High-protein foods for people who hate cooking

Which foods are high in protein?

Most of them are easy to recognise. If it had a head, or came from something that did, it’s probably a good source of protein. Meat, chicken and fish had one. Eggs, milk, yogurt and cottage cheese came from something that did.

That shortcut gets you through most of a supermarket, but it has two holes. It lets in a few animal foods with very little protein: butter and cream are almost all fat, and a hot dog or a chicken nugget has about half the protein of the same weight of plain chicken, or less.

It also leaves out the plant foods that can do the same job as meat or fish. Tofu, tempeh and edamame all come from soy beans: tofu and tempeh are sold as blocks, and edamame are the young beans, sold frozen. Beans and lentils get there too, in bigger portions.

The other foods you see on high-protein lists, the nuts and seeds, the peanut butter, the whole grains, add a few grams next to one of those. That’s worth having. They’re just not the main protein in a meal, and the numbers below show why.

How much protein is in a normal portion?

What we’re really looking for are foods that make it easy to get a useful amount of protein into a meal without much work. So the question to ask of each one is the parmesan question: how much do you get from the amount you’d actually eat?

To compare them, this article uses a meal with about 30 grams of protein as its example. That’s a planning number, not a rule. It’s roughly what each meal comes to if your day’s target is 100 to 120 grams over three or four meals, and it’s in the range that helps keep hunger down until the next one. Your own number may be higher or lower, and 30 grams isn’t what makes a food “high in protein”. It just gives us something to measure a portion against.

Here’s how far a normal portion of each food gets you. The last column says whether any cooking is involved.

Protein in a normal portion

A few things are worth noticing. The ready-to-eat foods hold their own against the ones you’d have to cook: a palm of rotisserie chicken is within a few grams of a chicken breast you cooked yourself. The size of the portion does a lot of the work: three eggs come to 19 grams, and one egg to 6. And a small can of tuna is 20 grams, not 30, so it wants something next to it.

What about nuts, bread and peanut butter?

Whatever goes next to that can of tuna is usually in the meal already. Plenty of foods add a few grams alongside the main protein:

• About 8 to 10 grams: a glass of milk (240 ml), two slices of bread, half a can of beans or chickpeas, a small pot of ordinary yogurt (170 g), a cup of peas or cooked quinoa.

• About 6 or 7 grams: one egg, a slice of cheese (28 g), a small handful of almonds (28 g), two tablespoons of peanut butter, a glass of soy milk.

• About 4 or 5 grams: half a cup of dry oats (40 g), a flour wrap.

• Under 4 grams: a cup of broccoli, two tablespoons of hummus or grated parmesan, a glass of almond or oat milk.

Two of those can add 15 grams to a meal, which is a real contribution. What they can’t do is be the only protein in it. That’s the peanut butter sandwich’s problem: 7 grams from the filling, and nothing else in the sandwich to do the heavy lifting.

For a food that isn’t here, the label has the answer, as long as you ask it the same question: how much protein is in the amount I’m going to eat? European labels give protein per 100 grams and US labels give it per serving, and neither has to match your portion. Greek yogurt looks modest at 10 grams per 100 until you remember you’ll eat 300 grams of it.

If you’re watching calories as well, our ranking of high-protein snacks has a label test for that.

How to add protein to a meal you already eat

Go back to the sandwich. Say you make a tuna sandwich with a couple of forkfuls of tuna mayo, about 30 grams of fish. The whole sandwich comes to about 14 grams of protein: 6 from the tuna and 8 from the two slices of bread.

Now put the whole small can in, the 140-gram size, which is about 107 grams of fish once it’s drained. The same sandwich comes to about 28 grams: 20 from the tuna, and the same 8 from the bread. Nothing about the meal changed except the amount of the food that was supposed to be its protein.

Most meals that come up short work the same way. The protein is in there, but as a garnish. So before you change what you eat, find the main protein in the meal and check there’s a full portion of it. A few meals you might already be eating:

• Pasta with sauce. A plate has about 12 grams. Stir in a small can of tuna or a palm of rotisserie chicken and it’s over 30.

• Instant noodles. A pack has about 8 grams. Two boiled eggs and half a cup of edamame bring it to about 30.

• A bag of salad. On its own it has almost none. A palm of chicken, or a small can of tuna with half a can of chickpeas, makes it a meal with about 30.

• Toast. Two slices have about 8 grams. A cup of cottage cheese on top makes it 33, and three boiled eggs make it 27.

• Oats or cereal. Half a cup of oats with a glass of milk is about 13 grams. Eat the oats with two small pots of Greek yogurt instead and it’s 36.

No-cook meals with about 30 grams of protein

When there’s no meal to start from, build one the same way: one food that provides most of the protein, in a full portion, and something to eat it with. None of these needs a recipe, and most take a few minutes.

No-cook meals, and what they add up to

If your number needs bigger meals, make the main protein bigger before you add anything else. 150 grams of chicken instead of 100 is 42 grams of protein before you’ve counted the wrap.

Over a day, it adds up like this. Say you weigh 80 kg (175 lb). Most adults that size do well on 95 to 130 grams of protein a day, and we set clients that size who are losing fat or building muscle at 130 to 175.

Your day will use different foods. What stays the same is the shape: a full portion of a food that provides most of the protein, every time you sit down to eat.

What to keep in the house

A no-cook meal takes two minutes when the food is in the house, and it doesn’t happen at all when it isn’t. So most of the work moves to the shop. In our coaching, clients shop from a list every time, because, as I tell them, healthy habits start in the supermarket.

This is a standing list for a kitchen that doesn’t cook:

• Fridge: Greek yogurt or skyr, cottage cheese, eggs, milk, a block of cheese, and one cooked meat that’s ready to eat: a rotisserie chicken, or a pack of cooked chicken.

• Cupboard: cans of tuna, salmon, sardines or mackerel; cans or pouches of ready-cooked lentils, chickpeas and beans; oats; bread or wraps; and peanut butter, for the few grams it adds.

• Freezer: shelled edamame, cooked peeled shrimp, peas, a spare loaf of bread, and berries for the yogurt.

The cupboard and the freezer are there for the evening you haven’t planned anything. Cans, pouches and frozen bags keep for months, so on the night the fridge is empty there’s still a can of tuna in the cupboard and a loaf in the freezer, and that’s the 28-gram sandwich.

The fresh food needs a little more thought. Get a rotisserie chicken into the fridge within two hours of buying it, pull the meat off the bones, and it keeps for three to four days.

Sliced turkey or chicken from a pack works as a backup. It has less protein than meat off the bone, and at least twice the salt.

If you do cook now and then, cook double. In our coaching, food prep doesn’t mean the bodybuilder kind. It means a weekly plan, a base shopping list, fruit cut and ready, and double portions to save time. The second portion is a no-cook meal waiting in the fridge.

If you’d rather have a coach build that plan and that list around the food you already eat, that is what we do at Gains For Gamers.

When the fridge is empty

It’s eight in the evening, there’s nothing in the fridge and your group is online at nine, so you’re not cooking. One stop at any supermarket covers tonight and the next few days: a rotisserie chicken or a pack of cooked chicken, a few pots of Greek yogurt or skyr, four cans of fish, a loaf of bread or a pack of wraps, and a bag of frozen edamame for the day the chicken runs out.

That’s dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow and a few days of lunches, and none of it needs a recipe. It only works if the main protein goes in at full size: the whole small can, both pots, a full palm of chicken.