Since our son started preschool, it feels like a weekly struggle to come up with creative school lunch ideas that doesn’t consist of sandwiches all week long and that is also nutritious. We’ve experimented with different recipes and have narrowed down our rotating lunch recipes to just a few that we know our son consistently loves and will eat.
If you’re struggling to find ideas for your toddler’s school lunch, look no more. This article was written for you!
Lunch Storage is Essential
The challenge with finding simple and healthy lunch ideas for school is maintaining the freshness of the meal. My biggest worry was whether my son’s lunch would still taste good after sitting around in his lunchbox for hours. Thankfully, we discovered a few great lunch storage options to maintain the freshness and temperature of hot lunches.
We invested in a thermos container and these lunchbots to store our son’s lunch and snacks which has been put to great use. The thermos container claims to keep your food warm for up to 5 hours, which is perfect for school. When serving, we ask our son’s teacher to serve his hot food in his lunchbox together with his side snacks.
Once you have the right food storage containers, it makes it so much easier to plan and allows you to offer hot meals as a lunch.
Simple & Healthy School Lunch Ideas
Another challenge with preparing school lunches is determining recipes that are both healthy and easy to make. As all parents know, school day mornings are a rush and can feel chaotic when you’re wrangling a toddler so simplifying lunch recipes is important in reducing stress and saving time in your morning routine.
If you’re a fan of meal prepping, this is a great way to save time preparing lunches in the mornings. A few of the recipes I’m sharing will have the option to prepare in advance so you can just heat it up in the morning for a quick meal. However, if you’re like me, who will usually prepare lunch on the day of, here are a few simple and healthy school lunch ideas that your toddler is guaranteed to love!
1. Tuna onigiri
This is one of our family’s favorite recipe and it’s super easy to make. It can be prepared for lunch or dinner. If you’re planning to serve this as a lunch, I highly recommend purchasing this onigiri film wrap, which will help keep the seaweed fresh and prevent it from softening from the moisture. You can use any topping, but our preference is tuna with mayonnaise. You must use Japanese short-grain sushi rice like this Koshihikari Rice because it creates a nice sticky like texture which allows you to easily mold the shape of the rice. All you will need is an onigiri mold to form the triangular shape and optional to add seaweed as a wrap. We like to season our rice with furikake to give it added flavor.
I like to make this on the morning of. Since cooking the rice will take the longest time, I start the rice cooker as soon as I wake up in the morning so it will be ready for me to make in 15 minutes. To store, we use the plastic film wrap to maintain the freshness of the seaweed and place it in the thermos to keep it warm. The entire process takes about 20 minutes with most of the time spent on cooking rice (10-15 mins).
2. Chicken nuggets, baked sweet potatoes and zucchini
We love the Applegate chicken nuggets because it contains no antibiotics and is made with organic chicken. We serve it with baked sweet potatoes cut up into crinkle fry shape using a crinkle cutter and roasted zucchinis. This recipe is super easy and takes less than 15 minutes to prepare. We throw everything in our toaster oven and then store it in our Thermos to keep warm. We will also serve this with a serving of fruit and a salty snack like these cauliflower rolls.
3. Stir fry udon noodle with scrambled egg and mixed veggies
We love Costco’s premade teriyaki stir-fry udon by Pulmuone. It takes less than 10 minutes to make and you can customize it to your preference. You can add in your protein of choice. We like chicken or scrambled eggs. And if you’re not a big fan of their premade vegetable topping, you can add in your own fresh veggies into it like steamed broccoli or carrots. If you want to make it even more healthy, you can ditch the teriyaki seasoning and make your own by using honey and soy sauce. This goes well with a variety of veggies and proteins so you can mix it up and make it different each time.
4. Cauliflower or chickpea pizza
A healthier alternative to your regular store bought pizza is the Banza chickpea roasted veggie pizza and Costco’s cauliflower crust pizza. This is a family favorite! We always make sure to have this on hand every week because this is always on our weekly rotating lunch menu. It’s super easy to make – just pop it in the toaster oven for 10-12 minutes and voila!
5. Grilled cheese sandwich with broccoli
A grilled cheese sandwich is a classic that your kid will be sure to love. Simply melt your cheese slice (we like medium or sharp cheddar) between your two slices of bread on a nicely buttered or greased pan. We will add broccoli or spinach to the sandwich so we can sneak in those greens!
6. Chicken quesadilla bites
This is another really easy and simple recipe. You can just simply add your choice of shredded cheese and fold it into a quesadilla. Then, melt it on the stove or microwave. If you plan to add protein like grilled shredded chicken, I highly recommend preparing that in advance the night before. That way, it’s already prepared and ready to add to your quesadilla the morning of. This is also a great way to sneak in those veggies – you can add broccoli here and your child will likely not notice. However, if your child is a picky eater and avoids anything with the hint of green, it’s probably best and safest to leave it out.
7. Mac N Cheese
Another classic meal is mac n cheese. We love the healthy alternative mac n cheese by Banza which is made out of chickpea pasta so your child will get the added protein from the chickpeas. I’ll add broccoli or peas to this recipe to make it a balanced meal. This takes less than 10 minutes to make. Serve it in the Thermos to keep it warm.
8. Fried Rice
This is a recipe that’s best prepared in advance since it does require more preparation and ingredients. We like to add mixed veggies to our fried rice which includes carrots and peas. We will either make our fried rice with salmon or chicken as the protein. The recipe also includes eggs which gives it a protein boost. You can customize your fried rice to whatever your child loves. For instance, our son loves mushrooms so we’ll make sure to add it in our recipe or you can use whatever veggie you have at home. We love to add onions, carrots, chinese broccoli, and peas. This recipe is super easy to make and once you’ve cooked it, it’s as easy to microwave it and store it in the Thermos on the day of.
9. Bolognese with mixed veggies
This is another recipe that’s best prepared in advance although you could pull it off making this recipe in the morning if you have an extra 10-15 minutes. For this bolognese recipe, all you’ll need is ground beef, pasta and your favorite marinara sauce. We love Rao’s marinara sauce for this recipe! For our bolognese, we like to pack in a ton of veggies like carrots, peas in addition to mushrooms (our son’s favorite). We’ll also add steamed broccoli on the side since our son is likely to eat it when combined with the marinara sauce. We love this recipe because we’ll make it as our family dinner the night before and then we’ll have enough leftovers to serve for our son’s school lunch the next day. Store it in the Thermos container to keep warm.
10. PB&J sandwich
Of course, I couldn’t leave out our classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is my ultimate favorite lunch as a kid (and still to this day as an adult). We held off on offering PBJ sandwich to our son due to the high sugar of jam. But most recently, we found this zero added sugar St. Dalfour Strawberry Conserves from our local community store which has been a game changer for us!
I would love to hear in the comments below, what are your favorite school lunch ideas for your kids?
