High-Protein Meal Prep Lunches That Still Taste Good on Day Four

With health and fitness being more popular than ever these days, meal prepping is a big part of that, and so is protein, tracking your protein and how much you’ve eaten every day to try to achieve your fitness goals.

But nothing is worse than the same old boring protein that you meal prepped on Sunday, like chicken and rice that you’re just sick of. The following recipes are meant to help you make high-protein lunches that will last you all week, and you won’t dread the sight of them come day four.

1) Chicken Rice Boxes

This is chicken that has been grilled or roasted with rice and broccoli, with a lemon garlic pan sauce. To make a really nice pan sauce, it’s important to season your chicken first, cook it in the pan most of the way, and then remove the chicken and use whatever fat you have left over in the pan to build your sauce. Maybe some garlic, lemon, a little bit of onion, and then some sort of heavy cream, simmering it to thicken.

If you’re going to add broccoli to this one, try not to cook the broccoli too hard, so that by the time you reheat it, it doesn’t wind up being really overcooked.

2) Turkey Taco Bowl

This is taco seasoned lean turkey with black beans, corn, and salsa, with Greek yogurt and lettuce on the side. I like to add my black beans right in with the turkey once the turkey is browned, and then heavily season both.

I like to take my cold filling, and once it’s in the containers, put shredded cheese on top, so when I heat the filling up, the cheese will melt, and then serve it on the cold lettuce.

3) Salmon Lentil Salad

This is roasted salmon broken up over top of a salad of lemon, dill, cucumbers, and lentils. I like to saute some onions and carrots and then cook my lentils in the same pan with a little bit of stock, salt, and pepper. This gives them a lot better flavor.

If you want to avoid the fishy smell with salmon, go for something like Atlantic farm raised as opposed to Pacific salmon.

4) Chicken Shawarma

This is chicken thighs or breasts seasoned in turmeric, garlic, lemon, paprika, and cumin. The chicken is then roasted, typically served with rice or a salad and a garlicky yogurt sauce. Cut your chicken up first and then season it so every piece gets seasoned on all sides before you cook it hard in a pan to get some nice char on it.

You can make a nice Lebanese style salad to go on the side with cucumber, tomato, and lettuce. If you want to make a nice vinaigrette for it, just keep it on the side so your lettuce doesn’t get soggy over the week. I like a simple yogurt sauce with a little bit of fresh garlic, lemon juice, and dill.

5) Steak and Sweet Potato

This is steak that has been sliced thinly, served with caramelized sweet potato and a chimichurri sauce. When you’re cooking your steak for this meal prep, cook it on the medium rare side, or at least one temperature below where you want to eat it, and then slice it up. Once you reheat it later, it will be the correct temperature and not dried out.

I like to do a little bit of smoked paprika and chili powder on the outside of my sweet potatoes once I cube them up to roast them. You still get tons of sweetness from all the sugar in them, but I find that the smokiness balances really well with that.

6) Tuna White Bean Salad

This is cannellini beans, or a similar white bean, in an oil, lemon, and parsley dressing with canned tuna and red onion, and celery for a crunch if you’d like. When I make tuna salad or anything with tuna in it like this, I like to try to cut my veggies up really small if I can, especially the onions, so it doesn’t become too overwhelming flavor-wise or too crunchy.

Smash up your white beans a little bit first and mix a little bit of olive oil and seasoning in before you add them to the tuna. If you want a higher protein option besides mayo, Greek yogurt is a great replacement in tuna salads.

7) Greek Chicken Pasta Salad

This is Greek seasoned chicken with tomato, cucumber, olive, feta, and pasta. Go for a nice pasta like a penne or a fusilli, or something that’s easy to eat with a fork when cold. Try to cut up your tomatoes and your cucumbers a little bit smaller so they don’t get too soft on you.

I like to make a really lemony oil dressing for this with plenty of oregano and dill and a little bit of mayo.

8) Egg Roll Bowl

This is ground turkey that has been seasoned with garlic and ginger, mixed with shredded cabbage and carrot, and cooked until tender, with the option to serve with rice, sesame seeds, and soy sauce. I think some sweet chili sauce would be really good on this, and kind of reminiscent of the dipping sauce you get with egg rolls.

I would probably add some of the fried chow mein noodles too. Keep them on the side, but bring them with you. Then you’ll get some crunch like you would with the wrapper on an egg roll.

