It’s easy to assume it’s more expensive to cook healthy meals from scratch than buy ready meals or takeaways. But we’ve proved that theory wrong time and time again.
Our tips
- Use less meat and bulk up stews, soups, chilli and curries with canned pulses like kidney beans, butter beans and mixed beans. You could divide your usual portion of meat into two meals and add extra veg to make it stretch further
- Shop smart
- Add grated veg to your mince to make it go further – try carrot, courgette and marrow
- Switch fresh fish for canned or frozen fish
- Add pasta or rice to your soups to make them go further
- If you buy bulk packs of meat or fish, separate them into portions and freeze the ones you know you won’t use before the use-by date
- Before you go shopping, check your cupboards and fridge: there may be ingredients you could use up first
- Cook in bulk and freeze leftovers in portions once they are completely cold. Check out our batch cooking and freezing page