Salads are a lunch basic for a cause: They require little-to-no cooking, don’t have to be heated up, and might simply be remodeled with a couple of ingredient swaps. Bringing one with you on the common is an entire lot simpler with a bowl like this one—it has ample area for lettuce and all your mix-ins.
“I really like that it comes with slightly dressing container and a stainless-steel divider that forestalls any spillage, even when I carry it round the wrong way up or on its aspect,” one SELF tester says. The 64-ounce (additionally accessible in 184-ounce) bowl is slightly giant—our tester match three to 4 servings of her favourite quinoa salad in it—so that you’ll have to make some room in your fridge, however we predict it’s value it if salads are a part of your common rotation.
Materials: Stainless-steel | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
Greatest Luggage: Stasher Starter Pack
Professionals
- Sturdy seal
- Very sturdy
- Microwave-, oven-, and freezer-safe
Cons
- Extra bigger sizes can be useful
Drained: Disposable, single-use plastic luggage. Wired: Reusable silicone pouches. I’d by no means even heard of the latter till Stasher got here on the scene—and so they’re a real game-changer, in keeping with our tester. “They’re high-quality silicone luggage with a extremely safe seal,” she says. “The ‘pinch loc’ seal could be very thick and simple to really feel when it locks.”
You need to use them to retailer substances (even liquid ones!) or prep your lunch for the subsequent day. This pack comes with seven pouches starting from itty bitty snack-sized–our tester match 12 chopped carrot sticks in it—to a half-gallon freezer bag that may maintain a big sandwich or numerous popcorn.
These luggage most likely gained’t change your glass or plastic containers, however they’re nice to your kitchen if you wish to in the reduction of on single-use plastic within the meal prep course of.
Materials: Silicone | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
Greatest for Temperature Management: Hydroflask Insulated Meals Jar
Professionals
- Leakproof
- Retains meals sizzling or chilly for hours
- Doesn’t maintain onto smells
Cons
- Not microwave-, oven-, or freezer-safe
If you need one thing that may preserve your soup sizzling or your in a single day oats chilly, look no additional than this Hydroflask jar. One SELF editor discovered that it saved her bites on the excellent temperature for 2 to a few hours, “although you would most likely warmth the meals up very popular earlier than you allow within the morning, put it into the container, and it might nonetheless be heat sufficient by lunchtime,” she says.
She’s additionally impressed—however not shocked, as a Hydroflask loyalist—by how sturdy the jar is: “It seals actually tightly, so I wasn’t afraid about something leaking. You actually can throw this factor round filled with meals and liquid, and never fear in any respect about it.”
Extra excellent news: “One other factor I really like is that the jar does not retain the style of no matter meals was in it,” our tester says. “Meals storage containers made from different supplies, like plastic and even some metallic ones, can find yourself smelling or tasting bizarre after they’ve had meals sitting in them for some time.”
Materials: Stainless-steel | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
Greatest for Lunch: Bentgo Fashionable Lunch Field
Professionals
- Customizable compartments
- Leak-resistant
- Microwave-safe
Cons
- On the bulkier aspect
- No deal with for simpler carrying
Do your lunches are inclined to contain sides, snacks, and possibly a candy deal with? This lunch field is a far cry from the brown bag you would possibly’ve carried as a child—it has a big part for the primary a part of your meal and some smaller ones to your Very Grownup Snacks.
The perfect function of this lunch field must be that it’s customizable: “The detachable limitations made it straightforward to tailor the compartments to my most popular serving measurement, fairly than the opposite method round,” our tester says.
Materials: Plastic | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
What do you have to search for in meal prep containers?
After making an attempt a bunch of choices for weeks, these are the options we predict are most essential:
Measurement
The sizes of containers you’ll want will rely on the way you cook dinner: Setting apart a number of servings of the identical meal? You most likely want a couple of medium containers. Do you have a tendency to organize substances for one meal at a time? You would possibly like some smaller choices as an alternative.
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