10 ways to save money on your food bill

10 ways to cut your food bill

Try to buy most of your fresh produce in the season that it's grown and harvested. If it's grown close to home, with no transport or freight costs, the produce on offer should be competitively priced.
Check out our seasonal ingredients calendar here.

Make a budget and try to stick to it. That way, you won't be tempted to waste money on food you don't need.
Write down a shopping list that corresponds to a meal plan. Knowing what food you want to cook and when you plan to cook it throughout the week will mitigate food waste and help you to factor in your leftovers.
Be prepared to swap in ingredients that you can’t get or that have gone up in price while you're shopping.
Don’t shop hungry or you'll buy too much food.

The difference in price between chicken breasts and thighs is bigger than you may think: about £7.33 a kilo vs £1.85 a kilo. The cost also goes up for organic meat. Choose lamb neck over lamb chops, pork collar over shoulder and so on, to save money.
Check out Tom Kerridge's lamb biryani recipe for a great way to use lamb neck.

Ensure you have a good range of frozen food – it’ll last longer and you’ll save on food waste as you'll only use what you need. It’s a misconception that frozen produce isn’t as good for you as fresh.
Frozen vegetables are often frozen soon after picking, so the nutrients are preserved. Use a white board pen to keep a tally on your freezer or fridge door of what you have in stock, so you don’t have to rummage.

Using a pressure cooker cuts down on cooking time and allows you to buy cheaper ingredients that usually need a longer time to cook. These include beans and pulses (which can be cooked dry or soaked) and cheaper cuts of meat. A pressure cooker also makes the most of meat bones and carcasses, extracting every last bit of flavour from them for stock.
Head here for our best pressure cooker recipes.

Make sure you know the difference between best-before and use-by dates. Use-by dates indicate a period when food is no longer safe to eat and should always be adhered to. They're usually found on perishable goods and it may be dangerous to consume them past that date.
Best-before dates indicate the optimum quality of an ingredient – the items are safe to consume past this date but may not be in peak condition.

Something as simple as eating your cauliflower and broccoli stalks rather than throwing them away can be cost effective and save waste. Trim any woody bits, or just peel and cut into slices or strips and cook along with the florets.
Stale bread can be made into puddings or whizz into breadcrumbs to make crunchy toppings for bakes and pasta. Discover our best leftover bread recipes.

Some greengrocers have bargain bins of produce or offer bulk-buying on certain items, such as overly ripe bananas or blueberries.
Supermarkets also sell off produce that's going out of date, so shop at the end of the day when the stock is checked and goods are reduced.

When making tomato sauce, I often make two or three times the recipe and freeze in portions for a quick pasta sauce or for adding to vegetable or meat dishes. You can do the same with batches of fried onions or white sauce.
If you have cheese that’s past its best, make a cheese sauce and freeze in portions.

Dried beans and pulses are cheaper to buy than canned ones but you have to soak then cook them. Using the oven to cook two items at a time makes economic sense, so make use of that spare oven shelf by cooking a pan of beans along with your main meal.
Bring the soaked beans or pulses up to the boil in a large pan, then transfer to a baking dish with a tight-fitting lid and bake in the oven until tender.