Skip to Content

Everything You Need to Know About Lunch Meal Prep

Tired of grabbing quick lunches? Wallet tired too? Then you need to start doing lunch meal prep on weekends. Here’s what you need to know.

Everything you need to know about lunch meal prep

The sun is warm, streaming through the windows on a Sunday. I’ve already grocery shopped for the week. Everything is tidily put away, awaiting the meals the ingredients will become. I could, at that point, just move onto something else: cleaning or reading; picking up the living room or rearranging my bedroom. But if I want my family to take lunches to work and school all week, there’s work to be done.

So I pull out the cutting board.

Vegetables are chopped. Chicken is marinated and cooked. Quinoa is made. Hummus and a sauce for the chicken are portioned into containers. The fruit is neatly organized for grabbing.

This is lunch meal prep, a process in which you prepare foods and ingredients ahead of time so they can be easily packed for lunches later. The fewer barriers to packing lunches that we have, the better. It’s less stressful in the mornings when we aren’t all rushing to make food. Plus, regardless of how busy we are, I know my kids and I will have easy-to-grab lunches ready.

The time I take on Sunday results in so much good (good food, actually). When you bring your lunch from home, you are spending less money on convenience food and more attention is being paid to what you are eating. That’s a win-win for your wallet and your health.

And in my house, it means we all are eating the optimal foods for good overall health.

Saving time, promoting healthier eating, less stress and less waste are all important benefits of lunch meal prep.

Ready to get started?

How to Get Started with Lunch Meal Prep

Lunch meal prep can be as simple as ensuring you have a variety of grab-and-go foods ready to tucked into lunchboxes or as complex as preparing full meals, packaged individually, ready to go. We mix these two methods in our house. I often purchase individual snack packs of cheese, for instance, and have granola bars on hand. But we also have prepared dishes like Potato Leek Soup portioned out and ready to be grabbed. And there are always fruits and veggies on hand too.

How you go about your lunch meal prep will vary based on what you or your family like to pack and how you like to pack it. And that’s really where you should start: choosing the foods you or your family like to eat for lunches that pack well. (Hint: My list of meal prep lunch ideas can help.)

Then decide how the foods are best packed.

  • If you can heat up lunches at work: You can either prep foods to be mixed and matched into lunches later or pack ready-to-grab lunches in containers. I prefer the first method because I can switch up the ingredients in my lunch daily. I really like the variety.
  • If you need to take hot food: Consider how you’d like to pack it. Some dishes I don’t mind mixing components altogether. Others, I like ingredients to be kept in a certain order. For ones I like mixed up, I store them in portioned containers and just reheat before transferring to a thermos.
  • If it doesn’t need to be heated: Again, it depends. I like to make salads with greens — for instance — the day I will eat them. But pasta salads are easiest stored in portioned containers for grab and go eating.

In terms of what to pack the food in, you’ll want to make sure you have the appropriate containers. They should be airtight so foods don’t spill. We have both larger containers for storing prepared dishes like boiled beets and raw ingredients like carrot sticks and smaller containers with airtight lids for packing in lunchboxes.

Foods to make ahead for lunches

Foods for lunch meal prep

What foods are best for lunch meal prep? Well, this is really a question of what you like to eat. Pastas, rice dishes and salads are all perfect for lunch meal prep. Sandwiches can be great too, but can’t be totally made ahead (unless you like a soggy days old sandwich).

Importantly, don’t prep anything you (or your family!) don’t like — even if it seems like something good to pack. If you don’t like the ingredients, why would you waste time and money on it?

The following are some things we often keep on hand for easy prepping for lunches.

Fruits: Berries, bananas, apples, pears, clementines, plums, peaches, grapes, etc. Choose the one you know you’ll eat. Don’t buy too much. No cutting needed. Just have these on hand.

Veggies: Carrots, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, peppers, etc. Cut them up for easy snacking. What I love about these is that they are easily eaten raw and store well. You can either store these together or in individual portions for easy grabbing. I sometimes like to have cooked veggies on hand too like boiled beets, sauteed onions or roasted Brussels sprouts.

Proteins: Chicken, hard-cooked eggs, chickpeas, beans like black beans or cannellini beans, peanut butter, lunch meat. Proteins like chicken or eggs should be cooked when you are prepping and then stored ready to eat.

