Meal planning tips to keep food costs down

How many of you are there and what kind of meals do you eat now?

I would don't menu plan and shop. Buy ingredient's that you regularly use so you only have to buy the odd ingredient you need to complete a meal.

I find this more economical as I can make most of the meals we eat without going to the shop and buying more then we need because I see it.

Not an App but The Works sell magnetic weekly planners for £3, you can also get them on Amazon, stick one on your fridge.

Sit down together the night before your shop and choose your meals for the coming week, tell DH you want him to decide on three, you choose three, pick another one together or let your children choose it, whatever works for you. Write the meals on the magnetic planner.
It's probably my least favourite task but it definitely saves money and stress later in the week.

I have favourite recipes printed out and kept in plastic sleeves, then arranged by fish, chicken, beef etc.
We try to have some kind of variety but equally we try to make best use of the ingredients before they go out of date or shrivel up. Eg a pot of fromage frais is used for a stroganoff sauce one night and then for a burger sauce another night, rather than just use half a pot and binning the rest.
Or the infamous Mumsnet chicken that you use for a roast one day, sandwiches the next, risotto the next etc.

I meal plan over 14 days, and buy ingredients that can do for several meals and can provide cheaper meals at least once or twice a week.

One night is sausage, beans , egg on toast.

Another is a cheese toastie with a spoon of beans in the middle ( my young adult teens love it!) .

Cheese Omelette , chips and beans.

For two adults and two teens that's

8 sausages £1 (home bargains are gorgeous)
2 can of beans £1
Loaf 75p
12 eggs £1.75
Cheese. £1.50
Potatoes/chips. £1
Butter £1.50

That's £8 for3 meals and £2.66 per meal, less than 70p a person, per dinner. You could pack it out even more with reduced veg, extra eggs , tinned potatoes for frittata etc.

Aldi/Lidl do these amazing small jars of Thai red/green curry paste for about 95p. Fry off the paste with garlic and ginger, add a ton of sliced peppers/onions/ veg (£1) to soften , a can of coconut milk (70p) and then toss in almost cooked spaghetti (30p) or noodles and leave to sit for a few minutes to absorb the sauce and it's an absolute fab meal than can also be eaten cold in packed lunches. That's enough to feed 6-8 people for £3. You can add chicken or salmon but it's not necessary and it's so tasty my teens don't even realise it's veggie.

I’m a very sad person who has always done meal planning for last 32 plus years. When I was working mum it saved all the crap about coming home after busy day, juggling kids and then trying to figure out what was for tea
i got to a point when kids were about 8/9 that I prepared a 8 week rolling menu. And I had ingredient lists to go with each week. Ok, I know that is incredibly sad and worryingly organised , but bloody hell the effort over a single weekend to come up with it (on excel to boot 🤣🤣) saved me so much time for years to come.
as kids got older and loved to cook, they’d even be able to get in from school and cook the tea without any discussion- my dc decided my chili or curry’s weren’t hot enough, or I didn’t reduce my pasta sauces enough 🤣🤣🤣 so they just cracked on with meals they liked to cook. If I was running late I could call and get them to start some prep
I could do my shopping on line for delivery over my lunch break at work. I was early adopter of tesco on line in days where you still dialled up internet connection and then inserted tescos floppy disk 😱…those were the days !

im now retired and live on my own. I meal plan each week to ensure I make myself cook and have a varied diet. Otherwise it’s too easy to just live on beans on toast. Having fresh veg in fridge for specific meals makes me cook them to avoid waste

Oh, sorry..should have said it does keep costs down. My ex took over for a few months, ditched my meal plans and would shop randomly with what looks good/ what I fancy cooking this week. He was good cook, liked his food. Bills went up by 30% and waste increased.
we soon stopped that and went back to my system. Luckily he reluctant spender so the bank balance consequences hurt him more than his pride

I know meal planning can seem overwhelming, I've done it for years and still have weeks when I feel like I can't face it. I would suggest you think about the benefits before you start, get it right and you'll save a lot of time by only shopping once a week.

Start with simple meals you enjoy and where you'll use whole products, like a pack of 2 breaded fillets or a product that can regularly reoccur, like carrots as they can be a vegetable side with every meal. Don't pick recipes that require something like 4 tbsp cream the rest will go to waste and be costly. As you get better at planning you can start thinking about how you would use a whole tub of cream during the week.

Buy some extra milk and a loaf of bread for the freezer. I know you said you don't have much space but it'll stop you running out and popping to the shops. My dsis uses uht milk all the time and has a bread maker to avoid this too.

Look at some 'tin can' meals too. Jack Monroe has created loads of them. Things like her bean chili can be made at the end of the week when you're out of fresh stuff or if for some reason you'll be a day or too later shopping than normal

Lastly, Tesco price match a lot of Aldi products so, depending on what you buy, you may not save much going to Aldi. As you'll be doing a bigger shop you could arrange click and collect from Tesco, that have some very cheap slots, and that may also feel like you've been 'rewarded' for your planning as you won't need to shop. You get Tesco points too which always come in handy

Pin a list on your freezer of what is in there.
‘I regularly go through my fridge to see what is going off soon, so I can plan to eat it, or I put it in the freezer.
You need to be ‘fridge aware’.

