Coming up with lunch ideas every single day can sometimes feel harder than making dinner! It’s especially tricky when you’re feeding a family and everyone seems to want something different.
One thing that makes lunchtime much easier for me is having a couple of fillings already prepared in the fridge. You can then use the same fillings in completely different ways throughout the week.
In this post, I’m sharing 5 quick and easy lunch ideas for the whole family, including flatbread pizzas, filled croissants, a burger bake, folded tortilla wraps and loaded noodles.
They’re great for weekends, school holidays, working-from-home lunches or simply those days when you’re standing in the kitchen wondering what on earth to make!
Prepare Some Fillings First
Before making the lunches, I prepared two simple fillings that I could keep in the fridge and use in different meals.
Chicken Tikka Filling
I used around 500g chicken thighs, cut into small pieces, and coated them in a simple tikka-style marinade.
You can use your favourite combination of yoghurt, tikka or tandoori seasoning, spices and seasoning for this.
Leave the chicken to marinate for around 15–30 minutes if you have time, then cook it in a frying pan until the chicken is completely cooked through.
Once cooled, this can be stored in the fridge and used for pizzas, wraps, noodles and plenty of other quick meals.
Seasoned Mince Filling
The second filling was a simple seasoned mince.
Brown your mince in a frying pan and drain away any excess liquid if necessary. Add some garlic and ginger paste, salt and spices of your choice.
Again, once cooked and cooled, this can be kept in the fridge ready to turn into different lunches.
And now for the lunch ideas!
1. Quick Flatbread Pizzas
Flatbread pizzas are one of my favourite easy lunches because you don’t have to make any pizza dough.
Simply open your flatbreads and lay them flat on a baking tray.
Spread over some passata and then add whatever toppings you fancy.
We used combinations of:
- Chicken tikka
- Seasoned mince
- Sweetcorn
- Jalapeños
- Cheese
- Peri-peri mayonnaise
They’re also a great lunch for children to assemble themselves because everyone can choose their own toppings.
Bake at around 180°C fan for approximately 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and everything is piping hot.
2. Savoury Filled Croissants
Croissants aren’t just for sweet fillings!
Savoury filled croissants make a surprisingly delicious lunch and take hardly any time to prepare.
Simply slice open your croissants and add your chosen fillings. I made cheese and tomato and salami and cheese versions.
You could also try chicken, tuna, leftover cooked meat or whatever else you have in the fridge.
Pop them under the grill or into the oven for around 5–10 minutes, keeping an eye on them so they don’t burn.
Quick, easy and very tasty!
3. Easy Burger Bake
This burger bake is a fun alternative to making individual burgers.
I started by cooking some chicken mince in a frying pan. Once cooked through, I added garlic and ginger paste, salt and spices, followed by a little passata because the mixture was slightly dry.
Next, arrange the bottom halves of your burger buns in an oven dish.
Add a slice of cheese to each one followed by the cooked mince.
I then added fried onions, spring onions, tomato slices, peri-peri mayonnaise and ketchup before putting the tops of the buns back on.
Finish with a little extra cheese and bake until the cheese has melted and the burgers are heated through.
I used brioche burger buns, which worked really well.
For an even quicker version, you could skip making the mince and use another ready-cooked filling instead.
4. Folded Tortilla Wraps
You might remember the folded tortilla wrap trend that was absolutely everywhere for a while — but it’s actually a really useful lunch idea!
Make a cut from the centre of a tortilla wrap down to one edge, creating four sections.
Add a different filling to each quarter.
One combination I made included:
- Passata
- Salami
- Sweetcorn
- Cheese
Another had:
- Peri-peri mayonnaise
- Passata
- Seasoned mince
- Jalapeños
- Tomatoes
- Cheese
Fold each quarter over the next until you have a compact triangular wrap.
Toast it in a lightly greased frying pan on both sides until golden and heated through. You could also use a panini press.
This is another good one for children because they can choose their own fillings.
5. Loaded Chicken & Veg Noodles
Finally, one of the quickest lunches of them all — noodles.
Rather than serving them plain, I like the idea of turning them into more of a meal by adding other ingredients.
Prepare your noodles according to the packet instructions and then add vegetables and some of the chicken tikka you prepared earlier.
You could use whatever vegetables you have available, making this a handy way of using up bits and pieces from the fridge.
It’s a very quick option for those days when you really don’t have much time to make lunch.
Make Lunchtime Easier With a Little Meal Prep
The biggest tip from these lunch ideas isn’t necessarily any individual recipe — it’s preparing versatile ingredients ahead of time.
Instead of preparing five completely different lunches from scratch, you can make a couple of fillings and use them in different ways.
For example, the same chicken tikka can become a pizza topping one day, go into a wrap another day and be added to noodles later in the week.
The same goes for seasoned mince.
It saves time, reduces the amount of cooking you have to do each day and still gives you plenty of variety.
Hopefully these ideas have given you some inspiration for the next time you’re wondering what to make for lunch!
