5 Super Simple Ways To Save Money In The Kitchen

While your food bill may shock you each week, when you get into the kitchen, you can still overspend.

A few changes in your habits can see you saving money in no time.

Meal plan

Meal planning may sound like a chore, but when you get started, you’ll realise how much money (as well as time) it’ll save you. With a little forward thinking, you’re able to have a list of everything you need to buy in advance, which will help prevent you from overspending when you head to the supermarket.

Then, when it comes to making dinner each evening, you won’t get stuck with what to eat and get tempted to call for a take out. You’ll also find a good meal plan will mean you have less food waste as you’ve been able to account for where everything goes.

Use leftovers and batch cook

Using leftovers is another excellent way to make sure you have less waste and can stretch a free meal another day.

For instance, if you’re going to be cooking a roast chicken for Sunday dinner, you can easily stretch it for several meals. The white meat may be fine for one dinner, but remember to pick off the dark meat, wings and legs to use in tasty dishes like a chicken fried rice or a delicious risotto. Also, the carcass can be used to make your own chicken stock.

Check out Skint Chef, which has loads of ideas for cheap family favourite meals that can use up leftovers.

As part of your meal planning, it’s worth factoring in a bit of extra food. If you’re going to be cooking a meal like Bolognese, stew or a pie filling, why not double up on your ingredients and make more to use another time. The leftovers will usually store well in your freezer.

You could even add things like beans and pulses to stretch the portions out.

Make your own cleaning products

Not only will you save on space under the kitchen sink, but you’ll also save money and be more eco-friendly if you look to make your own cleaning products. You likely won’t even need to go out and buy fancy ingredients to make your own cleaners.

Simple store cupboard essentials such as vinegar, lemon juice and bicarb of soda work wonders on keeping your kitchen clean and sparkly.

Forget your cooker

Making dinner on the hob or using your oven may seem like the easiest way to cook your food, but it can work out expensive. Instead, look to use other gadgets in your kitchen that cost less to run.

We can be guilty of only using our microwave to reheat leftovers, or warming up our forgotten cup of tea, but it’s a useful way to cook your food. The microwave can cook things like vegetables far quicker than boiling them on the hob and can preserve vitamin C and keep more nutrients inside them.

Another must-have for the kitchen is a slow cooker. As you’ll be cooking your food over a long period, you’re able to use far cheaper cuts of meat, but it becomes very tender and tasty when cooked. It’s also far less expensive to run your slow cooker for 8 hours than using your stove to make dinner.

Put a lid on it

If you do choose to use your hob for cooking vegetables or food in a pan, there are a couple of simple things you can do to cut back on your energy usage and save those pennies.

So, you’ve chopped your carrots (or another favourite veg) and popped them in a pan. Instead of adding cold water, and bringing them to the boil on the hob, you should use boiled water from the kettle. It’s cheaper to boil water in this way than it is to use the hob as the kettle uses a lower wattage.

Also, when you’re cooking your veg in the pan, be sure to use a lid. The lid keeps the water hotter, meaning it cooks quicker.

What other ideas do you have to save money in the kitchen?