Alongside utility bills and rent or mortgage payments, the money you spend on food is probably one of the biggest outgoings from your bank account every month. You might think there’s very little you can do about it.
However, there are a number of different ways you can reduce the money you spend on food and still eat delicious meals week in, and week out.
Here are three tips to make cooking for your family more affordable:
Subscribe to a Recipe Box
Normally when you want to cook a recipe from scratch, you might find that you have to go out and buy a lot of new ingredients. The main problem is that although the recipe might only warrant a teaspoon or even a pinch of one ingredient, you have to buy a whole packet or bottle of it.
If it’s an ingredient that you’ll ever only use on that one recipe, you might find yourself wasting a lot of money on ingredients you don’t use, especially if they have a short best before date.
To save wasting money on ingredients, subscribe to a recipe box service. These measure out all of the ingredients for you, so you’re only paying for the amount that will go into the dish and not what will be left in your store cupboard for months if not years.
If you have young children, choose a subscription that has recipes they’ll enjoy. For example, the meals sent out by compasscooks.com are not only suitable for children to eat, but they come with fully illustrated recipe cards so they can help cook them as well.
There are deals on trial boxes, and each box contains enough ingredients for three recipes for two adults and two children.
Batch Cook
In most supermarkets, the bigger the packet you’re buying, the better value for money you’re getting. That goes for everything from laundry detergent to toilet rolls and especially food. Try to avoid just buying one chicken breast at a time. If the recipe allows, buy all of the ingredients in bulk and make one large portion of the dish you’re cooking. Then freeze several portions of your meal to eat at a later date.
This will also prevent you from needing to splash out on expensive ready meals for when you don’t have enough time to cook a proper meal.
Plan Your Meals Well
If you find you are throwing away out-of-date food every week, then you’re practically throwing money away. To prevent this from happening, plan your meals carefully.
Write a list of what you’re going to eat before you go to the supermarket and make sure you stick to it once you’ve got the food home. Check expiration dates and make sure nothing is left to go moldy.
Try and stick to the plan as much as possible. If you do end up having a takeaway one night instead of cooking, then make sure you freeze any leftover food before it’s too late.
How do you save money when cooking for your family? Let us know in the comments below!
