More than 45 healthy lunch bowl recipes to keep your lunch exciting! Healthy lunch recipes to fuel you all afternoon long, including rice bowls, vegetarian, chicken and beef bowl options.
Stuck in a lunch rut? Let’s get you out of it! Today I’m rounding up some healthy make ahead lunch bowl ideas for us all that would make perrrfect work lunches!
Looking for more meal prep lunch recipes? Check out this super popular round up of 19 Healthy Lunch Meal Prep Ideas!
We are ALL about meal prep here at Sweet Peas & Saffron and one of the best meal prep recipes is a good old lunch bowl!
When I think ‘lunch bowls’, I think of a big bowl of goodness with a bit of everything. They can be warm or cold, vegetarian or made with meat, made low carb or with whole grains. You can really get creative with them!
Another thing I think of? Veggies. Lots and lots of veggies.
These lunch bowl recipes are packed full of of veggies and can be meal prepped for healthy lunches through the week.
How to build a lunch bowl:
This is how I go about building a lunch bowl, but is by no means the rule! You can get seriously creative with these healthy lunch recipes, and tailor them to suit your diet.
- start with 4 oz of protein (chicken breast, ground beef, tofu, black beans or whatever you’d prefer)
- add in 1/2 a cup of whole grains (rice, farro, barley, quinoa (technically a seed), or skip if you are low carb)
- add in 1- 1 1/2 cups of vegetables
- sauce it up– try one of these 7 Basic Vinaigrette Recipes. Keep separate until just before serving
- add ins– nuts, seeds, dried fruit, cheese, have fun!
Tips to keep your lunch bowls fresh
- keep your dressing or sauce separate until just before you serve (unless the recipe states otherwise)
- keep leafy greens away from wet ingredients- mason jars are great for layering
- store in a glass meal prep container (keeps your food from absorbing flavors)
- store no longer than 4 days- chicken, rice, and most vegetables start to decline drastically after 4 days
- avocado- add it fresh
Healthy lunch recipes
This post has a huge variety of healthy lunch recipes in ‘lunch bowl’ form. There is something for everyone’s diet including vegetarian bowl recipes, beef bowl recipes and chicken bowl recipes. There are also some low carb bowl recipes in there!
These healthy lunch recipes are heavy on the veggies. The biggest benefit to preparing your lunches ahead is that you are setting yourself up for eating healthy through the week and I think we can all agree that veggies = healthy!
Looking for more information on meal prep? Check out this post I wrote on How To Meal Prep.
Ready? Alright…let’s go! It’s make ahead lunch bowl time!
This post was originally published in 2016 and was updated May 2019 with fresh ideas
Continue reading:45+ Healthy Make Ahead Lunch Bowls