Saving Money with Home-Cooked Meals
Transitioning from order-in or take-out food to home cooking offers many benefits from eating healthier food and spending less on what you eat. However, simply switching to home cooking may not be enough to get the results you want. The assumption that home cooking saves money may prevent you from making the good decisions that lead to this benefit. In reality, unnecessary expenses combined with waste may mean that you end up spending more rather than less on food when cooking at home. Following these simple tips can ensure that you enjoy the benefits of home cooking while saving money.
1. Many Commonly-Used Grocery Items Can Be Bought in Bulk
Many staple foods such as rice, beans, lentils, and pasta can be bought in bulk and stored for long periods. Assuming they are properly kept, these foods won’t go bad and are far cheaper when bought in large quantities. Buying in bulk will ensure that you will not run out of essential ingredients for a long time.
Foods such as rice can often be purchased in large bags of several pounds while beans while local food markets may also allow you to buy these goods by weight. Make sure that you do your research and compare local prices.
2. Using the Same Ingredient in Multiple Dishes Saves Money and Time
Many ingredients such as brown rice may be useful in a multitude of dishes used throughout the week from soups to salads. Cooking a large amount of rice at a single time and freezing it for use throughout the week allows you to prepare the rice once instead of three times and to reuse leftovers rather than discarding them, thus saving you time and money.
3. Rotisserie Chicken: Versatile, cheap, and tasty
Typically available at ten dollars or less at your local grocery store, rotisserie chicken is tasty and can be used in a multitude of dishes from soup to pasta. While some may frown on this shortcut, the tastiness, nutrition, and affordability it provides make rotisserie chicken a convenient addition of protein to your home menu.
4. Buying Produce Diced or Cut is More Expensive and Poorer Quality
Buying processed food may save you the five seconds inconvenience of having to dice a melon yourself, but processed foods are ultimately more expensive, less fresh, and waste plastic in the form of wrapping. Instead, it is advisable to buy whole fruits and vegetables and cut them yourself.
5. Transform Scraps into Simple and Tasty Dishes
A stem of broccoli may seem like a piece of waste to be thrown in the trash but try using some soy sauce and sesame seeds as a seasoning after some additional boiling to soften it up. Thus, making broccoli stems a tasty snack or side dish. Never discount any food waste. You would be surprised how many recipes you could make with salvaged food scraps that you usually would throw straight in the trash. They can make some of the tastiest dishes!
6. Vegetable Scraps Can Be Used in Broth
On the subject of recycling vegetable scraps, those which cannot be used in dishes can be frozen in ziplock bags and later used to make vegetable stock, which flavors soups and sauces. This gives you something to do with vegetable scraps while saving you money on soup broth.
7. Using Frozen Fruits and Vegetables
Frozen produce has several advantages over fresh fruit. For one, they are usually frozen at the point at which they are freshest, allowing them to retain nutrients such as vitamins. Frozen fruits and vegetables do not spoil nearly as fast as merely refrigerated ones. Doing research and some mild experimentation will quickly teach you which recipes can use frozen produce without compromising on flavor.
8. Preserving Herbs
Aromatics such as basil, parsley, and coriander are affordable and add a delicious touch to many dishes. However, after a few days, you may find them wilting and losing their flavor. This degradation is caused by them losing moisture but fortunately, it is also an easily solvable problem. Some home cooks keep their stems in cups of water like flowers while others keep them wrapped in wet paper towels to keep them moist. At any rate, retaining moisture is key to preserving the freshness of these delicious herbs.
9. Vegetarian Food Tends to Cost Less
Meat is often the most expensive component of a meal. Foods like soybeans, tofu, and legumes are high in protein and cost fractions of what a piece of steak would. So, when planning out your meals try to include more high-protein vegetables rather than going straight for the chicken or steak.
10. Know Which Ingredients are Worth Spending on and Which are Good at Any Price Point
It pays to be selective about which foods to spend extra on. Simple foods like rice, beans, or celery with little taste may be virtually identical whether one buys the cheapest brand available or the most expensive. Foods such as tomato sauce, however, differ wildly depending on the quality and it may be worthwhile to invest more in a pricier brand. At any rate, be selective about which ingredients you choose to spend on and your wallet will thank you later.
11. Revive Rather than Discard Leftovers
Leftovers confront the home cook with a simple but difficult choice: throwing them down the garbage disposal or eating yesterday’s supper a second time. However, adding leftovers to a new dish can breathe new life into them. For example, throwing leftover fish or chicken into a salad can turn your last meal turn into an innovative culinary concoction that keeps on giving.
Saving money as a home cook requires more than simply switching from takeout to preparing your meals. It requires making conscious decisions that allow you to save money without sacrificing the quality of what you eat. Following the guidelines above and a bit of research and experimentation will allow you to get the most out of your home cooking experience.