How to Make Your Favorite Lunchboxes Tastier and Healthier at Home
It’s school season, which means buying pencils and planning lunch. You already know the basics of packaging a healthy lunch for your child , part of which is making sure your child actually eats what you collect. The recipes below are not only infinitely tastier versions of popular prepackaged meals, but because you have precise control over what goes into them, they are also healthier than store-bought counterparts.
Of course, there is no need to limit the following to just the smallest – cups of homemade pudding are delicious in every brown bag, no matter who owns it.
Create the best dining table
When I was young, Lunchable was the Holy Grail of school meals. They were just crackers, meat and cheese, but separating them into neat little compartments that needed to be assembled later made the pre-packaged dish magical. When they introduced the Lunchables pizza, I was totally obsessed.
The standard Lunchable Meat and Cheese Cracker can be made effortlessly, and as you choose the players, these dishes can be customized to suit your child’s nutritional needs. Whole grain crackers, low sodium lunch meats, or even fried chicken pieces can all be used to create a healthier cracker snack. More desirable pizza snacks can be made by hand with a little effort on your part. Just make small circles of pizza dough (maybe whole grain ?) And store them in the freezer until they go. Add a small container of low-sugar pizza sauce and topping. Shredded cheese and pepperoni are easy, but cooked diced vegetables help make a pizza day fun and nutritious.
Freeze homemade burritos and wraps for delicious microwave-safe meals
Few things are more convenient than frozen foods, and if your child has access to the microwave throughout the day, it can be difficult to resist throwing a frozen burrito in his lunch box. But with a little time for the weekend, you can make burritos and wraps exactly what you want and then freeze them for lunch throughout the week.
You will want to use cooked ingredients such as beans, grilled meats and vegetables, and grains; fresh tomatoes and crispy lettuce do not store well in the freezer. After you’ve prepared a delicious filling, add about a cup and a half to your favorite tortilla and wrap it up. Then, wrap that foil back in the foil and toss future meals into the freezer bag (or wrap them again in plastic wrap) to prevent scalding in the freezer. When it’s time to put your child on the school bus, pack one of your frozen creations along with fresh salsa or guaca (homemade, of course) and send them off knowing they’ll be eating all-round food. rolled food. ( Check out these great posts from The Kitchn and Bon Appetit for delightful fill ideas and build notes.)
Prepare enviable snacks and desserts
Apples and carrot sticks are great for your health, but they’re not the most exciting snacks you can find in your Scooby-Doo lunch box. Goldfish pudding cups and crackers have always been my favorites, but single portions can be expensive and create a lot of packaging waste. Both can be easily prepared in the kitchen and packaged in reusable containers, saving you money and reducing unnecessary packaging. (They are firmly categorized as “treats,” though, so maybe pack them with the fruit.)
For little cheese fish, both this recipe from The Kitchn and this Tasty Kitchen recipe are full of crunchy, savory qualities, and the latter has great practical advice for making fish-shaped cookie cutters from aluminum cans. These Serious Eats Chocolate Layered Pudding Cups are not exactly healthy food, but they only take you ten minutes and are much tastier than their store-bought counterparts. With these snacks in the bag, your child will be the bell of the dinner ball, but I doubt they’ll want to participate.
Refresh your college noodle cups
College students (and their parents) are not immune from back-to-school season, but their needs and resources are slightly different. Before you send your kid back to campus with a microwave and mini-refrigerator, think about how to teach him how to make improved instant noodles (ridding them of the super-salty taste of death) using this deceptively simple method from Serious Eats :
The idea is simple and ingenious: In a jar, combine partially cooked noodles, some vegetable base, a few raw chopped vegetables, and a few spices. Add boiling water, wait a few minutes, and you have a lunch with all the appeal of instant noodles, but with the real flavor and freshness enclosed under this lid.
There are four great flavor combinations (with do-it-yourself flavor packs!), But once you master the recipes, you and your favorite college student can be free to get creative with vegetables, sauces, and even jerky. If you really want to take it to the next level, you can cook the noodles yourself .
Even if you don’t have kids to pack lunches for, the above meals and snacks are great options for any lunch that needs to be portable. I can only call my “furry kids” mine, but I can guarantee that I will use these recipes. In fact, nothing is easier than a frozen burrito and nothing tastier than a cup of pudding.