The best high-protein meals for muscle gain

A meal that helps you build muscle ticks these boxes:

• Lots of protein: about 40 to 60 g, toward your daily target of 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg (ISSN, 2017).
• Plenty of carbs: rice, pasta, potatoes or bread fuel your training and recovery.
• Quality fats: oil, avocado, nuts or house-made sauce add calories without volume.
• A reasonable volume: if the meal is too big to finish, it doesn't help.
• Flavour: you'll eat it often, so you need to want to come back to it.

It's the foundation of bulking for a reason: rice is easy to digest, goes with everything and lets you add calories simply by increasing the portion. Add chicken, beef or tofu, vegetables and a sauce, and you have a complete meal.

Easy variations: curry chicken with chickpeas, a poke-style bowl with teriyaki chicken, taco-seasoned ground beef with rice and toppings. Sauces make all the difference in not getting sick of it.

Pasta is among the most calorie-dense foods and the easiest to eat in large amounts. A mac and beef with spinach, a meat sauce or stir-fried noodles with chicken bring lots of carbs and protein on one plate.

To keep a good protein-to-calorie ratio, put in a real portion of meat, not just a few pieces in the sauce.

Baked potatoes, sweet potatoes or mash, with chicken, beef or fish: a classic that works. A plate of potatoes with chipotle chicken, for example, combines carbs, protein and flavour without much work.

Potatoes have another advantage: they reheat well and keep their texture, which makes them an ideal base for meals prepared ahead. Add a sauce or a little cheese to raise the calories without raising the volume.

Main meals do most of the work, but breakfasts and snacks round out your day:

• Scrambled eggs, toast and a big glass of milk.
• Oatmeal cooked in milk with peanut butter and banana.
• Greek yogurt, granola and fruit.
• A bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, or with eggs.
• A chicken or tuna wrap to go.

Bulking doesn't need endless variety. People who succeed often have a few base meals they repeat, changing the sauce or the protein. It simplifies shopping, prep and tracking your intake.

If you don't feel like cooking these meals yourself, that's exactly what meal prep does: dense, high-protein meals that change enough not to get boring. At the time of writing, the Protéine Express weekly menu included, for example, curry chicken with rice, a taco bowl, a teriyaki chicken poke bowl, mac and beef with spinach, and chipotle chicken with potatoes.

If you'd rather cook your bulking meals, set yourself up to batch-cook once or twice a week. A big pot of rice or pasta, a sheet pan of baked chicken and a sauce let you put together several meals in minutes during the week.

• Weigh your carb portion once to see what your target looks like, then keep using the same container.
• Make two or three different sauces to change the flavour without changing the base.
• Use same-size containers to keep portions consistent from one day to the next.
• Keep your meals in the fridge and follow food safety rules for leftovers.

What matters is consistent portions: that's how you know whether you're really eating enough to progress.

Every meal on the bulking plan has about 930 kcal and 60 g of protein, and every dish's exact values are listed. Order by Friday noon, from $13.49 per meal, and get delivered on Sunday from 9 a.m. in Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, Brossard and elsewhere on the South Shore and North Shore.

To figure out how many meals you need, read our article on how many calories to eat to build muscle.