I couldn’t manage without a freezer - I’d do without my fridge to make room if necessary (not really, but maybe)

I’m not a natural meal planner at all. It’s too rigid for me but I have the bones of a system.

so roughly, I allocate a meal type to each day of the week - eg I might do chicken breast on Tuesday, but that might be a stir fry, or fajitas, or any type of sauce.

The chicken breast is already chopped and portioned and frozen because I hate that job. I toss in the flavouring and leave it to defrost and marinade.

It’s the right balance of routine and variety for me.

I use my freezer a lot - I have a meat drawer (prepped and portioned), a veg drawer (including chopped onion, garlic and ginger) a breads drawer, a potato drawer and a soups & sauces drawer for the ones I make. I use jars too and a good range of spices.

I have a designated place for everything - so the pasta sauce by autistic dc eats gets a 6 jar space, and the ones that I might buy on a whim also have a 6 jar max. It means there’s variety, but there isn’t anything languishing forgotten in the back, and if I know I can’t store it, I don’t buy it.

Because it’s visually organised I can see when I open a drawer what’s running low and how much space I have and I just restock the stores rather than trying to plan groceries according to a specific meal plan.

That means I don’t stock up on beans when they’re on sale anymore because I only have room for 6 cans max, but I have less food waste and I’m spending less on food than I used to.

It also means that if I just don’t feel like chicken on chicken day it’s not a big deal either.

I only buy enough food, salad veg, dairy etc for a week and use it up.

I often find a main enemy of meal planning for me is just that - the process of sitting down snd cominhbup with x 7 tasty, quick, cheap and nutritionally balanced meals. Sometimes it's such a boring drag and I feel like it's sucking my soul away. Now DH works from home and it's the school holidays there's lunches to come up with too.

What I try to do now is each evening while I'm cleaning dinner away and closing up the kitchen I try and vine up with a nice tea for the same time next week. I have a quick check of the calendar so I can take evening activities into account.

I find thinking of 1 each night less overwhelming. Then by Sunday I've got it sorted

Not meal planning as such but stop using white wine to cook with as unless you're drinking the rest or have room to freeze it csn be wasteful.

Use vermouth instead ... a bottle lasts ages and you can still have that nice rich touch to your dinner.

And you've almost got ingredients for a martini

Excellent point.

Freezer Roulette is also a fun tea!

Buy all meat for the month in bulk and put it in the freezer.

Have all rice, pasta, tins etc bought in bulk for the month. One big shop.

Then as PP said each night is a different core meat / veg

Monday mince - one week spag Bol, another shepherds pie, another lasagne, another meat balls.

Tuesday chicken - one week curry, another stir fry, another roast, another pasta,

Wednesday eggs - one week omelette, another scrambled, another carbonara, another frittata

Thursday Veg / pulse - one week chilli, one week chickpea curry, another lentil pasta bake, another Dahl and roti

Friday Sausage - one week sausage and mash, next toad in the hole, next hot dogs, next sausage casserole

Then weekly shop fresh fruit and veg, dairy, eggs only for that weeks recipe - so nothing can go to waste

There are a number of app recommendations here - several are free - most will create a shopping list for you from your chosen recipes

www.thespruceeats.com/best-meal-planning-apps-4766812

I started meal planning during lockdown to avoid countless trips to the shops, it doesn’t work so well in summer due to the constant top ups needed here for salad but planning on getting right back on it in September.
my tips -
write a list of meals that you all eat, so you can pick one to add when your mind goes blank.
I do a roast potato meal, a hm chips or jacket meal, a mash potato meal, a bread meal (fajitas, enchiladas), a rice meal, a pasta meal, and a pizza/burger meal.
When I cook a roast I’ll cook jacket potatoes and put them in the freezer.

Meal planning may seem time consuming, but if it means you are going to the supermarket once and not three times, it will actually save you time and energy. I use Thursday evenings to do mine for two weeks, although I shop weekly. I also do my shopping online which saves huge amounts of time and there is less temptation to just grab stuff.
I have Kindle Unlimited which gives me free magazines in my subscription and I use Good Food, Delicious and Olive to pick my meals. Occasionally I use get Taste AU but it's Australian and some of the ingredients require a little imagination to get something similar here.
We like to eat different and new meals all the time, but I have several notebooks with tried and tested recipes I've come across online. I screenshot or take a photo, try it and if we like it, then it gets written down.
Some weeks I think I really can't be bothered cooking much and then we eat the things that don't need a recipe: fajitas, sausage and mash, carbonara, pizza, stir-fry etc.

I plan but only 3 or 4 days ahead otherwise it goes to pot! Rather than plan religiously I find it better to really check what's in the fridge and about to go off and plan round it. I go to the supermarket once a week and the fruit and veg market once or twice.