By now you’re probably familiar with the idea of meal prepping lunches for work, and dinners for when you get home. But so many people don’t even think about meal prepping breakfast and it’s probably the one meal that meal prepping is likely to benefit the most. We’ve all run around the kitchen with one sock on, only one arm in a shirt sleeve, and our trousers unfastened as we grab a light snack for breakfast because we should have left for work ten minutes ago. This guide will take you through what you need to know about meal prepping breakfast.

Can we meal prep breakfast?

Breakfast is perhaps one of the easiest meals to prep. However, you will need to think about the food and recipes that are best for meal prepping for breakfast, because not every recipe combination is. There are certain tips you ought to follow too, to get the most out of meal prepped breakfast. This includes how to store, reheat, and which containers you’ll need. But don’t worry, we’ll cover all this and more!

We’ve already established that, we can meal prep breakfast. But before we get into prepping breakfast, it’s crucial that we remember that the saying, ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ didn’t just spring out of nowhere. To meal prep effectively, you also need to think about nutrition and the benefits it’ll have for you throughout the day.

Sweet, sugary cereals might taste nice in the moment, but you’ll be hungry again by 10am. So, how can you meal prep breakfast effectively to ensure you won’t be reaching for lunch two hours early?

Keeping a food’s nutritional value in mind

Knowing what the food you prep for breakfast is going to do for your body throughout the day is crucial to picking a recipe that’s going to help you. So here are some breakfast ingredients and their benefits, so you can start thinking about creating a recipe that’ll benefit you in the morning:

1. Porridge or muesli: healthy carbohydrates that burn off slowly and provide sustained energy throughout the day
2. Oats: high fiber content and a healthy superfood
3. Berries: natural, healthy sweetener and great at waking your body up in the morning
4. Cranberries: scientifically proven to lift mood
5. Nuts: full of healthy fats that help throughout the day
6. Seeds: great for your immune system and add texture to meals
7. Eggs: high in protein and a great fuel for the day
8. Bacon: used sparingly, it’s a high calorie food that can help keep you full for longer

By keeping a food’s value in mind, you’re able to think carefully about what your body needs early in the morning, and prep accordingly. So now we know some ingredients that are great for meal prepping breakfasts, how do we put them all together?

The best breakfast meal prepping recipes

If you can’t think of ways to put those ingredients (and others) together, then we have some amazing recipes for you below. All of them can be meal prepped in advance, so here are our top 4 meal prepping breakfast recipes!

Overnight oats

Overnight oats are the easiest way to enjoy a healthy meal prepped breakfast. As the name suggests, all you have to do is leave raw oats (that’s right, no need to cook them) in milk overnight with all of your favorite ingredients too. These are best kept in a glass jar with a lid to keep everything perfectly protected and chilled.

The result is a creamy, delicious mix of smooth oats and delicious fruit and toppings. All you need is rolled oats, and any milk of your choosing (including plant based milk too). Here are some optional extras to make it extra special:

• Fruit (any will do here)
• Chia, flax, pumpkin seeds
• Honey
• Nuts (again, any will do)

Want to know the best thing about these overnight oats? You can keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days, so you can prep everything you need for the week with different toppings to keep it interesting too!

Yogurt parfait

Yogurt parfait is basically just yogurt, granola, honey, and any toppings of your choosing. This one isn’t as filling as overnight oats, which is perfect for those who prefer a lighter breakfast in the morning. You can add whatever toppings you want here. Just place some yogurt, honey, and your favorite toppings into a jar and refrigerate.

We recommend adding the granola on top in the morning when you’re about to eat, because otherwise it can become a little soggy. But it’s important to remember that it still counts as meal prepping, even if you’re adding something at the last minute to finish.

There’s no need to go over toppings again – any fruit, nuts, or seeds will do here. In terms of storage, you’ll only want to keep these in the fridge for 3 days, so you can only prep a few breakfasts for the week at the weekend, before you’ll need to top up your supply again mid-week.

Healthy smoothies

So many people write healthy smoothies off as not being a ‘proper breakfast’, but we beg to differ! And when you see how easy this is to meal prep, you’ll count it as a proper breakfast too!

