If I want to prep for multiple days and eat good after the prep, I’m making freezer friendly burritos.

Refried beans, rotisserie chicken, diced raw onion, and cheese. Heat up the couple I’m eating then, and throw the rest in freezer bags. Reheats well in the microwave, and I just toss it on some shredded iceberg along with a hefty bit of Cholula on top. Fake chicken and without cheese works good too if you’re vegan.

The only other thing I do in batches is Chili like so many others suggested. I’d do more if it weren’t for a shared kitchen that’s a staircase away from my fridge.

Roast chicken.

Cook a bird on Sunday afternoon and pick on the remains all week.

Baked beans.

Super easy to make, not hard to make delicious, taste just as good the next day, freeze really well.

I don’t like leftovers. I prefer when it gets made into something else.

Roast chicken becomes soup, tacos, or enchiladas.

Grilled steak or chicken gets chopped up and put in the freezer to make quesadillas.

Chili becomes chili dogs or chili con carne on cheese enchiladas.

My mom used to cook a couple pounds of ground beef and then season bits as needed for tacos, sloppy joes, or spaghetti.

Rice and beans yumm

Any stew type thing is generally easy to scale up and usually follows the “better the next day” character. Goulash, curries, thick soups (beef barley is my favorite), and chillis.

There’s no change in texture from reheating, which I think is key to good leftovers. Anything baked is going to dry out yet not be crisp, and anything fried is going to be soft and sad. Applying these principles to other things, and you come across things like lasagna as well.

For stuff that is baked, grilled, or pan fried, if it’s something you can cook a bunch of, but pull most of it when it’s 80% done, you can sometimes reheat that ok. We’ll make 4 burgers out of a pound of meat, and either cook up 2 and just leave the other 2 for tomorrow, or say, pull 2 off when they’re pretty rare, and cook the ones we’re eating to medium. Then the next day, by the time the patties are heated through, they’re to the right doneness.

Chilli con carne + rice
Spaghetti bolognese
Lasagna
Spinach & ricotta canneloni
Slow cooked braised beef & penne
Thai green curry + rice
Slow cooked butter chicken + rice
Slow cooked lamb korma + rice
Soups (pumpkin, potato & leek, pea & ham, etc)

Also we tend to freeze batches of leftovers without pasta/rice as it saves a lot of space in the freezer and throwing some fresh rice or pasta is little effort while the frozen meal container defrosts (fresh rice & pasta is much better, but frozen does work for a true reheat-only meal)

Curry always tastes better the next day.

Lasagna

Vermicelli rice. Next day I make it into fried rice or mix it with minced meat, egg and fried onions making some meat balls.

Chili. Almost any stew, really. They only get better when they sit longer.

Two of my favorites are one-pot chicken riggies and baked ziti

Chili, as everyone is saying.

Gumbo, and also oxtail stew, I won’t even serve them the first day, they are so much better after a rest in the fridge.

Not cooking but any time we get pizza hut pizza I get a pan pizza to reheat - all that extra fat in the crust crisps up, it is so good reheated and not good the first day.

Any big hunk of meat is good because the first day it can be meat, rice, and beans, then tacos, then nachos or soup/chili or enchiladas.

Also if you don’t like cooking (I do but have competing priorities) a big Tupperware of salad made in the weekend can help throughout the week.

I love doing Pulled Pork for lunches and dinner. Great for a meal and then it’s great to put in other dishes. Nachos and quesadillas for lazy days and then great in soup

Dirty rice with andouille sausage, shepherds pie, pizza, tacos (assuming all the parts are refrigerated separately; putting an assembled taco in the fridge doesn’t really make good left overs IMO), soups, fried chicken… Nothing with pasta. Cold pasta is gross and reheating it never comes out good.