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45+ Healthy Make Ahead Lunch Bowls

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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!

collage image 45 lunch bowl recipes

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.

Don’t forget to pin this post to save it for later!

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

Vegetarian bowl recipes

These vegetarian bowl recipes have a few things in common: healthy, delicious, portable, and packed with all the good stuff! Keep the dressing separate until just before serving.

collage image with nine vegetarian bowl recipes

1. Vegan Sushi Bowl Meal Prep from Sweet Peas and Saffron

2. Fajita Veggie Burger Bowls with Blistered Sweet Reds + Cilantro Lime Cashew Cream from With Food and Love

3. Wild Rice and Sweet Potato Salad from Sweet Peas and Saffron

4. Chopped Kale Power Salad with Lemon Tahini Dressing from She Likes Food

5. Thai Chickpea Mason Jar Salad from Sweet Peas and Saffron

6. Rainbow Kale Power Salad with Peanut Dijon Dressing from With Salt and Wit

7. Cauliflower Cashew Lunch Bowls from Sweet Peas and Saffron

8. Quinoa Burrito Bowl from Hapa Nom Nom

9. Buddha Bowl Recipe from Sweet Peas and Saffron

collage image with nine vegetarian lunch recipes

10. Spicy Tofu Noodle Meal Prep Bowls (vegan) from Sweet Peas and Saffron

11. Roasted Rainbow Winter Bowl from Keepin’ It Kind

12. Cobb Salad Recipe from Sweet Peas and Saffron- keep bacon off for vegetarian

13. Quinoa and Shaved Carrot Salad with Chickpeas, Currants and Cashews from Floating Kitchen

14. Portobello Fajita Vegan Meal Prep from Sweet Peas and Saffron

15. Quinoa and Roasted Broccoli Lunch Bowls from Kristine’s Kitchen

16. Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad in a Jar from Sweet Peas and Saffron- keep chicken off for vegetarian

17. Spring Farro Salad with Feta, Lemon, and Mint from Flavor The Moments

18. Easy Cauliflower Fried Rice Recipe from Sweet Peas and Saffron

Chicken bowl recipe ideas

These chicken bowl recipe ideas are perfect for a balanced lunch, and check out all the delicious flavors! Isn’t chicken so versatile?!

collage image with nine chicken bowls

19. Kale Chicken Pasta Salad from Sweet Peas and Saffron

20. Easy Buffalo Chicken Salad (Whole30 & Paleo) from Project Meal Plan

21. Healthy Chicken Shawarma Quinoa Bowls from Peas and Crayons

22. Caprese Chicken Salad Meal Prep Bowls from Sweet Peas and Saffron

23. Chicken Enchilada Cauliflower Rice Bowls from Recipe Runner

24. Thai Chicken Lunch Bowls (Make Ahead) from Sweet Peas and Saffron

25. 1 Rotisserie Chicken, 4 Easy Prep Lunches from Meal Plan Addict

26. Ranch Chicken Jar Salads from Sweet Peas and Saffron

27. Spinach Power Salad with Chicken and Farro from The Lemon Bowl

collage image with nine chicken lunch recipes

28. Low Carb Indian Chicken Skillet from Sweet Peas and Saffron

29. Balsamic Chicken Salad with Lemon Quinoa from Cafe Delites

30. Southwestern Chopped Chicken Salad (Meal Prep) from Sweet Peas and Saffron

31. Buffalo Chicken Ranch Whole30 Meal Prep (Paleo, Keto) from 40 Aprons

32. (Make Ahead) Chicken Fajita Lunch Bowls from Sweet Peas and Saffron

33. Peanut Chicken Meal Prep Bowls from The Girl on Bloor

34. Meal Prep Stir Fry 2-for-1 (Honey Sriracha & Lemon Sesame) from Sweet Peas and Saffron

35. Greek Chicken Bowls from Two Peas and Their Pod

36. Healthier Firecracker Chicken Meal Prep Bowls from Sweet Peas and Saffron

Beef bowl recipe ideas

Just like chicken, beef is an incredibly versatile protein. These beef bowl recipe ideas are diverse in flavor and would be incredible for lunch!

collage image with nine beef bowl recipes

37. Sweet Potato and Ground Beef Bowl from Paleo Leap

38. Sesame Ginger Beef with Zucchini Noodles from Sweet Peas and Saffron

39. Fajita Bowls with Cauliflower Rice from Kirbie’s Cravings

40. Korean Beef Bowl from Real Simple Good

41. Ground Beef Zucchini Sweet Potato Skillet from Primavera Kitchen

42. Mongolian Beef Bowls from Sweet Peas & Saffron

43. Hawaiian Ground Beef Bowls from Cooking Made Healthy

44. Satay Beef Bowls from Sweet Peas & Saffron

45. Taco Bowls from Chelsea’s Messy Apron

 

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45+ Lunch Bowl Recipes

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.

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Comments

  2. Marion

    Hi Denise,

    I’ve been following each one of these recipes (I’m on week 16), that’s actually the first time I try meal prepping and the results are incredible! Theses recipes are healthy, it’s a very good way to save money and to discover new foods, it’s time saving and I can tell I’m in better shape.. your post is a GREAT find, thank you so much!

    Marion

    Reply

    • Denise

      Hi Dragana, I can’t speak for all of the recipes in this round-up, but I believe my recipes largely fall under ‘clean eating’ as I use very few processed ingredients.

      Reply

  4. Kelly Lee

    Is there a simple way of printing each series of recipes or does one need to go into each recipe separately ? very time consuming

    Reply

    • Denise

      Hi Kelly! This is a round up of my favorite recipes from around the web, so you have to go to the recipe developer’s site and click to print. Sorry for the inconvenience.

      Reply

  6. Karman

    I need help bringing prepared lunches to work. I also am on a health kick so check and check. These all look good! Thanks so much!

    Reply

  9. Danielle N. Pope

    Greetings Denise,
    I would like to use your web link on lunch bowls in my e-book. If this is OK, would you send me a permission contract? Please let me know.

    Thanks so much.
    Danielle N. Pope

    Reply

  13. Kelly

    Love this round-up, Denise! All of these lunch bowls are gorgeous and I seriously wish I could have one of each for lunch! Thank you so much for including mine!! <3

    Reply

  16. Izzy @ She Likes Food

    Now if I could just get someone to come over and make me one of these lunch bowls everyday, haha! Bowls like these are my favorites ever and I would happily eat any one of these for lunch everyday! Thanks for including one of mine!

    Reply

  18. Helen @ Scrummy Lane

    A colleague came to work with something like this one day last week, and I was so jealous.
    Now I have some recipes to rival his!
    These bowls are all so colourful, Denise, and we all know that means super healthy. 🙂

    Reply

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