Quick and easy: Rukmini Iyer’s five kitchen rules for hassle-free midweek cooking

The wider the range of herbs and spices in your store cupboard, the fewer trips you’ll need to make to the shops. Photograph: Issy Croker/The Guardian.

A minimum fuss, maximum flavour dinner is the post-work holy grail, and in my new column you’ll find everything from quick-cook, quick carb dinners (less than 15 minutes, with your sauce or stir-fry cooked in the time it takes to boil pasta, noodles or rice, say) to easy dinners in half an hour (think no-fuss roasting-tin dishes or stovetop one-pots). You can also expect budget-friendly, cook once, eat twice dishes for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunchboxes. To get you started, here are my top five rules for hassle-free midweek cooking.

1 Audit your fridge (and freezer)