I always think January is the perfect time to strip things back and get back to basics. After all the chaos (and spending!) of December, I always find myself wanting to start the new year feeling a bit more organised, a bit more mindful and definitely focused on money saving!
So this week on the blog I’ll be sharing a few Back to Basics posts — simple ideas that can save you money, make life easier, and help you get organised for the year ahead. And I thought I’d start with one of my favourites: batch cooking.
Batch cooking saves me time, money, and stress all year round, and once you get into the rhythm of it, you’ll honestly wonder why you didn’t start sooner.
What batch cooking actually is
Batch cooking is one of the most effective ways to save money with your food shopping each week which is something we could all do with because, let’s face it, the cost of everyone’s weekly shop has increased massively over the last few years!
Put simply, it’s about making more than you need in one go so you can store the extra portions for another day.
Think of it as cooking from scratch once, but getting several home-cooked “ready meals” out of it that you can pop in the freezer to use another time. You still get that homemade flavour and comfort, but with all the convenience of just grabbing something from the freezer on a busy night.
And, it doesn’t have to mean spending a full weekend cooking either. I’ve seen people batch cooking on YouTube and TikTok and it’s a big deal to them with sometimes a half day every weekend batch cooking which looks exhausting to me.
Don’t let that put you off though as you can absolutely build batch cooking into your usual routine like I do with barely any extra effort or time. Here’s a few examples of just a few of the things I do to batch cook:
- If I’m making bolognese, mince and onions or any kind of stew, I just double it and freeze half.
- If I have some veggies to use up or I get some reduced from the shop then I’ll make a soup in the slow cooker while I’m pottering about the house and freeze portions for lunch or I might roast a few more veggies while the oven’s on and pop them in a quiche or some small egg omelettes to pop in the freezer.
- I cook some extra potatoes to make some fishcakes or a topping for cottage pie another night.
- I make a big batch of my own Yorkshire puddings every now and again so I have a stash in the freezer.
- About once a month, I make my own homemade tomato sauce in the slow cooker and freeze that in various different sized portions so I can take it out for homemade pizza toppings, pasta sauces, as a topping for homemade meatballs and numerous other things throughout the month.
These small steps add up, and before long your freezer will be full of easy meals ready to go.
Batch cooking is one of those small changes that makes a big difference — saving money, reducing food waste, and freeing up your evenings when life gets busy.
The cost benefits of batch cooking
It’s not just the time you save that makes batch cooking amazing though, there’s a definite financial bonus to cooking this way. When you batch cook, you can buy ingredients in bulk, which almost always works out cheaper per portion. You’ll also use up everything you buy instead of letting odd bits go off in the fridge.
Cooking bigger portions also uses your oven or hob more efficiently — one hour of cooking for six meals instead of three separate hours throughout the week. And maybe the best bit? Having homemade meals in the freezer makes it so much easier to say no to those midweek takeaways. You still get an easy tea, but at a fraction of the cost.
Over a month, batch cooking can save you a surprising amount — often £20–£40 off your food shop just by planning around what you already have instead of buying new ingredients every night.
How batch cooking makes meal planning easy
Once you’ve got a freezer stocked with homemade meals, meal planning becomes a breeze. You can build your week around what’s already waiting in there.
If you know you’ve got a few chilli portions, a pasta bake, and a curry in the freezer, that’s three nights sorted straight away. You just fill in the gaps with easy fresh meals or leftovers.
It’s less about starting from scratch every week and more about using what’s already there — and that saves both time and money.
I thought it might help if I shared a weekly meal plan featuring batch cooking with you along with a couple of extra bits I did to stock my freezer:
Monday – Cottage Pie This used mash made from extra potatoes that I cooked yesterday when I cooked Sunday dinner, I hate peeling potatoes so doing extra in one go works for me. I already had a portion of mince and onions in the freezer that I got out of the freezer on Sunday night to defrost and then on Monday, I just spent ten minutes topping the oven proof dish that I’d frozen the mince in with mash and in it went to the oven.
Tuesday – Spaghetti Bolognese I made a huge batch of bolognese on Tuesday which made a lovely tea served with spaghetti and garlic bread. I was able to freeze enough for another meal of spaghetti bolognese or to make a lasagne for another time. I also kept out two smaller portions for Wednesday nights tea too.
Wednesday – Jacket Potatoes We love a simple jacket potato tea every now and again and I always keep that in mind when freezing portions of some of the food we have. Bolognese makes a great jacket potato topping along with some grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream on top. I also cooked two extra smaller ones for lunch the following day.
