With living costs rising at an alarming rate, many of us have found our weekly food shop is a lot more expensive than it used to be. Lisa Faulkner, 50 says one of the key ways to trim back in the kitchen is planning.
Although she admits “it doesn’t always work”, it is something she tries to stick to as much as possible. “It stops me wasting food, which is the biggest thing for me – I don’t want to waste food, I find it really hard" she added.
At home, she and her husband, MasterChef’s John Torode, share food duties. “We both love to cook,” said Faulkner – and they don’t seem to get bored of it, despite being around food all day.
However, they do have very different styles in the kitchen. Faulkner said: “He is very meticulous.
"He cooks in a certain way, with order. I have a little order, but it’s usually like, 'let’s use that as a shortcut.'”
Whenever she is cooking, Faulkner is keen to keep food waste and costs low. Here are her top tips for saving a bit of cash when cooking.
Top tips on how to save money in the kitchen
Plan, plan, plan
Faulkner learned about the importance of mapping out weekly meals from her mother. “We planned everything,” she says, thinking back to her childhood.
“The Thursday ‘big shop’ was what we did. I think a lot of people who grew up in the Seventies and Eighties were like that.
"If I’m planning what I’m eating for the week, I know how much my food shop is. If I plan, I don’t waste food, and I don’t spend extra money.”
Get inspired with cooking magazines or cookery programmes
If you are not used to meal planning and find it all a bit dull, Faulkner recommends seeking out inspiration. “Even as a recipe writer, cook and mum, you sit there sometimes and go, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to make spag bol again.’
"It’s nice to keep coming up with ideas and keep getting inspiration.” Faulkner says she often gets inspiration from the Ocado magazine - she recently teamed up with the brand to create five cost-effective recipes.
“Whether it is a Shepherd’s pie, a stew or a dish my mum used to make us, these are the recipes I go back to. But also I look around and find inspiration everywhere.
"I get so much inspiration from TV shows. I watch American TV shows because I’m obsessed with American food."
Use up everything
Faulkner is a big advocate for using up as much food as you possibly can, making sauces or soups with leftovers. She said: “There are always times when you think, ‘Oh, we’ll keep that and we’ll have that another day,’ and it just sits in the fridge.
"You end up feeling so bad wasting food. We’re all trying to be better all the time.”
Herbs can often go bad quickly, but Faulkner has a hack for that: “We’ll dry herbs and we’ll make pesto and oils.”
Freeze the rest
Batch cooking and freezing is a perfect way to make sure no food goes to waste, saving you a bit of money in the process. Faulkner said: “I batch cook a lot and try to think ahead.
"This morning, I literally threw everything into a slow cooker. I know that I’ve made enough food that will feed us tonight, but I will also definitely have so many leftovers that I will then portion up and freeze.”
Meals from your freezer don’t have to be uninspiring, because you can make them into whole new dishes. Faulkner says: “We had some mash potato and fish in the freezers, so we made some fish cakes using these two ingredients.
"We had a stew but it wasn’t very much, so we ended up adding a tin of tomatoes, stock, and made it a big soup with tortilla chips on top. It was taking little bits of leftovers and making it into something else.”
Lisa Faulkner has created Five Meals for Four for £25 using Ocado Own Range ingredients. To view more recipes visit Ocado.
