Food experts’ tips on how to make the best of your budget

theguardian.com:

With food prices rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade, Britons are trying to make their budget go further in the kitchen by buying cheaper frozen and tinned products and supermarket own-label.

Simon Roberts, the Sainsbury’s chief executive, said this week that customers were watching every penny. They are also making more trips but buying less on each visit, and monitoring the price of their shopping to avoid “till shock” when paying at the end.

With the average annual grocery bill on course to rise by almost £400 this year, there is no magic recipe for price rises of this magnitude but there are ways to reduce costs at home. Here, professional chefs, and the people who train them, offer tips on how to cook on a budget – without cutting the quality of your food.

The Conservative MP Lee Anderson caused a furore when he suggested that nutritious meals could be easily cooked for 30p a time.

Felicity Cloake, the Guardian food writer and the author of Red Sauce Brown Sauce, says it is technically possible to make a meal for as little as that – but only if you have the “luxury of time, the cashflow to buy ingredients in bulk to get the best deal, the knowhow and equipment to do so, and those you’re cooking for are so desperate that they’ll eat anything”.

Keeping costs to within a more realistic set limit is possible, though, if you plan ahead carefully. Miguel Barclay, the author of the One Pound Meals range of recipe books, says: “Sit down and plan meals for the whole week. Think of those meals as being connected rather than separate, so you can use the same ingredients in more than one dish, and make a comprehensive shopping list.”

Then, resist any urge to impulse buy. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t go in the