Whether you’re rushing to the office in the morning or working from home, it can be really easy to overlook lunch. This can lead to unnecessary spending when you buy lunch out every day or skipping lunch altogether. Neither option is ideal. Enter: meal prep lunches.
Meal prepping your lunches is a great habit to form to save you time and money. It can seem daunting at first, especially if you’re not much of a cook, but with the right recipes, you can knock out a whole week of cooking lunches in just a couple of hours. If you are often rushing to the office, it can also help make your morning routine much less hectic. Even better, it relieves you of the need to make a choice every day about what you’re eating for lunch. Decide once, cook once, and enjoy every day.
To help you get started with meal prepping lunches, we’re sharing a fool-proof way to build nutritious lunches and seven specific recipes we love.
While most of these recipes feature a meat-based protein, you can substitute any of the meat options for a vegetarian alternative if necessary. These recipes are meant to serve as an inspiration and a jumping-off point for you to begin meal prepping your own lunches in a way that works for you.
Is it Healthy to Meal Prep Lunches?
As long as all of your food is properly cooked and stored in containers in the fridge, it is both healthy and safe to meal prep lunches for a few days.
The best way to ensure healthy lunches is to use recipes with some type of carb, protein, and produce. Your carb can be rice, quinoa, pasta, or another grain, and will help to give you energy. Meat is an obvious choice for protein if you’re not vegetarian or vegan, but beans, lentils, tofu, and other meat substitutes can also be excellent sources of protein. Lastly, incorporate vegetables into your recipe or make sure to pack fruits or vegetables on the side for essential vitamins and minerals.
Can You Meal Prep Lunches for 5 Days?
Meal prepping for an entire week of lunches may sound difficult, especially if you’re meal prepping for yourself and a partner. However, with a roster of recipes, or a simple way to build quick lunches, it’s easy and straightforward.
To meal prep lunches for five days without a specific recipe, you can quickly build a large variety of bowls to keep you satisfied. To build lunch bowls, start by:
- Prepping enough of one type of carb, like rice, quinoa, or pasta, for five days. I usually do anywhere from ½ to 1 cup of my chosen carb.
- Choosing a protein. Chicken, salmon, ground turkey, beans, lentils, or tofu are excellent options. I often combine beans or lentils with meat. If you’re worried about your meat lasting all week, you can cook half of the week’s meat and then cook the second half in the middle of the week.
- Adding fresh or cooked veggies. Cherry tomatoes and chopped bell peppers are an easy choice. If you’re short on fresh veggies, you can always grab a bag of mixed frozen veggies and oven-baked them. Toss them in olive oil and seasoning of your choice and make for about 25 minutes on 400 F.
- Mixing it all together and adding any dressing, hummus, or other sauces you love.
Building lunch bowls is an easy and no-fail way to ensure you have nutritious lunches for every day of the week without having to cook every day. Once you’ve prepped and cooked all of your ingredients, just pack five servings of your bowl into Tupperware boxes and store in the fridge.
7 Meal Prep Lunches to Try
If you’re looking for more specific meal prep lunch recipes, these are some of our favorite easy ones for lunches.
Sesame Soy Chicken Bowls
These delicious bowls features coconut milk rice, easy oven-baked sesame soy chicken, and veggies including avocado to keep it fresh. If you don’t want to cut up your own cabbage, you can sub it with a pre-packaged coleslaw mix.
For vegetarians: Stir-fry some tofu in a sesame soy sauce instead of making chicken.
Ground Turkey Burrito Bowls
This super simple deconstructed burrito recipe is yummy and easily customizable to fit your individual taste. Feel free to add black beans or replace the turkey with black beans to make it vegetarian.
Lentil Quinoa Garden Bowls
Use this recipe to make a quinoa and lentil base for your bowl and then add your protein and produce. I recommend:
- Chicken, chopped into small pieces (if adding meat)
- Garbanzo beans
- Cherry tomatoes, chopped in half
- Corn
- Hummus
- Feta cheese
- Spinach
- Cucumbers
Whatever you choose to add, the lentils will help you get your protein for the day, even if you keep the recipe vegetarian.
Greek Lemon Chicken and Rice
While not ideal for vegetarians, this Mediterranean-inspired dish can be cooked in one pan in an hour or less. Add halved cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese on the side for a mini almost-Greek salad.
Mediterranean Roasted Veggie Bowls
To make this recipe:
- Toss cauliflower, brussel sprouts, halved cherry tomatoes, and chopped bell peppers in olive oil and seasoning. Then bake at 400F for 30 minutes or until beginning to brown.
- Sautée onions in a pot until translucent, add 1 ½ cups medium-grain rice, and mix until translucent. Add 3 cups of chicken broth to the rice and season with salt, pepper, and cumin. Bring to a boil, then cover and allow to simmer until the rice has absorbed the broth.
- Season chicken cutlets with salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, and mint. Sear in a pan on both sides, then cover and cook on medium to medium-high heat until cooked through.
- Mix together and add feta cheese and canned garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed.
This recipe is a more specific version of the formula for creating your own bowls that we outlined above.
White Chicken Chili Over Rice
This recipe can be made in an Instant Pot and is super easy! Just make rice in a rice cooker (or stovetop) and pour your chili over it. I recommend serving with avocado on top, or even a banana – the Caribbean way.
To make it vegetarian: Skip the chicken! The beans are already a great source of protein.
Spicy Sundried Tomato Pasta with Chicken
If you’re tired of rice and quinoa, try this flavorful pasta recipe. The chicken is not part of the recipe but can be made on the side and added in.
To make it vegetarian: Skip the chicken!
All of these recipes and our general formula for building a nutritious and healthy bowl are great options for lunches during a busy work week!
