Painless Meal Prep Begins With the Proper Containers

Salads are a lunch traditional for a cause: They require little-to-no cooking, don’t must be heated up, and might simply be remodeled with a number 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 your entire mix-ins.

“I really like that it comes with a bit of 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 a bit of massive—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 price it if salads are a part of your common rotation.

Finest 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—they usually’re a real game-changer, in response to 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 should 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 plenty of popcorn.

These luggage most likely received’t exchange your glass or plastic containers, however they’re nice on your kitchen if you wish to in the reduction of on single-use plastic within the meal prep course of.

Finest 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 would like one thing that may hold your soup sizzling or your in a single day oats chilly, look no additional than this Hydroflask jar. One SELF editor discovered that it stored her bites on the good temperature for 2 to a few hours, “although you could possibly most likely warmth the meals up very popular earlier than you permit within the morning, put it into the container, and it could 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 would 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 steel ones, can find yourself smelling or tasting bizarre after they’ve had meals sitting in them for some time.”

Finest for Lunch: Bentgo Trendy 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 perhaps 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 principle a part of your meal and some smaller ones on your Very Grownup Snacks.

The perfect characteristic of this lunch field must be that it’s customizable: “The detachable limitations made it simple to tailor the compartments to my most well-liked serving dimension, fairly than the opposite approach round,” our tester says.

What do you have to search for in meal prep containers?

After attempting a bunch of choices for weeks, these are the options we predict are most essential:

Dimension

The sizes of containers you’ll want will depend upon the way you cook dinner: Setting apart a number of servings of the identical meal? You most likely want a number of medium containers. Do you have a tendency to arrange substances for one meal at a time? You would possibly like some smaller choices as an alternative.