Freezer "Food Legos"

 Is This Viral Meal Prep Trend Actually Worth It?

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If you’ve been scrolling through social media lately, you’ve probably seen the "Lego brick" meal prep trend: freezing entire meals in silicone molds to create satisfying, stackable cubes of food.

I have to admit, I started off pretty skeptical. I usually just throw my meal prep in the fridge and eat it within 5 or 6 days. The idea of cooking, cooling, freezing, and then popping them out seemed like a lot of extra steps. Plus, because I only bought two silicone molds, this quickly turned into a multi-day project, which felt totally counterintuitive for a time-saving hack.

But, I decided to give it a fair shot to see if these "food Legos" are actually practical or just aesthetic.

The Meal Prep: Over Prep!

The biggest challenge with this method is the sheer volume of prep. To make it manageable, I realized I had to overlap my ingredients. For example, I needed onions for three different parts of the meal, so I prepped them all at once.

I also realized that while freezing everything takes forever, using this method to test recipes for Cooking with Chaos allowed me to "kill two birds with one stone. The goal was to see if complex flavors, like a Japanese Curry and a Gyudon Beef Bowl, could survive the freezer without turning into a mushy disaster.

The BEST way, in my opinion, was advice given to me from the community: if you plan on making 4 portions of a dish simply make 8. That way you can eat some and freeze some, leaving you with left overs to work through.

The Critical Step: The Cool Down

If there is one thing I learned the hard way, it is that you cannot rush the process. You have to cool everything down completely—whether it's the curry, the rice, or the beef—before loading up the molds. If you rush it, you end up with ice crystals that ruin the texture.

I also found that for liquid-heavy dishes like curry, you have to be careful not to overfill the molds, because liquid expands as it freezes.

Once everything is cooled down, you can load up the molds and freeze over night. Alternatively, if you made a lot more prep than you need, keep what you want in the fridge then if it’s been a few days you can freeze the rest so it doesn’t go bad.

The Taste Test: Did It Actually Work?

After freezing the bricks overnight and popping them out (which, admittedly, looked pretty cool), I moved on to the reheating test. I microwaved the bowls, which took a surprisingly long time—about 15 minutes total to heat everything through. But I will talk about some solutions as well after the heat test.

Here is how the different components held up:

1. The Japanese Curry (The Winner) I used chicken thighs for this because they hold up much better to the process of cooking, cooling, and reheating compared to chicken breasts, which tend to dry out. The result? It was pretty damn good. The curry sauce protected the meat and vegetables, and the flavors weren't impacted by the freezing process at all.

2. The Gyudon (The Surprise) I was most hesitant about the Gyudon because I wasn't sure if thinly sliced beef would turn into leather in the freezer. However, I made sure to freeze the beef with plenty of teriyaki sauce to keep it hydrated. Surprisingly, the beef stayed tender, and the texture held up way better than I expected. The downside is that the beef did get a bit salty from sitting in the juices in the freezer.

3. The Sides (Rice & Veg) I was worried the rice would turn into a solid brick of mush. However, by gently packing the rice into the molds rather than jamming it in, it remained structurally intact after reheating. Even the bok choy, which I braised in liquid, retained some texture but the bok choy was a little soggy from the excess liquid. There is a fine line in how much liquid you should add to these.

Final Verdict: Is It Worth It?

After three days of cooking, freezing, and testing, my skepticism has (mostly) vanished

The food tasted great, and having a freezer stocked with ready-to-eat cubes is satisfying. However, I would not recommend meal prepping your entire diet this way. It takes too much time, equipment, and fridge space to cool everything down.

The Best Way to Use This Method: Treat it as a specific tool for your arsenal, not a total lifestyle replacement.

• Do: Make a massive bulk batch of one item (like the curry), freeze 8–12 bricks of it, and keep them for emergencies.
• Don't: Try to prep every single side dish and sauce this way every week unless you have unlimited time and silicone molds.

It looks cool on social media, but in reality, it's best used for bulk proteins, starch and some veg, that you can rotate through over a couple of months. Use this method in addition to your normal meal prep methods so this way you always have something tasty in the freezer.