9) Peanut Noodle Bowls

These are noodles served with a peanut soy lime sauce, crunchy vegetables, and baked tofu. Cut your tofu into cubes first and then drain it on paper towels before you toss it generously in sesame oil and then bake it. Your goal here is to get a nice golden brown on the outside and some crispy texture that will hold up all week in containers in the fridge.

Mix your soy and your honey together first to dissolve the honey before adding the rest of your peanut sauce ingredients, making sure to use a creamy, not a crunchy, peanut butter. I would keep the crunchy veg on the side and mix it in for each serving. That way you don’t accidentally water down your sauce.

10) Turkey Meatballs

This is lean turkey that has been mixed with breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley, seasoning, and egg, balled up, and cooked, then served with marinara with either zoodles or pasta. When I use ground turkey for meatballs, I like to throw an extra egg in, or at least the egg yolk, to help add some extra fat, because turkey tends to be pretty lean. That way your meatballs don’t get too dried out.

I like to brown my meatballs in the oven on a parchment lined baking sheet at 350 or 375, turning them every 10 to 15 minutes to make sure they get browned on all sides.

11) Shrimp Quinoa Bowl

This is quinoa, a grain similar to rice, with cilantro and bell pepper, with shrimp. Instead of using water to cook your quinoa, use veggie stock or chicken stock to add some extra flavor.

Shrimp don’t take very long to cook at all, so season them however you’d like, and then lightly pan fry them. Because this is a meal prep dish, you’re not going to quite cook them all the way, but most of the way through, so when you reheat them, they don’t wind up being too rubbery.

If you’re doing cilantro or bell pepper or anything like that in your quinoa, go ahead and cook it first, and then add the quinoa and then the stock. This will incorporate it into the quinoa and give it more flavor.

12) Chicken Caesar Salad Jars

This is a jar with the dressing in the bottom, then chicken, parmesan cheese, and romaine last. I like to shred the chicken for this. That way when I’m mixing it all up, I’m not stuck with big pieces and small pieces. It just kind of all blends in with the dressing and the salad.

Go heavy on the parmesan for this, because parmesan cheese is actually a very good source of protein. Skip the croutons on this one, because they’ll just get soggy in the jars, but you could add some crumbled up potato chips to each jar as you open it.

13) Chicken Caprese Bowl

This is chicken that has been cooked and sliced, served on cottage cheese with cherry tomatoes, basil, and balsamic reduction. Leave the cherry tomatoes whole for this so they don’t water down your bowl over time.

I would probably do dried basil in this one instead of fresh basil. That way you still get the basil flavor, but it’s not turning brown after two days in the fridge.

14) Salsa Verde Chicken

This is chicken that has been cooked in the slow cooker with green salsa and cumin and then shredded, served with either rice, tortillas, greens, or potatoes. For this one, you can just leave the chicken breasts whole and throw them in the slow cooker with the salsa verde, or green salsa, and some seasoning, and once it’s done, shred it all up and mix it in the salsa.

I like to do this one with rice, but if you’re looking for extra protein, you could do it with quinoa instead. I also like this one with a little bit of shredded cheese and some soft flour tortillas.

15) Feta Chickpea Bowls

These are chickpeas that have been roasted, mixed with baked feta and tomatoes, with the option to add cucumbers and herbs, and chicken or tuna if you need more protein. Take your chickpeas out of the cans and rinse them thoroughly, drain them on a paper towel just for a little bit, and then toss them in oil. That way when you roast them, you get some really good color.

I would probably skip baking the feta and the tomatoes, and just add the feta and the whole cherry tomatoes right to the container.

16) Chicken Fried Rice

This is day-old rice that has been fried up with diced chicken, edamame, and scrambled egg. It’s really easy to double the egg in fried rice to add a lot more protein, because you’re frying it scrambled in oil first, and when you fry egg in oil, it tends to get really stringy, so the pieces kind of disappear in the rice when you mix it in.

I’ll throw a scoop or two of frozen mixed veggies in too. Those seem to go really well with fried rice. Make sure to bring extra soy sauce on the side, because the rice will drink up any sauce you put in it while it’s sitting in the fridge, and you’ll want to add some more when you heat it back up.

17) High-Protein Snack Box

This is turkey, cheese, hard-boiled egg, pita and crackers, and fruit, with the option to add chickpeas or hummus if you need more protein. Go for an aged cheese, like a sharp cheddar or a parmesan or even an aged manchego, to get a higher protein content and a lower fat content.

