How much protein should a meal prep container have?
30–45g for most people. Divide your daily target by the number of meals you eat.
High Protein Meal Prep
Meal prep only works if each container clears your per-meal protein target. Cook the protein in bulk, vary the carbohydrate and vegetables, and the week takes care of itself.
Pick two anchor proteins for the week — say chicken breast and a legume — and cook them in one session. 1.2kg of cooked chicken breast is roughly 370g of protein, which covers eight 45g meals.
Then vary the base and the sauce so five identical containers do not feel like five identical meals.
Proteins that keep well
Protein and calories per 100g, from the Protein Hunter database.
| Food | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| 🐔 Chicken breast (cooked) | 31g | 179 |
| 🦃 Ground turkey (lean, cooked) | 27g | 163 |
| 🍔 Ground beef (lean, 95%) | 26g | 184 |
| 🐟 Salmon (cooked) | 25g | 250 |
| 🍢 Tempeh | 19g | 193 |
| 🥚 Whole egg | 13g | 155 |
| 🍢 Firm tofu | 12g | 76 |
| 🫘 Lentils (cooked) | 9g | 116 |
| 🫘 Chickpeas (cooked) | 9g | 164 |
| 🫘 Black beans (cooked) | 9g | 132 |
Per 100g.
The system
- Weigh the cooked anchor protein into 150g portions — that is roughly 45g of protein from chicken breast.
- Cook grains and legumes separately so the texture survives reheating.
- Three days in the fridge, three months in the freezer, for cooked meat and legumes.
- Sauces carry protein too — yogurt and tahini based dressings add 3–6g per serving.
- Run one container through the calculator once, then reuse the number for the whole batch.
Turn this into dinner
Hunter Chef builds a recipe around the protein target you pick, with macros calculated from the real ingredients.
Open Hunter ChefCommon questions
How long does cooked chicken last in the fridge?
Three to four days when cooled quickly and stored in a sealed container.
Does reheating destroy protein?
No. Heat changes protein structure but not the amount of protein or its amino acids.
Keep reading
Protein CalculatorAdd up any meal in plain words.Protein database230+ foods with protein and calories.How much protein per daySet the target these foods feed into.What is Protein Hunter?
Protein Hunter is a protein and nutrition app with a database of 232 foods — from a leaf of kale to a wagyu steak — plus AI tools that answer protein questions, count a whole meal, build recipes to a macro target, and track what you actually eat.
- Search any food
- Count a full meal
- Recipes to your macros
- Scan a plate or label
Why it's different: the numbers are calculated from a fixed ingredient database rather than guessed, and when a target is not physically achievable the app says so instead of inventing a figure.
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