Thursday – Homemade burgers I try and keep a stock of homemade burgers in the freezer as we like burgers but I’d rather they were 100% beef. I like knowing what’s in our food and for me, I have a burger without a bun to avoid carbs so a nice chunky burger with an egg on top is perfect for me. For everyone else, you can’t beat a delicious homemade burger in a bun with some salad and some fries on the side. This is the burger press I have if you’re interested.
Friday – Hunters Chicken We buy chicken breasts in bulk from our local butchers so I just defrosted one each overnight on Thursday, wrapped each one in bacon and cooked for 25 (ish) minutes in the oven. I finished them off with a bit of BBQ sauce and some grated cheese and popped them back in the oven for 4 minutes to melt the cheese. I served this with fries and a small salad of cucumber and tomatoes as that was all I had in.
Saturday – Homemade Pizza I have a few options when making the base for homemade pizza – our local farm shop sell pizza dough frozen in individual portions and our local Morrisons sells ready made pizza bases, both of which I tend to keep in the freezer. I do also sometimes make my own pizza dough if I have time. My partner has some of the BBQ sauce leftover from last night as his base and I had a small portion of homemade tomato sauce as the base for mine.
Sunday – Sunday lunch This week we bought a nice gammon joint (again) as we’d enjoyed last weeks so much so we cooked that in the oven and had that as the main event. 😁 One of the reasons we did gammon again was because of the leftovers it gave us the week before and again, we had loads of leftovers but I’ll get to that in a minute. I did a few extra veggies and potatoes to make bubble and squeak to go with gammon and a fried egg for tea the following night.
Lunches through the week were some gammon sandwiches, the extra jacket potatoes I cooked with some tuna mayo on them, a gammon based pasta salad.
I also prepped a few things to stock the freezer when I had a few minutes:
- Using the gammon, I made some mini egg omelettes for lunches over the next few weeks. I did this on Monday night while I was watching TV so it didn’t feel like I was spending actual time on it if that makes sense.
- I got some minced beef in the reduced section at Asda and it had three days on it before it needed to be used up for some reason. I brought it home and made the biggest batch of slow cooker mince and onions as that’s my most versatile meal using mince. I bought three packs of the mince and used two of them for this and although it takes 8 hours to cook, it takes two minutes to prep so for very little time, I could use up some bargain mince that I got and stock up my freezer.
- I actually ran out of homemade burgers after our Thursday night tea (there actually wasn’t enough for me 😞) so I used the last pack of mince to replenish my burger stock. This is a bit messy so not my favourite job but well worth the twenty minutes of so that it takes.
Storage and labelling
Good storage is key when you start batch cooking. You don’t need anything fancy, but it helps to have a mix of containers that work for different types of food. I use:
Stackable tubs for larger meals like stews, bolognese, and curries. You can use plastic containers but I prefer to be able to be able to use the tubs I freeze my food in to be able to reheat then in the oven if needed so I use similar to these ones.
For the food that I need to freeze in smaller batches, I have these silicone compartment trays which I love!
- Labels are a must — trust me, once everything’s frozen it all looks the same 😂. Write what it is, how many portions, and the date you froze it. These are the labels that I use and I find them better than the usual sticky labels as they actually stay stuck until I peel them off.
Keeping track of what’s in the freezer
Once you start batch cooking regularly, it’s really easy to lose track of what’s already in there. Keeping a freezer inventory will stop you from doubling up or letting anything go to waste.
You can use a notebook, a whiteboard on the freezer door, or my printable freezer inventory tracker that’s already on the blog. Just jot down what you’ve added and cross it off when you use it. It takes seconds, but it keeps things running smoothly.
It doesn’t have to be full meals
Batch cooking isn’t always about freezing complete dinners. Sometimes it’s just about getting a head start with the basics.
For example, on a Sunday I’ll often cook extra potatoes when I’m making a roast. I’ll mash the extras and pop them in the fridge. The next day, I might use that mash to make a cottage pie — using a portion of mince and onions I’ve already got in the freezer.
It’s all about working smart with what you’ve got. Maybe you make extra rice for tomorrow’s stir fry, or double up on roasted veg to turn into soup or quiche later in the week. You can even freeze basics like cooked chicken and when I had my Instant Pot, I used to make shredded chicken specifically for the freezer when I got some reduced.
Batch cooking doesn’t need to be complicated or time-consuming. Start small — maybe double one meal this week and pop the extra in the freezer. Before long, you’ll have a little stash of homemade dinners ready to go whenever you need them.
It’s one of those simple back-to-basics habits that makes life easier, saves money, and keeps your family well-fed without the stress. And honestly, once you’ve experienced the joy of grabbing a homemade meal from the freezer after a busy day, you’ll never look back. 😊
I’d love you follow me on Twitter and it would be amazing to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
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