Most meal prep advice tells you to spend your entire Sunday cooking six different dishes, portioning them into identical containers, and eating the same lunch for five days straight.
That type of meal prep is just not for me.
The Sunday Roast Method is different. You cook one thing , a whole roasted chicken with a sheet pan of vegetables and from that single cook you build five completely different meals, a pot of nourishing broth, and a week of effortless eating.
Nothing feels repetitive. Nothing goes to waste. And the whole thing takes about 90 minutes of actual effort.
Here are the five ways it changes everything.
1. One Cook Feeds You All Week — Without Eating the Same Meal Twice
The fundamental problem with conventional meal prep is boredom. When you batch-cook a single recipe, you’re committing to eating it repeatedly. By Sunday evening, most people are already dreading Tuesday’s lunch.
The Sunday Roast Method solves this by treating the roast as a base, not a finished meal.
From one roasted chicken and a sheet pan of root vegetables you get:
Sunday — the roast itself, fresh from the oven with pan juices
Monday — a grain bowl with shredded chicken, roasted vegetables, and tahini dressing
Tuesday — chicken soup using the broth you made from the carcass, with leftover vegetables and pasta
Wednesday — a warm grain salad with toasted walnuts and lemon dressing
Thursday — wraps or tacos with the last of the shredded chicken and any quick pickled vegetables
Friday — a fridge audit frittata using every remaining vegetable and a handful of eggs
Six meals. One cook. Zero boredom. The chicken appears in a different form every single time.
2. The Sheet Pan Rule Eliminates 90% of Weeknight Cooking Decisions
The most exhausting part of weeknight cooking is not the cooking itself — it’s the decision. What’s for dinner? What do I need? What will work with what’s already in the fridge?
The sheet pan eliminates all of that.
Every Sunday, roast whatever vegetables are in your fridge on a single sheet pan. Whole potatoes — no peeling needed. Butternut squash cubed with the skin on. Carrots, peppers, courgette, red onion, mushrooms. Whatever needs using. Toss with olive oil, salt, and any spice you like. Roast at 200°C for 35-45 minutes until caramelised.
Now you have a container of ready-to-use roasted vegetables that go into everything — bowls, wraps, pasta, frittata, soup — for the next five days. The decision is already made. You open the fridge and the answer is there.
This is the single habit that saves the most weeknight cooking time of anything in the method.
3. The Broth Turns Your Food Waste Into Liquid Gold
After you carve the chicken, most people throw the carcass away. That is the most expensive thing you do in your kitchen all week.
The carcass, simmered with your vegetable scraps, garlic skins, onion offcuts, and a splash of apple cider vinegar, produces two to three litres of proper bone broth. This broth becomes the base of Tuesday’s soup, the cooking liquid for your grains, and the deglazing liquid for any pan sauce you make during the week.
The Master Broth Method:
Place the carcass in a large pot with everything from your freezer scrap bag — onion skins, garlic skins, herb stems, carrot peels. Cover with cold water. Add a generous splash of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a very gentle simmer and cook for two to four hours. Strain, season with salt, and cool. Refrigerate for five days or freeze in portions for three months.
Cook your grains in this broth instead of plain water. The difference in flavour is significant.
4. It Forces a Weekly Fridge Audit — Which Saves You Money
The Friday frittata is not just a recipe. It is a sure way to use any leftovers, a systematic approach to food waste mitigation.
By committing in advance that Friday dinner is always a frittata made from whatever is left in the fridge, you create a guaranteed end-of-week consumption event. Nothing lingers past Friday. Nothing goes off at the back of the vegetable drawer. Nothing gets thrown away because you forgot it was there.
The average US household wastes $900 of food per year. The majority of that waste is vegetables that were bought with good intentions and forgotten. The Friday frittata eliminates that category of waste entirely.
The recipe is always the same: whatever vegetables you have, sautéed with garlic, then eggs poured over and finished under the grill with cheese. It takes 15 minutes. It never fails. And it tastes different every week because the vegetables are always different.
5. Sunday Becomes a Ritual, Not a Chore
The reason most meal prep habits fail is that they feel like a task to be completed — another thing on the weekend to-do list. They require willpower. And willpower is finite.
The Sunday Roast Method works because it fits a ritual that already exists. Most households already do something on Sunday that involves a bigger cook — a family lunch, a relaxed afternoon in the kitchen, a meal that takes time. The method simply extends that ritual by 30 minutes and redirects the output.
Roast goes in the oven. While it cooks — make the broth from last week’s carcass. While the broth simmers — prep this week’s grain. While the grain cooks — prep the sheet pan vegetables. By the time you sit down for Sunday dinner, you have already set up the entire week.
It does not feel like meal prep. It feels like Sunday.
How to Start the Sunday Roast Method This Week
You need: one whole chicken, one sheet pan of whatever vegetables are in the fridge, one pot, and the scraps you’ve been saving all week.
The base recipe:
Preheat the oven to 220°C / 425°F. Rub the chicken with olive oil, salt, garlic, and whatever herbs you have. Stuff the cavity with half a lemon. Place on a roasting tray surrounded by roughly chopped root vegetables. Roast for 60-75 minutes until golden and the juices run clear. Rest for 10 minutes before carving. Save every drop of the pan juices.
While the chicken rests — put the sheet pan of vegetables in the oven at the same temperature for 30-40 minutes.
After dinner — the carcass goes straight into the pot for broth.
That is the whole method. Everything else follows from those three actions.
The Complete Zero-Waste Version
If you want to take this further — using every scrap, every peel, every bone, and every drip of pan juice — the complete system is laid out in The Scrappy Kitchen Blueprint.
It covers the full Sunday Roast Method with all five meal ideas, the master broth recipe, the sheet pan rule, a complete 7-day no-waste meal plan, and 15+ zero-waste recipes — all in a 35-page instant PDF download.
Get The Scrappy Kitchen Blueprint — $22 — Instant Download →
From 5waystouse.com — every ingredient has more than one great use.
5 Ways to Use — Zero Waste Kitchen 
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