Freeze the whole lunch box — just pick the right foods

Yes, you can freeze a packed lunch the night before, but you have to think like a freezer, not a fridge.

The easy wins are sandwiches (hold the mayo, lettuce, and tomatoes), cooked pasta or rice, soups, stews, cooked meats, and fruit. Yogurt tubes freeze fine in a pinch. Hard cheese also freezes better than you’d think.

The things that turn sad: raw salad greens, cucumbers, eggs with shells, creamy sauces, and anything mostly water. A PB&J freezes like a champ. A chicken salad sandwich does not — that mayonnaise splits.

For containers, use freezer-safe plastic, glass jars with at least an inch of headroom, or stainless steel. Don’t fill anything to the brim — liquid expands in the freezer and can crack a glass jar or pop a lid. And if the package doesn’t say freezer-safe, assume it isn’t; normal disposable lunch containers get brittle and shatter.

When you pack the night before, leave the box slightly underfilled and let the lid sit loose until everything’s frozen, then seal it. That keeps the container from cracking and makes the lunch easier to pull apart in the morning.

Freezing a lunch box works great — just don’t ask it to freeze a salad.