Try our pressure cooker beef curry for a quick and delicious midweek meal. Read our review of the best multi-cookers. How to get the most out of cheap cuts of meat.

It takes a soup maker 20 to 30 minutes to make soup from scratch, which is significantly faster than using the hob and then the blender. Serve up this creamy and comforting soup maker leek and potato soup , perfect for a hearty lunch or supper.

Read our review of the best soup makers. Watch our guide on how to make almost any vegetable soup. For even more budget-friendly ideas, check out our collections of budget recipes and freezable family recipes , plus see our top 10 budget family meals.

Also see our budget section for more money-saving tips and recipe inspiration. Search, save and sort your favourite recipes and view them offline. Join the BBC Good Food Wine Club. Join our Subscriber Club Download our app Good Food Shows Wine Club Recipe boxes Videos.

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However, predictions for the following winter months, from January to March, currently suggest that the price cap will then rise again over the colder period," says Natalie. With this in mind, what practical steps can we all take when cooking to cut back on energy costs?

Read on for answers to some commonly asked questions about energy efficient cooking. If you'd like more great money reads, SIGN UP HERE for our fortnightly Financially Fabulous newsletter!

SIGN UP. One of the biggest energy drains in your home is the oven. Energy company Utilita suggests an electric oven can add as much as £ to your energy bills per year. And emergency home and boiler cover company Hometree estimate the cost of using the oven at £1 an hour.

If you have a microwave, slow cooker or air fryer, you could switch to one of these depending on the task and save money. For instance Air fryers are like mini convection ovens the name is a bit of a misnomer so are speedier to heat up and cook, which means they work out cheaper.

Typical usage cost is around 6p, according to the EST. Typical cost per use for a conventional oven is 24p. Typical cost per use is 4p. Designed to cook food slowly over longer periods, expect typical usage to be around 23p.

The oven will always be the mainstay of preparing family meals and there are tactics to use that will avoid wasting energy. Rather than switching the oven on several times a day, plan your cooking schedule carefully.

Slide in a traybake as you pull out a main meal and you can avoid pre-heating the oven twice. Residual heat is energy which would otherwise be wasted but can be useful. You can use it to warm food, potentially saving energy.

In some circumstances, you might also be able to use the residual heat to finish cooking food, or to save energy by not pre-heating the oven. Home cooked meals are a great opportunity to cook in bulk.

Use the hob just once for a big pan of chilli or curry, then freeze cooled leftovers to eat later or use as a base for another meal. Once cooked and cooled, portion the meals up and freeze them.

Slow cookers save us money and hands-on time in the kitchen, and they are also a gift for batch cooking. Try to use the low heat setting as much as possible. These can be perfect for work lunches or speedy suppers. Look out for reductions in the fresh vegetable section of your supermarket for batch soup recipes.

Slow-cooked meals often mean using a cheaper cut of meat, too. Pork shoulder is often a cheaper cut of meat and can be used in pulled pork burgers, stirred into a jar of your favourite pasta sauce for a quick and easy ragu. If you make a lot of personal meals, it may make sense to invest in a toaster oven.

Similarly, when using the cooktop, select the smallest pan necessary to do the job. Smaller pans require less energy to heat up. Buying top-of-the-line pots and pans may be a low priority for your household. But it pays to understand the implications of certain designs and materials when you do decide to buy new cookware.

When cooking on electric burners, solid disk elements, and radiant elements under ceramic glass, cookware should rest evenly on the burner surface. The ideal pan has a slightly concave bottom — when it heats up, the metal expands and the bottom flattens out.

An electric element is significantly less efficient if the pan does not have good contact with the element. Certain materials also work better than others and usually result in more evenly cooked food.

For instance, copper-bottom pans heat up faster than regular pans. In the oven, glass or ceramic pans are typically better than metal — you can turn down the temperature about 25°F and cook foods just as quickly.

For stovetop cooking, consider using a pressure-cooker. By building up steam pressure, it cooks at a higher temperature, reducing cooking time and energy use considerably. Believe it or not, cleaning your cooking appliances regularly will save energy. When burner pans — the metal pans under the burners that catch spills — become blackened from heavy use, they can absorb a lot of heat, reducing burner efficiency.

Microwaves also work more efficiently when the inside surfaces are clean of food particles. If you have a gas stovetop, make sure your burner is giving you a bluish flame.

If the flame is yellow, the gas may not be burning efficiently. Have your gas company check it out. Before You Start. With conventional ovens, keep preheat time to a minimum.

Essential advice and information to better understand your fast. Reading 14 economical and waste-preventing kitchen tips 5 minutes Next Zero waste and recycling, advice from Caillou.

