sweet potato — 40 min at 200°C
- Lentil soup on the stove — simmer 45 min, stir every 15 min
Five things. Multiple handoffs. Some with chained steps (rice → rest, soup → stir reminders).
The setup in Tempo
Roasted chickpeas: Countdown 35:00, name "Chickpeas". Chain to "Chickpeas — cool" 20:00 (so you remember to box them up after cooling, not straight from the oven).
Salmon: Countdown 15:00, name "Salmon". Start this 20 minutes after the chickpeas and sweet potato go in, since it cooks faster.
Brown rice: Countdown 35:00, name "Rice". Chain to "Rice rest" 10:00.
Sweet potato: Countdown 40:00, name "Sweet potato". Longest thing in the oven — start it first.
Lentil soup: Set three sequential 15:00 timers named "Soup — stir", chained together. Each one firing is a reminder to stir. After the third, the soup is done.
All of this runs in Tempo simultaneously. Running timers auto-sort by who finishes soonest, so you always see what needs attention next at the top of the board.
Why this is better than phone alarms
Labels that mean something. When "Salmon" fires as a notification, you know exactly what it is. Not "Timer 3".
Chained handoffs. Rice → rest, chickpeas → cool. You don't have to remember to set a second timer when the first one finishes.
Tab survival. Prep days involve a lot of moving around the kitchen. You're not sitting at your laptop. Tempo's timers are wall-clock based — they keep running even if your laptop sleeps, the tab closes, or the screen locks. Come back and everything is exactly where it should be.
Saved sequences. Once you've built this setup, save it. Name it "Standard prep day". Next Sunday, load it in one click. Adjust whatever changed in your menu, start everything, and you're off.
Shareable links. If you prep with a partner or housemate, share the URL and both of you have the same timer board. No more "what's next?" across the kitchen.
The deeper efficiency
Meal prep works because you batch similar tasks — all the chopping, all the roasting, all the portioning — to minimise setup and cleanup overhead. Good timing is what lets you actually run things in parallel rather than serialising everything out of caution.
Knowing exactly when each thing finishes, and having the transitions between steps handled automatically, is what unlocks the real efficiency of a prep day.