Cooking On A Budget: How To Eat Healthy, Wholesome Food
Money is tight for a lot of people right now, which means that when it comes to preparing meals that are tasty, healthy and wholesome it can feel like a bit of a struggle. It’s hard when times are tough, but the good news is that there are lots of ways that you can make your money stretch a little further.
When it comes to cooking on a low budget, it’s much easier than you might think to make your money go further. It’s simply a case of being smart about how you buy ingredients, how they’re prepared, and what recipes you follow, that’s all.
Wondering what it takes to make your budget go a little further? Below is a guide to all of the ins and outs of how you can spread your funds, while ensuring that you’re able to prepared healthy, wholesome meals.
Buy certain foods in bulk
When it comes to cutting costs, buying certain foods in bulk can save you a lot of money, so it’s worth taking the time to think about this. Dried goods – from rice and pasta to flour and sugar – can be easily purchased in bulk and stored. When you buy these kinds of goods in bulk, you normally get a heavy discount, which can help to make your budget go further.
As well as buying dried goods in bulk, if you have a large enough freezer, you can also buy fresh goods and meat in bulk. You can portion these foods up and freeze them down so that you can use them as and when you need them. When freezing fresh food, just make sure to date each pack, so that you know when it needs to be eaten by.
Shop around for the best deal
When you’re shopping for a specific ingredient, like lamb chops for a stew or curry, it’s vital that you take the time to shop around to get the best deal. Don’t just pop into the supermarket and pick up the first pack you see, take the time to do your research. You’ll often find lots of great deals online, so it’s worth taking the extra time to shop around.
Bulk out your recipes
A great hack for making food go further is to bulk your recipes out. There are some meals that it’s easier to do this with, such as risottos, stews, curries, and pasta dishes. However, you can bulk out most meals easily with vegetables or grains without losing flavour or ruining the dish’s nutritional value.
Just remember, if you’re adding extra ingredients to a dish to make it go further, you might want to consider adding extra seasoning too, to make sure that it tastes as good as it’s meant to.
Never waste leftovers
When it comes to saving money, make sure that you never waste leftovers. It’s easy to think that if there’s just a small portion left there’s no point saving it, but this isn’t the case – it’s much better to save money by portioning any leftovers up and freezing them for later than wasting food.
There you have it, a guide to how you can cut costs and keep cooking healthy, wholesome, delicious meals.