With healthy smoothies, you just need three things:

• Any fruit of your choosing
• Any greens of your choosing (yes, don’t forget spinach and kale go great with sweet fruit and are great for you in the morning)
• Liquid of your choosing (dairy milks, non-dairy milks, and water are best)

We don’t need to give you a specific recipe here because half of the fun of smoothies is throwing together a combination that works for you.

To prep, its best to chop all your fruit and greens beforehand and freezing them in a Ziploc bag. Freeze each individual smoothie pack separately. That way, in the morning, all you need to do is take it straight from the freezer, throw it into a blender with the liquid of your choosing, blend, and go.

The frozen fruit and greens keep it chilled, and you don’t need to worry about the texture of leafy greens (which can often turn soggy in the freezer) for smoothies because you’ll blend them anyway.

Breakfast muffins

Breakfast muffins can also be great. Not everybody likes sweet food in the morning, so this savory dish is a great alternative. It’s simple really: just make a breakfast muffin as you usually would (our favorite is bacon, egg, and spinach), allow it to cool, and then store in the freezer, but leave one in the fridge for the next morning.

To defrost these muffins, take them out the night before you want them for breakfast and leave them in the fridge. By morning, all you’ll need to do is warm them in the oven for 8 minutes or place them in the microwave for 2.

This breakfast can be kept safely in the freezer for up to 3 months. We’d recommend freezing all of them if you aren’t planning on eating one the very next day, as these ingredients are best stored in the freezer rather than the fridge for anything longer than 24 hours.

Tips and tricks for storing and reheating breakfasts

So, we’ve talked about knowing the value of the breakfast ingredients and given some great recipes to get you started. By now, we’ve hopefully answered the question, ‘Can we meal prep breakfast?’. So now let’s look at the best ways to do it to ensure food is stored and reheated safely.

Storing meal prepped breakfast  

We’ve already touched on this previously, but it’s probably good to reiterate the point. Some food loses its texture or color when prepped or added to certain recipes. The common breakfast foods that shouldn’t be combined in advanced include:

• Granola
• Nuts
• Bananas
• Apples

These are all things that should be added at the last minute before serving. Granola and nuts might lose their crunch (although if you prefer them softer in something like a parfait or overnight oats, then by all means add them in).

Bananas and apples lose their color, and brown slightly in the fridge overnight. However, this is purely cosmetic and doesn’t affect the taste or texture of the fruit. So again, while it isn’t ideal to meal prep them beforehand, it isn’t bad for you if you choose to do so.

Our only other tip on storing these types of food safely is to make sure you don’t store breakfasts in the fridge for more than 3 days (the overnight oats being the major exception to this rule). Make sure you freeze food that’s appropriate for freezing (anything containing milk or yogurt is not) if you will not consume the meals withing 2-3 days.

Reheating meal prepped breakfast

It’s a universally agreed fact that reheating food is always best in the oven. Foods will keep their texture more, taste nicer, and be heated thoroughly without burning your mouth. However, sometimes the microwave is necessary when you’re in a pinch. Our top tip is to aim to reheat food in the oven where you can and save the microwave for those one sock one sleeve kind of days.

If reheating food from the freezer, be sure to defrost it overnight in the fridge before reheating. This is the safest way to do it to make sure bacteria doesn’t grow, which it can do rapidly at room temperature. Ensure the food is warmed through thoroughly before eating.

Container tips

Our top tip for containers is to decide if you’ll be eating on the go, or at home. On the go containers can save you a lot of time in the morning if you just need to grab those overnight oats and hit the road.

Also ensure all containers are airtight to protect the food inside, and make sure they are space saving in their design. Some containers are much easier to stack in a fridge than others, so pick up these stackable containers to make your meal prepping easier.

Take home message

By thinking about ingredients that can sustain you throughout the day, preparing food sensibly and keeping storage instructions and container tips in mind, you can save yourself a lot of time in the morning and still have a healthy, balanced breakfast that will keep you full and your energy up throughout the day!