How To Save When Meal Planning- 34 Simple Ways

Looking for ways to save when planning and prepping your household meals without compromising the quality of your food is a life-saving hack. Not only do you save a few coins (which amount to something … cumulatively), but also keeps you motivated and you want to prepare meals from scratch more often.

A well-stocked and organized pantry helps you achieve at least half of the meal planning savings in terms of cost and time. Well, the other half is fairly distributed among other contributing factors. Depending on how you manage your kitchen activities, other sectors can greatly benefit from it while keeping waste at a minimum or zero.

Here’s a list of 34 simple things you can do or add to help you save when planning your meals. This segmented list touches on the main areas surrounding meal planning: Preparation, Grocery shopping, Pantry Stocking, Cooking, and Storage.

General Preparation

1..Prepare your meals in advance. Take a few minutes to plan what your family will feed in the coming days or weeks. The beauty of this is that it takes away a week’s worry on meal matters instead of worrying each afternoon, each day on the ‘what’s for dinner?’ question.

2..Use cloth napkins or towels. I know this is debatable and as a regular user of paper towels, I am slowly coming to love the option of doing more cloth than paper. The trick is to have a set of good, lint-free cloth towels or napkins and you can never go wrong with quality micro-fiber cloths.

3..Avoid single-use items. stay clear of single-use disposable items like cutlery, straws, plates, etc in your home. One, this is too much clutter. Secondly, it doesn’t do the landfills any favor. You’d rather invest in a few quality cutlery pieces that will serve a long time.

4..Use of reusable coffee filters. Being one of them, coffee lovers can use reusable coffee filters. The initial investment may be higher but this will save you some costs over time. Also, you get to enjoy your coffee in totality as more oils and flavors pass through easily.

5..Choose reusable water bottles. Invest in a few pieces of good water bottles for you and your family. Instead of purchasing a single-use water bottle each time, you can always carry your water in a bottle that you get to use time and again.

6..Use leftovers for packed lunches. Leftovers make up for good lunches instead of buying pre-packaged meals or simply eating out. Once in a while is ok but carrying your lunch saves you costs and reduces food wastage.

7..Educate yourself and other members of your household. It is a learning curve and new ways and tricks on how to save while planning your meals keep emerging. You don’t have to know it all but just enough to simplify the process and you can always change to accommodate different seasons.

What is in your pantry?

8..Re-purpose stale bread. Do you have stale bread in your pantry? Do not throw it away. You can use stale bread to make homemade breadcrumbs, bread pudding, etc. Please note, that it is stale bread and not rotten, moldy bread.

9..Always ‘shop’ in your pantry first. Before you head out for grocery shopping, peep in your pantry first and check what you have. Plan your meals based on what you have and this will help reduce wastage. Use what you have first before replenishing especially if the expiry dates are close.

10..Stock vinegar and baking soda. They are both used in cooking and baking but are also good alternatives to cleaning products. They come cheap and are as effective as most chemical-based cleaners.

11..Rotate your pantry items. Once in a while, you want to take advantage of the irresistible food promotions in the market or your favorite food store. Just ensure what you replenish is placed after (behind) what you have in stock in your pantry. At least this way no item goes to waste because it was forgotten.

How to approach grocery shopping

12..Buy in bulk. Some staples are easier to purchase in bulk such as dry grains, spices, etc helping you to take advantage of promotions and discounts. It is also a good way to reduce packaging waste.

13..Shop with a list. This is one of the habits I picked way early and I still stay consistent on it because I know its usefulness. When you go shopping with a list, you know exactly what you want, and most of the time you tend to stick to your budget. Plus, there’s a high chance you will not miss an ingredient for your next meal prep.

14..Minimize packaging waste. Go for products with minimal packaging or package-free options where possible.

15..Use reusable shopping bags. Thankfully, nowadays there are so many pretty grocery shopping bags that are not plastic and single-use. You just need a few reusable shopping bags in different sizes. This way you can always reach out for one when a shopping need arises and depending on the quantity, you’ll know what size to pick.

16..Take advantage of seasonal produce. Buy fruits and vegetables that are in season as they tend to be cheaper and so one batch of produce can make a good base for several meals.