I love to do hard-boiled eggs for a lunch like this. I’ll peel them, but not cut them in half, so they don’t dry out. Turkey’s really great, like any other kind of lunch meat, for high protein, but turkey tends to be lower in sodium than things like ham. You could also easily do shredded rotisserie chicken too.

18) Beef and Broccoli

This is beef that has been sliced thin and cooked in a garlic soy ginger sauce with broccoli added in, typically served with rice. Slice your beef thin like you typically would, but be careful to only barely cook it before you add the broccoli and the sauce. That way when you reheat it, it doesn’t get too chewy on you.

Cornstarch-thickened sauces like this tend to thicken up even more with reheating, so keep your sauce kind of loose when you’re putting all your food in your containers for the week. I like to keep the rice separate for this one.

19) Deconstructed Chicken Burrito

This is everything that you would typically see in a burrito, just not in a burrito. Seasoned chicken, beans and rice, pico, and avocado if you’d like, all separate. When I do something like this, I like to have it with tortilla chips, because then I can build each little chip with whatever toppings I want, a little bit of chicken or some cheese.

You can probably mix the chicken and the black beans and the pico all together in one container. I would keep the rice separate, and any toppings that you would want, like shredded cheese or sour cream, separate as well. You could easily turn this into a chicken taco salad too, just by dumping it all on some lettuce.

20) Protein Pasta

This is pasta that’s cooked with wilted spinach, tomato sauce, and chicken sausages. If you want to add some dairy when you reheat it, I would stay away from milk, especially with a high acid thing like tomato sauce, and go with heavy cream instead. Even half and half doesn’t have enough fat in it, and it’ll just wind up curdling when you try to cook it.

You can chop your chicken sausage up kind of small and then pan fry it, and it’ll almost resemble crumbled Italian sausage, which would go really well in this pasta dish. Again, add lots of parmesan cheese or pecorino cheese to add some extra protein. I think it’s something like 5 to 7 grams per ounce.

21) Teriyaki Chicken

This is chicken that has been seasoned with a bottled teriyaki sauce that has been cut with soy sauce, served with snap peas. I like to add a can of cut up pineapple to my teriyaki chicken. Just make sure you drain a lot of the juice out first.

Any Asian veggies would be good in this. You could cut up some carrots, some onion, some snap peas, even broccoli. Just make sure to add enough sauce to cook whatever veggies you put in with the chicken. I like to serve this one over rice.

22) Stuffed Peppers

These are bell peppers that have been stuffed with a mixture of turkey and rice and tomato and seasoning, with feta cheese on top. What I like to do when I’m picking out the peppers for this is try to find ones that have four points on the bottom and look like they’re going to stand up fine in a pan, so you don’t have to cut the bottom off and let any liquid out.

I will cook my ground meat all the way with the seasoning and the tomatoes and then mix the raw rice in. Then you put this filling into the bell peppers, cheese on top, and bake them. Cover each pepper with a little bit of foil, so the cheese doesn’t stick to the foil, but also doesn’t burn by the time the rice cooks. Then you just take the foil off at the end and let the cheese brown.

You’re going to want to let these ones sit for a minute before you cut into them. They will be very hot.

23) BBQ Pulled Chicken

This can be done in the slow cooker or the pressure cooker. It’s just chicken in barbecue sauce, and you shred your chicken up. Serve it with roasted potatoes or slaw.

I like to do the crock pot for this, but first I’ll season my chicken and sear it in a pan to get some really good flavor, and then just slow cook it all day in barbecue sauce and shred it up. Potatoes are good for this one, but I really like to serve it with a bun and some pickles. Shredded barbecue chicken can also be really good used in a wrap with coleslaw inside. I would probably just not add too much dressing to the coleslaw.

24) Tofu and Broccoli

This is tofu with a soy garlic ginger sauce, served with roasted broccoli and rice. Tofu is tricky because it doesn’t taste like anything and it’s hard to get lots of flavor in it, so don’t be shy when you’re cooking it with the sauce.

If you’re roasting the broccoli for this, you could also roast something like brussels sprouts or carrots or larger pieces of onion. I like to make a quick egg fried rice to serve on the side with this. It’s just regular rice that I’ve scrambled some eggs into.

25) Chicken White Bean Soup

This is a soup of chicken, celery, carrots, garlic, and white beans. I like to use great northern beans or cannellini beans because they tend to be softer. I like to season my chicken and then sear it pretty hard in the bottom of a pot, and then add all my aromatic veggies and stock and start cooking all those, then throw the chicken back in for the rest of the cook, and then shred it up at the end.

