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Salads are a lunch traditional for a cause: They require little-to-no cooking, don’t should be heated up, and might simply be reworked with just a few 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 whole mix-ins.
“I really like that it comes with slightly dressing container and a chrome steel divider that stops any spillage, even when I carry it round the other way up or on its aspect,” one SELF tester says. The 64-ounce (additionally obtainable in 184-ounce) bowl is slightly massive—our tester match three to 4 servings of her favourite quinoa salad in it—so that you’ll must make some room in your fridge, however we predict it’s price it if salads are a part of your common rotation.
Materials: Stainless-steel | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
Finest Baggage: 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 baggage. 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 keeping with our tester. “They’re high-quality silicone baggage with a extremely safe seal,” she says. “The ‘pinch loc’ seal could be very thick and straightforward to really feel when it locks.”
You need to use them to retailer elements (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 a number of popcorn.
These baggage in all probability gained’t change your glass or plastic containers, however they’re nice in your kitchen if you wish to reduce on single-use plastic within the meal prep course of.
Materials: Silicone | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
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 need one thing that may maintain 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 3 hours, “although you may in all probability warmth the meals up extremely popular earlier than you permit 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 fabricated 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.”
Materials: Stainless-steel | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
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 likely to contain sides, snacks, and possibly a candy deal with? This lunch field is a far cry from the brown bag you may’ve carried as a child—it has a big part for the principle a part of your meal and some smaller ones in your Very Grownup Snacks.
The very best function of this lunch field must be that it’s customizable: “The detachable boundaries made it simple to tailor the compartments to my most well-liked serving measurement, slightly than the opposite approach round,” our tester says.
Materials: Plastic | Care directions: Dishwasher-safe
What must you search for in meal prep containers?
After attempting a bunch of choices for weeks, these are the options we predict are most necessary:
Dimension
The sizes of containers you’ll want will rely upon the way you cook dinner: Setting apart a number of servings of the identical meal? You in all probability want just a few medium containers. Do you have a tendency to organize elements for one meal at a time? You may like some smaller choices as an alternative.
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