How to reduce the cost of food?

reduce the cost of food step by step

1. Diet Composition

Whenever I’m bored or a few hours before my husband comes home, I love sitting at the dining table with a notebook spread out. I list all the ingredients we have in our house, one by one, as if I’m playing a puzzle game. While doing this, I enjoy coming up with menus by fitting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes, creative cooking ideas come to mind, and naturally, I memorize the inventory of ingredients in our house, making it easier to purchase only what’s needed when I visit the store.

2. Recipe Search

If you are an experienced cook, you may be able to come up with a dish just by looking at the ingredients. However, if you are a novice in cooking, this process can feel overwhelming. In such cases, using the search bar can be very helpful. Instead of searching for the name of a dish, try searching for the ingredients, which is often easier to manage and visually appealing.

For example, if you have difficulty handling tofu, you can search for “tofu recipes.” Nowadays, there are many cooking apps with these features, although I haven’t personally used them, so I can’t provide any recommendations.

3. Substitute Ingredients

Letting go of the obsession with adding every single ingredient listed in a recipe can make cooking much more enjoyable. While it’s true that adding everything exactly as specified can bring you closer to the original intended taste, it often doesn’t make a significant difference. Factors like heat control and personal touch can also play a role, making it difficult to replicate the dish exactly. Therefore, it’s okay to make some substitutions and create your own style.

4. Multi-Purpose Approach

By repeating the steps outlined in 1, 2, and 3, you can develop a habit that allows you to think of multiple dishes when you pick up a single ingredient at the store. This skill enables you to efficiently plan your grocery shopping. For instance, if you buy a bunch of spinach, you might quickly think, “I have flour at home, so I’ll make one-third into spinach pancakes, eat one-third fresh, and blanch the remaining one-third before freezing it.” This habit can lead to various benefits, such as saving time on grocery shopping and reducing food expenses.

5. Ingredient Utilization

A practical way to reduce our food expenses from well over a thousand dollars to less than 300 dollars was by minimizing food waste through efficient ingredient usage. We make every effort to purchase the bare minimum of ingredients, ones that can be consumed immediately or used up within one or two meals.

However, when this isn’t possible or when we simply prefer not to do so, we employ various methods to portion and store ingredients, ensuring that not a single piece goes to waste.

6. Leftover Food

In essence, it’s crucial to cook an appropriate amount of food that matches the number of people you’re serving. However, when there are unintentional leftovers, rather than throwing them away immediately, we often ponder how to make the most of them to enjoy another satisfying meal.

For instance, if there’s extra sauce left from ordering delivery food, we store it in the fridge and the next day add some sesame oil and roasted sesame seeds to stir-fry it with rice or mix it into rice and top it with cheese for a gratin-like dish.

7. Barter and Exchange

In our couple, when we receive gift sets that we rarely use or have ingredients we don’t particularly like, we sometimes engage in exchanges with our neighbors through local community forums or cafes. However, we dislike unnecessary energy waste and prefer quick, straightforward transactions, so we post exchange offers with the most affordable rates.

For example, shampoo set might be exchanged for a can of Spam or a couple of unwanted nutritional supplements for two cans of tuna. We mainly focus on exchanging for long-lasting ingredients that my husband enjoys but I don’t frequently buy.