By admin Sep 10, Facebook Pinterest Twitter E-mail. October 16 will be the day of the fight against waste and it is a date that we do not want to forget. What if by reducing our waste, we reduced our expenses and our impact on the environment?

It is possible today and it is the fashionable movement. Witness the antigaspi that has flourished on social networks. Even if you are not present on social networks, this movement cannot leave you indifferent. Everyone is concerned and a few figures can convince you.

Food waste represents 10 million tonnes of food products per year , or nearly 20 kg per French person per year, which would represent between and euros per year of food that is still edible! We have therefore decided to give you some advice to apply on a daily basis To save energy with simple gestures When you need boiling water pasta, vegetables : use a kettle first, which is much more energy efficient than a pan on a stove, then decant With induction plate: use utensils of the exact size of the plates, otherwise the energy losses are considerable to boil water, as above, prefer the kettle to the Boost function which consumes a lot of electricity Oven: start your cooking in a cold oven and stop the oven ten minutes before the end of the planned cooking.

The heat from the oven will continue to cook the food without consuming energy. Double the remaining cooking time for perfectly cooked meals! Obviously, whenever possible, cook several dishes at the same time and freeze! So, to your knives!

See the excellent treatise on miamology on this subject for technical explanations, or take inspiration from the great chef Alain Passard. Discover the taste benefits of cooking at low temperature! Alain Passard talks about it a lot. Fresh vegetables generally contain enough water for them to cook almost without adding external water, at °C.

It takes longer, but if you cut small pieces, the cooking time remains reasonable and requires less supervision. To clean a burnt pan: when you have finished using the pan in question, take advantage that it is still hot to pour a little water and baking soda!

This is an effective method that will save you liters of water! Do not throw anything, or almost, in 6 points Be a Fan of Fans! All plant leaves and more specifically their non-woody parts radish, turnip, etc. can be eaten after cooking and prior soaking in water and baking soda. Try, for example , pasta with radish tops.

Bread: anything you buy that exceeds your daily consumption: freeze! Place products with use-by dates on the front and all others on the back. You will therefore avoid wasting them by consuming them first.

Well, there you have it! We encourage you to take the pressure off of yourself however you can in feeding yourself and your family. Whether it means cooking a lot more as an outlet or whether it means the whole family eats cereal every night, give yourself permission to go whatever route you need each day.

Want to really crank up your savings? Join the More Money Challenge, where for 30 days there are just three simple rules, and one of them is no dining out.

Can you do it? What is YNAB? Share YNAB. Log In Start Your Free Trial The Method. Arrow Right. Start Your Free Trial. Rachel Wong. Stock Up on Pantry Essentials A well-stocked pantry will save your wallet and protect your time from last-minute trips and temptations to the grocery store.

Trail mix Mixed nuts Your favorite crackers Fun cereal Ready to get serious about saving? Keep Easy, Go-To Meals on Hand Not every meal needs to be a Michelin-starred event. Easy options: Pasta Sandwiches Things with beans Potatoes and eggs Stir fry Breakfast burritos Udon noodles that are already cooked you just have to steam them plus frozen stir-fry veggies with egg and tofu.

Make Cooking a Good Experience If you want to make budget-friendly cooking just a part of your normal life, do everything you can to make it an enjoyable experience. Here are some tips to making cooking a better experience: Start simple.

Make recipes that include flavors you love but not too many ingredients. Cook with somebody else. Nobody around? Turn it into a virtual date with a friend.

Read the recipe all the way through before you make it. Prep your ingredients before you start cooking. Turn on music or an audiobook while you cook. Give yourself plenty of time to do it. Keep a running grocery list. Try meal planning, if just for a month. Have the right stuff.

Keep Cheap, Easy Recipes on Rotation Brush up your rotation with budget-friendly recipes that you know the family will enjoy. Bonus if you add cheese! Baked sweet potatoes with shredded chicken and any sautéed veggies that sound good. Scrambled eggs with veggies and salsa.

Make peanut sauce with stir-fry noodles, veggies, and top with green onion. I use this peanut sauce recipe a lot, thinning it with hot water to taste. Slow cooker salsa chicken. Try this two-ingredient recipe. Make tuna salad and add garbanzo or white beans to make it go further.

Use black beans or pinto beans in ground beef, or kidney beans in sloppy joes you can think of beans as a supplement to use less meat and make your meals more filling. This lemon garbanzo feta salad is super easy to put together. It has a texture similar to steel cut oats. This artichoke-topped pasta is an example of what I was talking about to add fun things to pasta.

You can easily add chicken to it.