Save the beans to add at the very end, because they’ll fall apart pretty fast in the soup, especially sitting for a couple days in the fridge.

26) Turkey Egg Burritos

These are breakfast burritos made with turkey, egg, and cheese. I would probably use turkey bacon for this, or even crumbled ground turkey seasoned to taste like breakfast sausage. I like to wrap these in a little bit of foil once I’ve prepped them all up and then freeze them in the foil, and then you can just throw them straight into the oven in the foil to heat them back up for breakfast.

Keep your salsa or any sauce on the side for these so they don’t get soggy. Greek yogurt is a great high protein substitute for sour cream too, to serve on the side with your salsa.

27) Mediterranean Tuna Pita

This is a tuna salad with a Mediterranean twist, with lemon and dill and capers, served on a pita with cucumber and greens. While I love to add Greek yogurt to my tuna salad so there’s more protein, I do find that it is a little on the acidic side, and you do need a little bit of mayo in there, especially if you’re adding pickles or capers and lemon juice.

For greens on this, I would probably go with arugula, because it tends to hold up to being refrigerated and still doesn’t get soggy, and the flavor would hold up pretty well to some lemony tuna. This is a great one to throw a little hummus on if you’re looking to add some extra protein.

28) Chicken Satay Salad

This is shredded cabbage, carrots, and chicken with peanuts in a peanut dressing. I would mix lots of shredded chicken with my peanut sauce, carrots, even a little bit of cabbage, and some green onion and sesame seeds. Lime wedges are great to have on the side too, to put on as you’re eating it.

Chicken satay is typically served on a skewer, but in this shredded application, it might be best to season your chicken with a little bit of sweet soy sauce and then pan fry it to get some good color on it before you shred it up.

29) Harissa Chicken Bowls

These are chicken thighs and chickpeas tossed in oil and harissa, a spice paste, and then roasted, with a salad of peppers and cucumbers served on the side. I would cook the chicken thighs and the chickpeas separately. Thighs have a lot of fat, and if you cook everything together, the chickpeas can get kind of greasy, and they take different amounts of time to cook in the oven.

I would do this one with rice or quinoa, mixing your cold cucumbers into your rice portions and then heating everything up the day of.

30) Protein Mac and Cheese

This is a mac and cheese with a homemade cheese sauce, diced chicken and broccoli, and a high protein pasta. When you’re making your cheese sauce, you want to use a roux, which is equal parts butter and flour cooked in a pan until it starts to smell like toasted nuts or turn the littlest bit golden brown. You want to make sure not to make it too dark.

With your cheese sauce, try to avoid anything sharp like a sharp cheddar or an aged provolone or parmesan, because they’ll have a really hard time melting and the sauce can separate. Go with a medium and a mild cheddar, and then maybe one or two slices of American, to keep your sauce nice and creamy and not separated for the entire week.

If you find your pasta is kind of sticky when you’re reheating it, a splash of milk in this case will go really well. Just add the milk when it’s cold, stir it up, and then heat it up.

31) Chicken Quinoa Bowls

This is quinoa tabbouleh that has been served with grilled chicken on top. Tabbouleh is a salad typically made with bulgur wheat or quinoa, and then tomatoes and cucumbers and parsley, and you’ll want to keep it separate from your chicken so it doesn’t get too soggy.

Season your chicken breasts with Mediterranean flavors, lots of lemon and olive oil and garlic and dried oregano, before you grill it. Whatever you dress your quinoa salad with, make sure you make extra dressing and set it on the side for each day, because the quinoa and the parsley will soak up a lot of your dressing and it’ll eat kind of dry.

32) Pork Tenderloin

This is pork tenderloin that has been seasoned and roasted and then sliced after it rests, served with crispy brussels sprouts and a mustard sauce. When I do pork tenderloin, I like to season it with a little bit of mustard on the outside so all of my seasoning sticks to it, and then I’ll fry it hard in a pan on each side and then just take the whole cast iron pan and put it right in the oven to finish it.

For crispy brussels sprouts, I like to trim them and cut them first and then steam them in a steamer basket on the stove before tossing them in the oven. That way you’re not relying on the oven to do all of the cooking and the crisping. They can be cooked all the way through, and then you can just get really good color on them, and once that happens, you’re done.

This is another one that you want to cook a little bit less than you typically would if you were serving it, so when you reheat it, it isn’t overcooked. And with pork tenderloin, and all protein really, it’s important to let it rest before you slice it so all the juice doesn’t run out and you’re left with a really dry meat.

