Lunch Ideas: Easy, Healthy Recipes

Meals have to be kept in optimum conditions as well as to remain tasty after reheating them. It is also important that they are balanced recipes and provide us with everything we need to face the day.

6 easy, quick, healthy lunch ideas

Many people have to pack their lunch daily. With our fast pace of life and our little imagination, we end up always eating the same, taking the first thing we find or having lunch at some fast food restaurant. In the end, we end up sacrificing our diet and our health.

However, preparing delicious, healthy meals for a balanced diet is not such a difficult and expensive task. Many foods and elaborations can be cooked the day before or several days before being consumed.

That's why we've put together a list of easy homemade recipes for packed lunch,  so that from now on our lunchbox looks delicious and tasty. Certainly, this is the best way to enjoy a healthy homemade meal every day.

1. Chickpea salad

If you like chickpeas, you'll love this recipe. Also, you can make endless combinations with other ingredients and even prepare it with any other type of legume. This dish is the perfect ally anytime. Also, apart from being healthy and quick, it is also a  vegan recipe.

To prepare this salad we will need 2 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 cucumber, 200 g chickpeas, mint leaves, cilantro, parsley, juice of half a lemon, spices to taste, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Cut the cucumber and the tomatoes in small pieces. Then, chop the herbs and add them with the chopped vegetables. Add the oil, cumin, and pepper in a bowl and mix. Emulsify the spices to taste with olive oil. Add the drained chickpeas to the spices we have just emulsified. Finally prepare the salad, mixing all the ingredients, and we have one of the most useful lunch ideas.

Vegetable salads are a perfect packed lunch choice. | Getty Images

 

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2. Sautéed spinach with chickpeas and boiled eggs

Spinach is one of the easiest and most complete foods we can prepare for a meal at work. There are plenty of spinach recipes, but one of the most popular ones is sautéed spinach. If we complement them with protein, we already have a complete dish.

To cook this dish for four people, we need 750 g chickpeas, 2 bunches of fresh spinach, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 4 slices of hard bread, 2 boiled eggs, vinegar, a pinch of cumin, 1 teaspoon of paprika, salt, and pepper.

We have to fry the slices of bread for a while. Sauté the onion previously cut into strips. Add the garlic and paprika, being careful not to burn them. Add the spinach to the frying pan and sauté. Meanwhile, put the garlic together with the cumin, salt, and vinegar in a mortar and mash.

To finish, we mix the fried bread with this mixture and crush it. Add it to the frying pan, sauté everything and add the chickpeas. Serve with the chopped boiled egg on top and a little pepper.

3. Shrimp salad

By adding a few shrimps or prawns to an Olivier salad, we can transform a typical insipid dish into something tastier. If we also add other vegetables and light mayonnaise, we already have the perfect lunch for this season. This is  one of the most original lunch ideas to save our day.

To make this salad for 4 people we need 600 g boiled potatoes, 600 g peeled shrimp or prawns, a few radishes, a cucumber, a bunch of chives, a handful of parsley, a cup of quark cheese, vinegar, oil, Perrins sauce, salt, and pepper.

Cut the cucumber into slices. Cut the radishes into quarters and add 4 tablespoons of vinegar with a pinch of salt and let stand. Cut the potatoes into quarters and mix them with the cucumber, the radishes, the shrimps or prawns, the parsley and the chopped chives. Dress with oil, salt, and pepper.

To make the light mayonnaise, mix the quark with the vinegar that has been left over from marinating the radishes and a dash of Perrins sauce. Add the mayo to the salad.

Chicken rice or with vegetables is another of the most versatile healthy recipes. | Getty Images

 

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4. Pork noodle casserole

This is one of the most common leftovers recipes. We can use the broth that we have left from some other recipe or prepare it based on leftovers from other dishes.

For four people we need 200 g thick noodles, vegetable broth, chicken or meat, half onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 4 tablespoons tomato sauce, 1 sausage, 300 g pork rib cut into cubes, 300 g lean pork, salt, pepper, thyme, and olive oil.

Fry the ribs, the lean meat, and the sausage cut into pieces. Then toast the noodles in a frying pan. Chop the onion and poach it together with the garlic. Add the tomato and thyme and stir. Then add the noodles and keep on stirring. Add the meat and broth and cook over medium heat until the noodles are ready.

5. Rice salad

One of the best lunch ideas for our lunchbox preparations is rice salads. There are many types, but so that it does not become a boring dish, we can add vegetables to taste and dress it with vinaigrette. This is another one of the vegan recipes in this article.

For our salad, we will need 200 g of brown rice, 500 g of beans, 1 lemon, 2 shallots, a tablespoon of fresh thyme, olive oil, pepper, and salt.

Boil the rice and beans. Grate the lemon peel and take out two spoonfuls of its juice. Make a vinaigrette with the chopped shallot, salt, pepper to taste, thyme, olive oil, and the grated lemon zest. We make the salad mixing the rice with the beans and the dressing.

6. Chicken thighs with couscous

The secret of this recipe is to take advantage of the flavor of the chicken fat in an original way, preparing a couscous that will also serve as an accompaniment. Serve it with whatever vegetables we have in the fridge.

For four people, we need 4 chicken thighs, 4 tomatoes, 2 onions, 1 lemon, 1 head of garlic, 250 g couscous, half a liter of chicken broth, red paprika, thyme, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Put the thighs and the garlic in the oven. Also, add the tomatoes and onions cut into quarters. Mix the lemon with the oil, the paprika, and the thyme and sprinkle with the chicken. Season the thighs and cook for 45 minutes.

To make the couscous, add the fat resulting from the chicken and the vegetables cooking to the chicken broth and boil it all. Cook the couscous and once ready, serve it together with the chicken.

In the following video we will find many more packed lunch recipes: