Healthy eating on a budget

Eating on a budget doesn't mean you have to sacrifice taste or nutrition. Understanding which foods to stock up on and how to use these foods to create cheap healthy meals is key. Here's how to develop some easy dinner ideas to manage your budget and keep everyone healthy.

Rob's top tips

1. Stock up on store-cupboard essentials

Keeping your cupboard stocked with essentials is a practical way to help manage your food budget. Canned foods such as beans, pulses and lentils can provide a useful source of protein and other key minerals such as calcium, magnesium and iron. These foods can be added to a range of meals, especially one-pot dishes such as casseroles, soups, curries and stews, all of which can make for healthy cheap meals.

It's also worth stocking up on healthy carbohydrates such as wholemeal pasta, bread and other foods such as sweet potatoes. These can be used in many different ways, and provide a good base for healthy meals on a budget.

2. Fresh vs frozen

Frozen foods such as fruits and vegetables are often just as nutritious as fresh, so are a good alternative when thinking about cheap dinner ideas. Frozen fruits can be added to healthy breakfast smoothies and puddings, while vegetables such as peas, cauliflower and sweetcorn can be added to various dishes including soups and stews.

3. Create a 'fake-away'

Takeaways have become part of many people's weekly food intake, but these do come at a price. To keep your food bill down, try exploring the 'fake-away' by recreating your favourite dishes at home. You can use lower-cost proteins such as chicken thighs or frozen Quorn alongside cook-in sauces to create takeaway favourites such as curries. Boiling your own rice and cooking your own poppadoms also saves pennies.

You can make your fake-away healthier than your usual take-away by adding more vegetables to your dishes such as frozen peas, cauliflower and spinach. Try my recipes for crispy beef with rice noodles, chicken kebabs with tzatziki or easy butter chicken with coriander chutney to create your own at-home fake-aways.

4. Switch to plant-based proteins

Meat and fish can be expensive if you're eating them every day, so try exploring plant-based foods. Plant proteins are much cheaper and include canned beans, pulses and lentils, as well as tofu and frozen Quorn. If you are eating meat, try swapping half of it for a plant protein such as canned beans to keep the cost of your dish down.

5. Get grainy

Grains such as rice, couscous, barley, spelt and quinoa are a good way to create cheap meal ideas. These foods contain fibre, B vitamins and magnesium, and make a good base for many meals. Easy recipes using grains include egg-fried rice, mushroom pilaf and summer salads using other ingredients such as dried fruit, nuts and seeds.

6. Spice things up

Cheap meal ideas need to taste good, and this is where spices come in to play. Spices can be cheap and go a long way, as well as offer valuable nutrition in the form of key minerals and other compounds that protect the body from disease.

Find your favourites, which may include single spices or blends such as curry powders. A good place to start is common spices such as cumin, coriander and smoked paprika, which are all incredibly versatile. Spices are also particularly useful when cooking plant-based meals with foods such as canned pulses, beans or tofu, which can be a little bland on their own. Shop around for your spices: independent shops can be cheaper than supermarkets, depending on where you live.

Cheap dinner ideas do not have to be boring or tasteless, and with a little inspiration and understanding of how to use basic store-cupboard ingredients you should see the difference to your bank balance. Here's a recipe as an example.