17..Buy locally. How often do you support your local farmers or grocery shops? There are advantages to purchasing your groceries locally. To name a few; one, you know the source. Two, you are contributing to your community’s ecosystem.

18..Grow your produce. What comes to mind for most people when this is mentioned is that you need a big chunk of land to grow your food. This is not the case. You can always start with the small area that you have including an apartment balcony and start with simple produce like herbs, and small vegetables. I am too starting out on this and will add on more with time.

Tips and hacks that save in cooking

19..Cook in batches. Whether you are a full-time homemaker or a part-time homemaker, a day’s work can be a handful and sometimes overwhelming. But you know what, we got to eat! Batch cooking allows you to streamline your meals thus reducing prep time and stress.

20..Use your leftovers wisely. Depending on how much you have, leftovers can be enough to feed your family at least one part of a day’s meals e.g. lunch and all you need to do is tweak that leftover meal a little, and voila!

21..Use every part of the ingredient. What’s cooking for today? Assess what you are cooking and its particular ingredients and find creative ways to put at least 98% of the ingredients into good use. For example, a whole chicken: Grill some parts (thighs, drumsticks, wings), use the carcass to make broth (bones, skin, cartilage) and other parts to make stock (neck).

22..Do not forget to do plant-based meals as well. Plant-based proteins are healthy and also come in variety making them a good alternative to meat. For #NoMeatMondays (or any other day), choose a plant-based protein to supplement your daily protein intake.

23..Practice portion control to minimize food wastage. Serve what’s enough for each and carefully store the leftovers.

24..Use energy-efficient cooking methods. Cut on energy costs by using energy-efficient methods in your cooking. A good set of such methods include slow cooking which saves on electricity while tenderizing your meats, steaming, stir-frying, etc.

25..Repurpose cooking oil. Reusing cooking oil can be economical but requires caution. Filtering out food particles and storing it properly extends its lifespan. However, overuse can lead to the formation of harmful compounds and affect food flavor. It’s best for occasional frying and not for prolonged use to maintain food quality and safety.

26..Use alternate cuts. If you consume meat, you can opt to buy cuts that are less popular but equally nutritious. These kinds of cuts tend to be cheaper and if you buy in bulk it can be a good save. Some opt to buy a whole animal and have the premium cuts. Well, don’t waste the other cuts. Some of these parts produce quality ground meat and with ground equals several different meal preps.

27..Cook with imperfect produce. Use the ‘ugly’ ingredients first before the rest. They are not bad and are still safe to use if not rotten. Sort this batch from your home garden and keep it near your kitchen to use it first. Also, if buying, this batch comes a bit cheaper than the rest. You can pick this batch and save some cost.

28..Make good use of water. You can channel some of the water you use in cooking to different uses. For example, you can use the water you use to rinse your rice to water your plants (from the second rinse onwards). You can reuse pasta water to make soups, etc.

29..Prep a compost. Start a compost bin for food scraps and use it to enrich your soil for gardening. This way your produce grows organically and saves you costs for purchases like manure, fertilizer, etc.

Storage

30..Invest in quality storage containers. You can check all the necessary steps to preparing a healthy meal only to mess up at the storage step. The kind of storage you use to store your food is as important as what you use to prep your food. Go for quality!

31..Use reusable containers. Store your leftovers or prepped meals in reusable containers instead of single-use wraps or containers.

32..Label and date your food storage promptly. This will help you to minimize food wastage by exercising the ‘first-in-first-out’ rule. Also, if not using clear storage containers, labeling will help you and any other member of your household easily identify what is in each container.

33..Preserve excess produce. If you grow your own food or bulk-purchase fresh produce, especially the seasonal ingredients, it is good to learn various ways you can safely preserve them. Examples of preservation methods you can opt to use include canning, drying, freezing, pickling, etc.

34..Share with neighbors. Yes, this important point goes here because there are times you notice you have more than enough and the likelihood of your stored produce going to waste is high. Share with your neighbors. It does some good than letting it waste. It is also a good human gesture.

What ways have you incorporated into your meal planning and prepping to help you save in terms of cost, time, and energy? Please share in the comment section below.