Five Desk Lunches I Would Rather Assemble Than Buy a Meal Deal

Let us be fair to the meal deal. It is convenient, it is everywhere, and on a grim Tuesday it does the job. But somewhere around the fourth sandwich of the month you start to notice that a £4 lunch is mostly bread, and that the crisps are doing a lot of emotional labour.

I have spent the autumn assembling lunches instead — from leftovers, from the reduced section, from whatever the veg drawer has to offer. None of these take more than twenty minutes the night before, and most of them use things you probably already have. Costs below are rough 2026 supermarket prices for a single portion, because prices move and nobody needs a spreadsheet with their lunch.

One rule before we start: everything here is designed to be eaten cold or reheated in a workplace microwave that has seen things. Nothing delicate. Nothing that goes grey.

1. Roast chicken, pearl barley and lemon

Pearl barley is the most underrated grain in the shop — nutty, chewy, and about 90p for a bag that lasts a month. Cook a mugful in salted water for 25 minutes, drain, and dress it while warm with lemon juice, olive oil and plenty of black pepper. Then fold through shredded leftover roast chicken, a handful of chopped parsley and some fine slices of raw fennel or celery for crunch.

Taste note: the barley drinks up the lemon and stays firm overnight instead of going claggy, which is more than can be said for rice. Slightly chewy in a good way. The fennel gives it a lift that stops it tasting like a Sunday roast in a box.

Cost per portion: about £1.70 (barley is pennies; the chicken is the expense, which is exactly why you use leftovers).

2. Sardine and butter bean smash on rye

A tin of sardines in olive oil, drained and mashed roughly with a fork into a tin of butter beans, a squeeze of lemon, a little mustard and a lot of chopped soft herbs if you have them. Pack it separately from two slices of dark rye or a few crispbreads, and assemble at the desk so nothing goes soft.

Taste note: this is the one people are sceptical about and then steal. It tastes of the sea and of lemon and of good olive oil, and the beans give it a texture that whipped fish lacks. It is also genuinely filling — the sort of lunch that stops you buying a flapjack at 3pm.

Cost per portion: about £1.15.

3. Celeriac remoulade with ham

Grate a quarter of a celeriac coarsely — do not bother peeling it perfectly, just cut away the gnarly bits. Dress immediately with mayonnaise, a teaspoon of Dijon, lemon juice and salt, because celeriac browns fast. Add a tart apple cut into matchsticks, and pack it with a couple of thick slices of ham or a spoon of shredded leftover pork.

Taste note: sharp, crunchy and clean — a proper palate-waker rather than a stodge. The celeriac holds its bite for two days, though the apple will soften, so add that in the morning if you are being organised. Buy the smallest celeriac you can find; half a huge one will haunt your fridge.

Cost per portion: about £1.40.

4. Sweet potato, black bean and feta

Bake a sweet potato the night before — whole, 40 minutes, no fuss. In the morning, split it, fork the flesh roughly and pile on half a tin of black beans warmed with cumin, chilli and lime, then crumble over feta and a spoon of yoghurt. Reheats in three minutes, or eats perfectly well at room temperature.

Taste note: the sweetest, most comforting of the five, and the only one that genuinely feels like a hot meal. The lime is not optional. Without it the whole thing collapses into orange mush; with it, it tastes deliberate.

Cost per portion: about £1.30.

5. Sesame egg and spring onion rice

Day-old rice, fried hard in a hot pan with a little oil, soy and a handful of frozen peas, then pushed to one side while you scramble an egg in the same pan. Off the heat, stir through sesame oil, sliced spring onion and toasted sesame seeds. Pack hot and let it cool down with the lid ajar.

Taste note: the cheapest and the most satisfying. It is essentially a takeaway staple made for about a fifth of the price, and it reheats better than almost anything else in this list. The sesame oil at the end is what makes it — add it off the heat so it stays fragrant rather than cooking into the rice.

Cost per portion: about £0.85.

What actually makes a desk lunch work

The recipe matters less than the packing. Things that stay separate stay good: dressing in a little jar, crunchy bits in a bag, bread wrapped on its own. Things that sit together for six hours get soft and sad, and soft and sad is precisely what the meal deal has already cornered the market in.

Second, season it properly before it goes in the box. Cold food tastes flatter than warm food, so a lunch made the night before needs more salt, more acid and more herbs than you would put in the same thing at the table. If it tastes perfect hot, it will taste dull at one o'clock.

And third, be realistic about your week. Five assembled lunches sounds aspirational until Wednesday, so I usually do two proper assemblies, one jar of grains that stretches across three days, and a fallback tin of sardines in the desk drawer. That is not a failure of planning. That is planning.

The meal deal will still be there when you need it. It just should not be the plan.