It is no surprise that all across the UK we are now facing some finically difficult decisions regarding paying bills, heating and food.
The cost of living has made it almost impossible to not worry about how to make ends meet and for us as a family things are immensely tight. Along with so many other families just one major finical hiccup could be enough to sink us so we are trying to make the most of our budgets while we can.
This month I challenged myself to home cook and batch cook as many of our families meals as I could for less than £50 and I am thrilled to say I managed it.
If you have been reading here for a while you will know I also hate being in the kitchen so for the last decade I have been on a learning curve with my batch cooking journey and it wasn’t an easy start when I began batch cooking.
However in order to get the maximum for our money I needed to visit several supermarkets to take advantage of prices and offers where possible. For this challenge I used, Aldi, Lidl and Asda. Thankfully for me there are all within a few minutes travelling time from each other so I could do a circuit and then return home.
What Did I Make?
Sausage Casserole x 8 portions
Fajita’s x 4 (ate for lunch while batch cooking for the plait)
Bacon & Chicken Pasta x 6 portions
Cottage Pie x 8 portions
Corned Beef Hash x 3 large portions (could have made 4 smaller portions easily)
Fajita Plait x 4 portions
Chilli Con Carne x 8 portions
Lasagne x 6 large portions (could have made 8 smaller portions easily)
Chicken curry x 4 portions
What Do You Need To Batch Cook?
Over the last few years I have made some great choices for batch cooking and also some not great choices.
Where the recipes are concerned I have had great success with tomato based recipes and gravy bases. I have never managed to batch cook anything with a cream or yogurt base other than curry which is my husbands speciality and he uses creamed coconut for that.
The next choice for making batch cooking successful is to have some pots in the right sizes. Over the years I have used a range of pyrex type dishes but about a year ago i discovered the 365+ range from IKEA and it made the organiser in me super happy too! I purchased the 1 litre and 2 litre rectangular boxes as they both use the same lids .. how genius is that! its just the depth of the tubs that is different and the 600ml and 1.4 litre square containers also share the same square lids. These have been used all through my fridge as i now decant all fruits and vegetables into these boxes for storage and food has lasted so much longer than keeping it in their shop packaging.
Just to make me love the 365+ range even more you get the option of using the same lids with either plastic tubs or glass tubs so I now have a range of both.
My batch booked meals that will need an oven or my air fryer to reheat I put into glass tubs and those meals that need a microwave or pan are stored in the plastic tubs. For family meals I have also invested in some of the IKEA 365+ 3.1 litre rectangular dishes too. When preparing and storing meals, don’t forget to take care to protect your countertops and kitchens by using cutting boards and ensure spills are cleaned up quickly.
How To Make Batch Cooking Worthwhile …
Plan ..
Plan recipes..
Plan freezer space..
Plan shopping trips..
Plan time to spend the day in the kitchen..
This set of meals took me from 10am – 2.30pm to make and at least 30-40 minutes after for the last batch of recipes to cool down before I was able to store them. So it also offers a great time saving too as working out the time per meal it means I spent a mere 4.8 minutes per fresh cooked meal! .. Which makes me really happy as I HATE being in the kitchen!
I am also thrilled that I was able to oven cook 21 meals in the oven using it twice and using extra racks so now these meals can all be reheated either in the air fryer or microwave so much cheaper than putting the oven on 5-6 times for each batch of meals if i hadn’t batch cooked them!
So will I set myself this challenge again?
Without question I will be doing.
Next time I am intending to not only cook another 50+ meals I am intending to do it with all new recipes too!
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