Easy ways to make your groceries last longer (and save money)

By ditching the “big shop” and escaping the weekly supermarket rut, we can save time and cash. Photo / 123RF
Your complete shopping list and dinner plan to last a fortnight.
In a recent interview with the Radio Times, former Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain urged home cooks to drop the weekly big shop. Hussain, whose latest BBC Two series and book Cook Once, Eat Twice offers tips on how to get two meals out of one set of ingredients, questioned whether it’s time to overhaul our routine shopping habits.
“Are you really thinking about what you have at home, and whether you are using those ingredients up before you go [grocery shopping]?” she writes. “For me, I find the biggest thrill is if I can stretch all my ingredients to not just one week, but maybe even 10 days or, dare I say it, 14. I love that.”
Despite the cost of groceries remaining extremely high, climate charity Wrap (Waste and Resources Action Programme) estimates UK households are throwing away over 4.5 million tonnes of edible food and drink every year – around three-quarters of which could have been eaten if managed properly.
And while most of us would hope to waste as little food as possible, it’s easy to fall into bad habits – adding all of our favourites to the shopping basket when buying food online, or neglecting to check what we have in the fridge before leaving for the supermarket.
But by ditching the “big shop” and escaping the weekly supermarket rut, we can save time and cash, all while reducing waste. Here’s how to do it:
Like Hussain, I’m a careful grocery shopper and hate wasting food, only picking up essentials to plug any gaps in my meal plan. Identifying your own key wastage items is a good starting point – what is often left languishing in the bottom of the vegetable drawer or fruit bowl? In my case, it used to be bagged salad, which I addressed by buying whole lettuce, which lasts much longer.
Whether buying a handful of essentials or planning a full restock, you should always make a list of what’s needed and stick to it. Avoid adding variations of ingredients you have already that can be easily interchanged, such as different mustards, grains or dairy products. No one will care if the midweek chili is made with cannellini beans or the pasta bake is topped with Red Leicester instead of cheddar.
A strategically stocked cupboard is the key to stretching out your groceries and minimising the number of shopping trips you’ll need to make. You probably won’t need to buy these items every fortnight, but here are the essential staples I always have at hand.
Pasta and noodles
No one needs more than three shapes of pasta in stock at any one time (one strand, one big shape, one small shape).
Grains and rice
Cost-effective and filling, grains such as rice, pearl barley and buckwheat can serve as the base for many dishes, from hearty breakfasts to dinners.
Pulses
While all dried and canned pulses are incredibly useful, red lentils are my go-to. I love the ability lentils have to thicken into a velvety texture in just 20 minutes with no pre-soaking. Dried pulses and beans such as chickpeas are cheap and simple to cook (particularly if you have a pressure cooker), you just need to remember to soak them the night before. Tins or jars of beans are endlessly useful for everything from turning leftover bolognese into chili to making hearty soups.
Tinned fish
Packed with protein, healthy omega-3 fatty acids and essential vitamins, canned fish are shelf-stable, inexpensive and versatile. Add them to salads, squash on to toast, toss with pasta or use in these delicious recipes.
Tinned tomatoes
The single most important ingredient in my kitchen, a standard 400g tin from the supermarket, will cost anything from 37p to £1.55 ($3.33). I favour whole plum tomatoes, but chopped will work in most recipes.
Other tins
Oils
The two essentials I’m never without are a neutral oil such as rapeseed for cooking and a good olive oil for finishing – just be aware of best-before dates.
Baking ingredients
For everyday use, you only really need plain flour for coating and thickening sauces, though self-raising is handy for use in baking recipes. I find granulated sugar serves for almost everything – it’s much cheaper than caster or muscovado sugar, though if you bake often, it may be worth keeping finer caster sugar and soft brown sugar in stock.
Condiments and spreads
You can effortlessly add flavour to a range of dishes with sauces, vinegars and mustards. For the most part, just one of each is all you need, although I’ll make an exception for stir-in pastes and mustards.
Ambient fresh produce
Some fresh fruits and vegetables are happier kept at a cool room temperature rather than the chill of the fridge. The recommendation on where to store root vegetables does change often – the current thinking from Wrap and Which? is that onions and garlic are best kept out of the fridge, as the cold encourages sprouting. However, Xanthe Clay might not agree – she says keeping onions chilled stops your eyes watering.
Fruit and vegetables
Opt for hardier vegetables that will last longer in the fridge. There’s no need to stick rigidly to the leafy vegetable specified in a recipe – while the textures and strength of flavour will vary, you can happily swap around spinach, chard, cabbage, kale, cavolo nero and pak choi.
Eggs
If you’ve got eggs, you’ve got a meal. They have a relatively long shelf life, and while they don’t need to be kept in the fridge, the shells are porous, so store them somewhere cool and away from strong-smelling foods.
Cheese and other dairy products
Hard and aged cheese such as gouda and Parmesan will keep for weeks if stored carefully and also freeze well. Grate first and, once frozen, sprinkle directly from the bag. You’ll get away with swapping cheese for similar styles in most cooked dishes, for example: brie with camembert, Parmesan with pecorino, comte with gruyere.
Fresh meat
With ongoing high food prices, the trend towards eating less meat also sees cheaper cuts such as mince and braising steak being used more widely in the kitchen. Meat stews and bakes can easily be bulked out with more vegetables.
Cured and smoked meat
While it may cost a little more per kilo than rashers, I find diced pancetta or lardons, which come in perforated tubs, a surprisingly cost-effective option that pays for itself in both time and lack of wastage.
Many of us, myself included, are guilty of filling up the freezer rather than using what’s in it, and while frozen foods have a much longer shelf life than fresh, they won’t last forever. If you’re aiming to shop as little as possible, regularly implementing two or three freezer food days towards the end of the fortnight is a good way to keep on top of what’s in stock.
Many fruits and vegetables, including those listed below, are frozen at source, making them a better option nutritionally than fresh produce that’s been sitting in the salad drawer all week.
Fresh herbs, such as parsley and chives, can be chopped and frozen at home. Likewise, if you’re adding ginger, garlic or chilis to a recipe, chop extra and freeze for another day.
Freezer essentials
You’ll find it easier to stick to your budget if you use a supermarket scanning handset and keep tabs on how your bill is totting up as you fill your trolley. Buy only the amount you’re likely to get through. Don’t be tempted by buy-one-get-one-free offers and other multiple-buy offers unless you’re sure you’ll use up what you buy before it goes out of date. When it comes to fruit and vegetables, go for loose rather than pre-packed, which tends to go off sooner.
Don’t ignore the frozen aisle – consider which of the ingredients on your list are worth buying frozen. As well as offering longer storage, prices are often significantly cheaper too.
Making a double recipe and freezing half to enjoy another day is a no-brainer, both in terms of saving time and energy. But if you don’t fancy a repeat of the same meal or often find yourself with a smaller portion left over, repurposing a dish into something completely different or using the same ingredient to inspire a different meal for another day can form a solid base for your meal plan. You will be leaning into the freezer and store cupboard more as the days progress, but you won’t be bored.