Feeding a small crowd – whether that’s family members or flatmates – week after week can be a strain on the wallet.
However, food writer Rosie Kellett discovered the joy – and challenge – of budget-friendly cooking when she moved into a six-person East London warehouse five years ago.
Living on £25 a week per person (covering food and household goods), Ms Kellett perfected the art of creating “delicious meals on the table” nightly.
She is now sharing those skills in her debut cookbook, In For Dinner.
The book features 101 recipes designed to be affordable, achievable, healthy, and environmentally conscious.
The 32-year-old supper club host also offers her top tips for maximising flavour while minimising costs when cooking for a group.
Do your grocery shopping online
Ms Kellett says it’s easier to keep track of what you’re spending when you shop online.
“You can always see your basket, and you can take advantage of the deals,” she says.
“You’re not doing all of those little trips to the local mini supermarket and picking up a couple of things here and there.
“You plan a bit better and know what you need to use up. I think that mentality really helps to budget.”
Doing a weekly shop means it can be “quite slim pickings” towards the end of the week, but it forces you to “really utilise” the ingredients in the fridge and pantry, she says.
Make plants the focus
Ms Kellett and her housemates eat mostly vegetarian, with “a little bit” of canned fish, including anchovies, sardines and tinned tuna.
“Apart from that, we don’t buy any meat, which really keeps the cost going. For protein we really utilise legumes, a lot of beans, pulses and lentils, and tofu.”
She also advises people to shop seasonally where they can, because vegetables grown in the UK season will be cheaper.
Buy these hero ingredients
Frozen raspberries are not only cheaper than fresh ones but Ms Kellett says they often work better in baking. “The raspberry sponge [in the book] has four ingredients and one of them is frozen raspberries and it’s an incredibly cheap dessert to make – it’s very easy and quick and simple.
“You need 700g of frozen raspberries – if you were to buy them fresh it would be very expensive, but there’s no need. Also my blondies use frozen raspberries – I’ve done it with fresh and I’ve done it with frozen, and frozen just works better. They become quite jammy.”
Tins of chickpeas, beans, legumes, tomatoes and fish are key for her cupboard too.
“And things that are pickled or preserved in jars. So capers, gherkins, sauerkraut and preserved lemon, like all of those things, a little goes a long way, and they last forever.
“I think it’s really good to make sure you’ve got a pantry stocked with all of those things, so that all you really need to be buying fresh each week is a couple of vegetables, a bit of fruit, and you can kind of build a meal quite often from your pantry.
“Buy the best quality you can afford. If a bean is going to be the bulk of your meal, and the main source of protein, if you can buy jarred, then the texture and the flavour is so much better [than tinned]. And the difference between the cheapest tomatoes to the middle range is pretty vast.”
Make more from scratch
Ms Kellett makes bread and granola from scratch.
While it may seem more expensive to buy the ingredients rather than a ready-made box of cereal, it works out cheaper in the long run as the homemade recipe will make much more granola, she says.
“And I think it can seem daunting, but actually, when you’re in the habit of doing that, it benefits everything in your life, from like your wallet to your mental health to your body’s health, there’s a snowball effect.”