Dips: Hummus, ranch dressing, whatever you like. Avoid the prepackaged ones and instead by a larger portion and divide it into containers for taking.

Carbs: Crackers, bread, rice, pasta. These help make for a filling lunch.

Lunch meal prep 101

What you should know about lunch meal prep

Lunch meal prep takes about an hour or two each week to ensure that you and yours eat well for days. It’s an investment in your health and life. And it’s one to make deliberately and with good consideration.

There are 5 things everyone should know about meal prep:

  1. Choose foods you’ll eat. This one is huge. If you aren’t a big fan of farro, then don’t make any. Having a conveniently prepared vat of something you don’t like to eat isn’t going to make you any more apt to eat it. Instead, prepare foods you and your family like.
  2. The more you can do ahead of time, the better. Again, this is important. If you know your mornings are too hectic for much more than tossing something in your lunch bag as you dash out the door, no amount of conveniently prepared foods will help … unless you have them ready to go in portioned containers. The good intentions of prepping a salad or sandwich in the morning are always the first to be abandoned when time is tight.
  3. It’s okay to freeze some. Sometimes I will make four portions of a dish, but only really want to eat two that week. That’s where freezing meals comes in handy. Pastas, grain bowls and many soups often freeze well in portions. I particularly like to use my Food Saver whenever I can for this. Then I just grab a bowl and a bag of food to heat up at work later.
  4. Variety is the spice of … lunchtime. Have you seen those cooking videos where folks prepare chicken breasts and four quadrants of veggies, which are all perfectly cooked at the end. And then they put a different on in each container? Do this! Cook a few different veggies with your meal. Package them in different bowls. Enjoy. How wonderful to prep once and have a variety of meals to choose from!
  5. Don’t forget the snacks. No, seriously. Well-planned snacking can keep you satisfied and energized throughout the day.
How to prep lunches for a week

How do I prep lunches for a week?

Have a plan. Before you go to the grocery store. Before you chop anything or divide anything into portions, have a plan. This will help you avoid buying too much. Making a shopping list with that plan in mind. Also, using versatile ingredients can save you time and money.

Then, once you have all your groceries, prepare them. Chop. Cook. Prepare. Get as much work out of the way as you can. Then store your foods as advised above — in individual portions or grouped by type of food. You are prepped!

Now, comes the hard part: Packing it up. Each morning, grab your lunch. Prepare last-minute things like salads and sandwiches. Pack up dishes to heat up. Remember the snacks and the forks.

If you have children, also consider getting them in on the lunch-packing act. It can be very empowering for kids to help with packing lunches.

Then enjoy, and bask in the wonderfulness that is a homemade lunch.


Lunch Meal Prep Q&A

I get bored eating the same thing day after day. How do you counteract lunch boredom?

Great question! One of the benefits of well-planned meal prep is that you can make several options to eat on different days so there’s variety in your meals. For instance, if you have three people in your family and you all want to pack lunches, making three entrees will get you through most of the week (3 entrees x 4 servings = 12 meals). Having a forth option of midweek leftovers, veggies and hummus trays or a last-minute salad means a bit of prep later but five different meals for everyone for the week.

Another option is to make something very versatile like grilled chicken but prep different ways to enjoy it such as on salads, rice bowls and with different sauces.

How do I do lunch meal prep for one?

As someone who is quickly nearing empty-nester status, I feel this one deeply. Lunch meal prep for one is challenging but totally doable. The key here is to make and freeze entrees so you can mix and match (and defrost) differing options. For instance, there are a lot of pastas that freeze really well. Making one or two and saving at least some of the portions will help you have variety in your lunches with our waste.

I also find that the techniques I used for my family also apply on a smaller scale such as cutting up veggies and having dips at the read, prepping salads and stocking the pantry with grab and go options that last.

This seems totally overwhelming. What do I do?

Start small. You don’t have to start with lunch meal prep for every day of the week. In fact, you could start with prepping just one recipe and a few snacks for the week. As you get more comfortable, make more entrees and other foods for packing in lunch boxes. Every little bit counts as you move toward being less stressed (and spending less).

Do you meal prep for your lunches? What’s your favorite thing to pack?