Frugal Friday! Batch Cooking
One of the ways I enjoy saving money (for paying off debt quicker, of course) is to batch cook. The average UK household – if the people I watch in Tesco are anything to go by – seems to live on prepacked microwave meals, pizza and takeaways.
If you enjoy cooking though there’s a much cheaper alternative.
Cooking in Batch
This sounds complicated but is actually really easy to do. All it involves is cooking more than you plan to eat right now, portioning out the remainder and either putting it in the fridge, freezing it, or a combination of the two. Batch cook several meals over the course of a week and before you know it you have a fab selection of home made food in the freezer that can be taken out at a moment’s notice and popped in the microwave.
Good steaming hot home made food in 5 minutes flat. Because it’s frozen you can even take it to work for lunch providing you have a microwave available.
A Quick Example
I love Chinese takeaway, but I really dislike paying for it. So as I was going out anyway, I combined journeys and diverted to Tesco before coming home. Scouring the reduced areas (I was going to cook when I got home), I managed to pick up:
- A family-sized packet of ready cut Chinese vegetables (70p down from £1.50),
- 2 cooked meat-counter hot & spicy sausages (50p down from £1.85),
- A bag of fresh egg noodles expiring today (20p down from £1),
- 3 giant red onions (30p down from £1.05),
- 3 giant mild red chillies (20p down from £1),
- A clove of garlic (full price at 30p),
- A packet of sweet sticky chilli stir-fry sauce (full price at £1)
Method
I already had the olive oil to fry off of the onion so that was done first. After softening and turning a nice golden brown, I sprinkled some sugar in to caramelise, and then added the giant packet of vegetables. After gently frying it down for about 10 minutes I added the sauce, chillies and noodles. Mixed well, and divided equally into some snap-shut plastic containers – the ones your Chinese delivery normally arrives in!
Tip: Save these plastic containers – they fit together to take up next to no space anyway and are great for doing this with. Wash them out, and store dry. They are reusable, microwave and dishwasher safe.
Calculate The Saving
After cooking and portioning out, I’d managed to feed myself for lunch yesterday, and I also made up 5 containers for freezing.
If I’d not purchased the discounted items, then the total meal cost would have come to £7.70 which made each meal £1.28. This is still very cheap for a Chinese meal, but being frugal, I am not ashamed to shop in the knock-down sections first. The total cost of the items I bought was £3.20 making each portion just 53p – over two and a half times cheaper!
Now the kicker: I always shop in Tesco, and where possible, get my fuel there as well. The end result is lots of Tesco ClubCard points and vouchers. I actually cashed in a £2 voucher for this shop, so I only really spent £1.20, making each dish just 20p.
Need Inspiration?
There’s no shortage of recipe repositories online, but if you want ones with frugal wholesome living in mind, check out this amazing list of ideas from the dedicated people over at the MSE forums.
If you find yourself using the excuse “I don’t have the time / energy to cook” when you get home from work, then batch cooking is a great way not to just save money but keep your pennies to yourself and save yourself time later on in the week as well.
Have you tried batch cooking before?
p.s. Frugal Friday is published every Friday and includes a frugal tip for money saving. To see every Frugal Friday post, click ‘Frugal Friday’ under Categories to the right.
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