15 healthy meal prep recipes without chicken

Meal prep and eat healthy the entire week with these simple simple and healthy no-chicken meal prep recipes! That’s right! If you’re sick and tired of eating chicken, broccoli and rice every day of the week – these meal prep ideas without chicken (or turkey) will provide the inspiration you need!

What Is Meal Prep?

Meal prep isn’t rocket science. You basically make a lot of food on Sunday or whenever you have one to two hours and then eat what you’ve made during the week. If you’re ambitious, you can meal prep recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But this collection of meal prep ideas is for healthy lunches and dinners. We find these meals to be more challenging during the week…probably because making overnight oats for breakfast or a smoothie isn’t that time-consuming.

Why Meal Prep?

Does your cooking consist of putting some cheese on bread and toasting it for 2 minutes? Or heating up some food that was pre-packaged months ago by a machine, because you don’t have time or desire to cook during the week? Then maybe, it’s time to try making some healthy recipes ahead aka time to meal prep.

We myself wasn’t the biggest fan of meal prep and eating old food, but life’s gotten pretty busy lately and we kinda started adopting this habit of preparing some food twice a week (vs. daily!) and it’s definitely helping us eat healthier. And it saves some money as well.

Meal Prep Tips

Now, before we get into the no chicken meal prep ideas, let’s address some basics:

• Make a Meal Plan That You Enjoy. Pick out some recipes you feel like you’ll love and make a meal plan that you’re excited about. Don’t want to eat at home every evening? Want to go out for lunch with your coworkers? Plan it out and make a grocery list accordingly, so you can make your meals ahead and stick to your goals.
• Don’t Make Too Much Food. The one downside of meal prep for us is the thought that at some point we'll be eating old food. So when making that meal plan, be realistic and don’t plan for too much food, because you might not want to eat it by day 4. You need to know what you’re comfortable with.
• Keep Ingredients Separate. Either use different food containers or use containers with separate compartments. We like this way of making food, because we feel the food stays fresh longer and we can warm up whichever part of the meal we want. For example, if we have meatballs with salad, we'd keep the meatballs separate and heat them up when it’s time to eat.
• Keeping Ingredients Separate Allows Flexibility. You can use the same ingredients to make something different every day, so you don’t get bored and throw everything out (has happened to us!)

15 Healthy No Chicken Meal Prep Recipes

Now to help you out, this is a collection of fun, colorful, satisfying, healthy meal prep recipes without chicken (yes, they do exist!)! These recipes don’t take a million hours to make – in case you’re worried about it – they’re pretty fast and simple to put together.

1. 5-Minute Mediterranean Bowl (Vegan & Gluten-Free). Probably one of our favorite meals, like ever, and something we make pretty much at least once a month. We're not gonna lie to you – this is our recipe and it has a special place in our heart and on this list of healthy meal prep ideas without chicken.

2. Quinoa Fried Rice. Our sister shared this recipe on her blog and we can testify, it’s tasty! It’s healthier than take out and the one time she made it for us, it was ready in about 15 minutes. Pretty good for a vegetarian meal prep recipe and SO worth it.

3. Mediterranean Salmon Bowl. There’s salmon in it, there’s hummus in it, what is it? A Mediterranean Salmon Bowl with greens on the side – and it’s pretty much the solid dinner. Healthy, simple to make and absolutely satisfying meal prep idea.

4. Black Bean Quinoa Bowl. This vegan recipe with cooked black beans, quinoa, guacamole and a simple tzatziki sauce is solid for lunch or dinner.

6. Quinoa & Ground Beef Skillet. Meal prep dinner for the next 3 days in 30 minutes, by using the recipe for this healthy quinoa and ground beef skillet. And yes, there’s the one pan that does all the work.

7. Meal Prep Shrimp Taco Bowls. Now, if our old food looks like this we would have it every single day of the week and never complain. This meal prep recipe is great if you want to have a satisfying, balanced, gluten-free meal.

8. Lo Mein Meal Prep. Can you imagine this lo mein recipe is actually good for you? It’s meatless, loaded with veggies AND high-fiber (yes, those are whole wheat spaghetti).

9. Meal Prep Greek Meatball Bowls. These Greek meatballs are made with ground beef and served with a simple tomato cucumber salad, some olives, feta cheese and garlicky yogurt sauce. This one should definitely make it on your list of must-try no-chicken meal prep recipes!

10. Tempeh Taco Salad Meal Prep Bowls. We've never had tempeh, but we might just start with this recipe, because it looks so incredibly tasty. On top, it is vegan and gluten-free.

11. One Pan Baked Teriyaki Salmon and Vegetables. Okay, so you know how “they” say meal prep should take hours? If you make this simple salmon recipe you’ll need only 30 minutes and one pan.

12. Meal Prep Simple Vegan Red Lentil Dal…and if you thought: 30min? Who has 30min? Bam, here’s a 15-minute satisfying vegan red lentil dal recipe you can meal prep to eat healthy for a long time.

13. Shrimp Fried Rice Meal Prep. Okay, so yes, this is shrimp fried rice. Is it the healthiest option when it comes to simple meal prep recipes without chicken? Maybe not. But is it healthy-ish? Yes. It’s got some vegetables in it, some brown rice in it, some shrimp, it’s good. Better than cookies for lunch, we're telling you.

14. Meal Prep Italian Couscous Salad. Alright, when we first saw Chelsea’s Greek Couscous Salad Meal Prep Recipe We thought: “This is it, meal prep recipes can’t get any better than this”. Then we take a look again and there she is: this beautiful, majestic Italian couscous salad. We fell in love. Is this basil? You know how we feel about basil. Well if you don’t: we love it.

15. Lemon Roasted Salmon With Sweet Potatoes and Broccolini. Oh our, this meal prep recipe without chicken…it’s kinda solid – simple, simple and pretty much everything a hungry girl could ever dream of.