Cost cutting cooking tips
Plan meals in advance, make a shopping list and only buy ingredients you need for your meal plan.
Love Food Hate Waste has many helpful hints, tips and guidance to help you get the greatest value from your food, making sure its eaten and saved from the bin.
A lot of meals/food can be prepared in advance and then frozen. This can save waste and save time.
Cook extra portions – eat some now and freeze the rest for later.
The Food Standards Agency has more details on how to chill, freeze and defrost food safely.
Low-cost meal planning
If you're looking for affordable meal ideas, these websites provide budget-friendly recipes, meal plans and cooking tips to help you make the most of your food budget.
- Tesco: Budget meals and recipes
- Morrisons: Savers recipes
- Lidl: Recipes
- Good to Know: Cheap family meals
- BBC Good Food: Cheap family recipes
Food dates and storage
A Use-By date on food is about safety. You can eat food until and on, the Use-By date, but not after. Food that has passed its Use-By date can be hazardous even if it looks and smells alright. However, you can freeze pre-packaged food right up to the ‘use by’ date.
‘Best Before’ dates are about food quality rather than safety. The item may still be okay to eat after the Best Before date but might not be quite as fresh or tasty.
To find out more about food labelling read the article at Love Food Hate Waste: Making sense of food labelling.
Low energy cooking
It's possible to lower costs when it comes to cooking great family meals by thinking about how you can save energy - here are some useful websites:
Food Swaps
Tesco have an article about swapping ingredients to make food go further:Tesco: Budget swaps.
Healthy diet and portion sizes
Learn more about healthy eating, balanced diets and portion sizes with these trusted resources, which offer practical advice to help you make informed food choices and reduce food waste:
- NHS: The Eatwell Guide
- British Nutrition Foundation: Portion sizes
- Love Food Hate Waste: Portion calculator
Free recipe cards
For budget friendly family meals which are easy to cook, call into your local Best Start Family Hub and pick up some recipe cards.
Find a Best Start Family Hub: Find opening times, facilities, events and activities.
