9 of the Cheapest, Healthiest Make-Ahead Breakfasts, According to Reddit

There are a few mornings a year when I cook myself a luxurious breakfast shortly after waking up. These exclusively occur when I’m camping—you know, the vacation that turns keeping yourself alive into a hobby. For my everyday breakfasts, though, the point is just shoveling calories into the food hole with as little effort as possible, so here’s how the Eat Cheap and Healthy subreddit recommends we do exactly that. Minus the overnight oats, because we know you know about overnight oats.

It’s news to me that homemade breakfast burritos freeze well, but the subreddit is full of people sharing this important information. The recipe? “Whatever meat(s), egg, cheese, veggies, rice. You can make a bunch at once and freeze them.” If you’re at home when you eat your burrito, you can crisp up the outsides after microwaving with a minute or two in a hot skillet or in the air fryer.

Call it an egg muffin, a baked omelet, or a “crustless mini quiche,” but this genre of egg dish stores well in the fridge or freezer and can be eaten cold or hot. I like to microwave mine with a slice of cheese on top. The idea is simple: fill muffin tins with a mixture of beaten eggs and the fillings of your choice (sausage, peppers, and onions, for example). If you want to be fancy, line the muffin tin with bacon.

Oatmeal can be baked in huge batches in a pan and then refrigerated until it congeals. The result is a solid object that you can slice like a cake into individual portions, each of which becomes a day’s breakfast. Incorporate fruit, nuts, cinnamon, or whatever toppings you like. There are baked oatmeal recipes all over the internet; try this one for starters.

I’ve long been a fan of saving a smoothie for later, and I do it by pouring it into a mason jar—that way you just need to shake it to re-suspend the previously-blitzed ingredients, and your smoothie is ready to drink. The subreddit proposed another idea, though, and this one works even if you like ice in your smoothie: simply blend the ingredients the night before, minus ice, and pop the entire blender pitcher in the fridge. In the morning, put the pitcher back on its base, add ice, and blend to your desired texture.

Breakfast sandwiches, like their burrito brethren, also freeze well. The traditional recipe is a bagel or English muffin (or toast) with cheese, egg, and a meat of your choice such as ham. Try this recipe to make a single serving egg puck in the microwave, or make a larger batch of eggs in a skillet or baking pan.

Hot oatmeal without having to cook it in the morning? Yes, please. Even though it’s not that hard to assemble and microwave a bowl of oats, there’s something fancy about having a whole steaming pot of the stuff ready when you wake up. A redditor suggests making oatmeal using a rice cooker’s timer function. (Our own Allie Chanthorn Reinmann lays out the requirements your rice cooker must meet to do this without intervention; it works best if you have a fancy rice cooker.)

Just because you want to eat eggs, bacon, fruit, and carbs doesn’t mean you have to cook all of these things and put them on the same plate. One redditor suggests boiling a bunch of eggs, and then baking a whole pack of bacon in the oven, and then storing these in the fridge. Grab a few of each on your way out the door, and supplement with a banana, bagel, or whatever you feel best rounds out the meal.

Yogurt is eminently portable, whether you layer it carefully into a mason jar with its toppings or simply grab a yogurt cup and a handful of trail mix on your way out the door. The trail mix is brilliant, I think—more flavor, texture, and heartiness than a plain old granola—but, of course, you can dress up your yogurt any way you want. Mix some whey powder into the yogurt for an extra protein boost, and drizzle with honey if you like.

I love a potato-based breakfast, and one of my favorites to prepare during those camping vacations is a hash made of potatoes, eggs, cheese, some kind of meat, and a variety of veggies. This concept translates well into a make-ahead bowl, several redditors noted. One pointed out these breakfast bowls from Budget Bytes as an exemplar of the genre.