33) Chicken Soba Bowls

This is soba noodles with shredded cabbage, edamame, chicken, and a soy ginger sauce. This one’s great hot or cold, but either way, just keep your noodles separate from your sauce so they don’t wind up soaking up all the liquid.

I think shredded carrots would be a great addition to this one. I typically try to stick with chicken thighs when it’s Asian cooking. Just cut them up and season them and then fry them pretty hard in a pan.

34) Buffalo Chicken Bowls

This is shredded chicken tossed in a buffalo sauce, served over rice with celery or carrots and ranch dressing or a homemade garlic dill yogurt dressing. I would probably skip the rice on this one, and when I’m mixing my shredded chicken with buffalo sauce, mix it with some shredded cheese and even some cream cheese to make it go a little bit farther.

I like to serve this with tortilla chips. I think shredded carrot would be good in this, but I think celery might be a little weird and probably not eat that well. If you’re feeding people that are sensitive to spice, maybe just go a little bit light on the buffalo sauce and then serve it on the side when you’re heating it up.

35) Ginger Miso Chicken

This is chicken and rice with roasted carrots and a ginger honey miso sauce. Miso has a lot of umami and a lot of flavor, so if you’re not used to using it, just add a little bit at first, and if you find your sauce needs more, then add some more to it.

If you’re roasting your carrots and your chicken on the same sheet pan, just try to cut your raw chicken to about the same size as your carrot chunks so they cook evenly, and you can brush everything with your ginger miso sauce during the cooking process. Broccoli would be a great thing to add to the sheet pan as well, because it roasts really well.

This one’s really great served with rice, or if you’ve got some butter lettuce, lettuce cups are really nice with the cold miso chicken.

36) Spicy Beef Chili

This is a chili made with beef or turkey, beans, tomatoes, and spices. When I make chili, I like to add lots of vegetables too. I’ll cook my meat until it’s browned and then add onions and bell pepper and garlic, cooking that until it’s sort of translucent before I add all of my beans and tomatoes, spices, and stock. Then I add lots of extra liquid so I can cook it down until it’s nice and thick.

I feel like it always takes more chili powder than you would think, so add plenty at the beginning, and then at the end when you’re tasting it, add a little bit more. If you’ve added plenty of salt and you’re still not tasting it enough, I like to do lemon juice. I feel like the acidity mimics what salt would do without adding too much salt and making it unhealthy.

37) Chicken Spinach Curry

This is chicken cooked with curry spices in a tomato sauce or a coconut milk sauce with spinach and chickpeas. I’ll cook all of my spinach down first in a saute pan with a little bit of butter. Take some minced garlic and cook it until it just barely starts to brown, and then add all of your raw spinach, stirring it until it’s all wilted and cooked down. Then when you mix it into something else, you’re not cooking all that water out of it.

Either season your chicken heavily with your curry spices, or add a little oil to your saute pan and then your curry spices and warm them up. This will really wake up the flavor. If you do it this way, just take your warmed up spices and add the coconut milk to them. I would honestly probably skip the chickpeas on this one.

38) Baked Cod

This is cod that has been baked in the oven, served with garlicky white beans and a tomato herb sauce. When I do fish like cod or a mild fish like tilapia, I like to mix parmesan cheese and a little bit of mayo and green onion, spread it on top of the fish, and then bake it. I feel like it gets this nice, really crispy, almost sauce-style crust baked on top.

This one would be really good served on green beans, or even just an arugula salad with cucumber. You want to bake your fish until it’s just flaky and falling apart. You want to be sure not to overcook it. It typically doesn’t take too long to cook fish. Lots of lemon and fresh herbs will go great on the fish too.

39) High-Protein Yogurt Parfaits

This is layers of yogurt, berries, and chopped nuts, with the option to add chia seeds if you would like it to thicken up, served cold. Stick with a Greek yogurt or something Icelandic like skyr. If you’re looking for a high protein yogurt, they typically tend to have less sugar in them as well.

I like to layer the yogurt with granola and then the berries and then more yogurt. Be careful not to add too much fruit, or it could start to get really runny and unappetizing several days later.

While yogurt is really healthy and high in protein, I find that it tends to not be very filling or stick with you that long, so make sure you pack yourself two of these. To cut back on sugar, you could just get yourself a big tub of plain Greek yogurt and then add your own maple syrup or a little bit of brown sugar, or even vanilla extract, for flavor.