5 Ideas for Easy Lunchtime Meal Prep

Working week ahead? We’ve come up with some delicious recipes you can make right in your Studio kitchen.

Meal prepping is a great way to save you time when you have a full week ahead. Tight schedules and busy lives can make it difficult to come up with a MasterChef lunch every day. This can lead to spending all your cash on soggy sandwiches and tiny bags of fruit.

Getting bored of the January diet? Being healthy doesn’t have to mean being boring!

Batch Cooking

Batch cooking is a great way to save you time and energy during your busy schedule. We’ve got some lovely recipes to give you something to look forward to!

Batch cooking is generally the best option if you prefer making something tasty for dinner and spending time on it, to freeze it for another day. Save the time-consuming cooking to the weekend or the evenings, and make a large amount of food.

1. Chili with a twist (vegan option included)

You can’t go wrong with a nice hearty chili to warm you up on these blustery winter days! A smokey chili is a great option if you want to add some spice to your day! The trick to this chili is the sacred trio of spices used.

Taking chili is super easy – you can just heat it up in the microwave before eating. There are loads of different ways you can have chili too: serve with rice, crushed avocado, sour cream, coriander, or take a bag of nacho chips to work for dipping! You could even add this delicious recipe into enchiladas, or take some tortilla wraps to work so you can make warm wraps at work.

Ingredients

• Beef/vegan mince
• 400g tin red kidney beans or mixed beans
• 1 pepper
• White onion
• Sweetcorn
• Red or green chili
• Garlic
• Chipotle chilli paste
• Tin chopped tomatoes (or passata for a smoother, more liquidy chilli)
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 and a half tsp paprika
• Olive oil/chilli oil if you’re feeling daring!
• Salt and pepper
• Coriander

Method

1. Fry off your onions in some olive oil with chopped garlic
2. If you’re using beef mince, then add your beef mince once the onions are fried
3. Add pepper and continue to fry off (add oil as necessary)
4. Once everything is fried off, add your tin of chopped tomatoes, chilli paste, beans, chillies and sweetcorn
5. If using veggie/vegan mince, add this now
6. Let the chilli simmer for 20 minutes
7. Add salt and pepper to taste

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2. Creamy Tuna Pasta

Tuna pasta with a twist! If you’re still on the ‘New Year, New Me’ bandwagon then we’ve added some lower-fat alternatives to this ingredients list to help keep the calories to a minimum – although it might not taste quite as creamy! This is a fab Sunday night meal prep – as this recipe will stay fresh for 5 days if you keep it refrigerated in an air tight container or a bowl with tightly wrapped cling film.

Ingredients

• Pasta (alternative: wholegrain pasta, bean/lentil pasta)
• Greek yoghurt (alternative: low fat greek style yoghurt)
• Mayonnaise
• Tuna
• Peas
• Sweetcorn
• Chopped celery
• Finely chopped red onion
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Cook your pasta
2. Add tuna to a bowl and mix with mayonnaise and greek yoghurt
3. Add your peas, sweetcorn, celery and red onion
4. When the pasta is cooked, drain off
5. When the pasta is cool, mix with your tuna mayonnaise

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The Ultimate Breakfast-for-Lunch bowl

For those who don’t eat breakfast, but love breakfast foods…have brekky for lunch! This is a fantastic ‘chuck it all together kind of recipe’ that’s perfect for keeping in the fridge the night before. This brunch bowl is equal parts creamy, crunchy, nutty and sweet!

You can change and swap the different fruits to taste, add white chocolate spread instead of hazelnut chocolate spread, and add or remove as many nuts/seeds as you like! This is packed with protein and healthy fats, to give you tonnes of energy to see you through the day.

Add all the ingredients into a bowl and cover tightly with cling film, or add into a relatively shallow but wide container with a lid.

Ingredients

• Greek yoghurt
• Peanut butter
• Walnuts
• Oats
• Banana
• Raspberries
• Dates
• Blueberries
• Chocolate Spread
• Chia Seeds/flaxseed

Method

We’re not even joking when we say: you can chuck all of this into a bowl and make it look pretty. That’s it. Dead easy! Make it the night before and keep it in the fridge so you can just grab it from the fridge in the morning.

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Soy Buddha Bowl

This is a super tasty buddha bowl is a good one to make when you’ve got the time to chop everything! If you spend the time making these buddha bowls in individual tubs, you can keep them in the fridge throughout the week to keep them fresh.

Ingredients

• Tofu or cooked chicken
• Sesame Seeds
• Rice
• Edamame
• Sweet potatoes
• Quinoa
• Red cabbage
• Diced cucumber
• Sweetcorn
• Soy sauce
• Chili flakes
• Cashew nuts
• Sesame seeds

Method

1. Add everything to your tubs
2. Drizzle some soy sauce, chili flakes, cashew nuts and sesame seeds
3. Add them to individual tubs ready for the week ahead, and keep in the fridge