A Week of Meals Using What We Already Have in the Freezer and Cupboards
One of my favourite ways to keep our food shopping costs down is to plan a week of meals around what we already have in the house rather than heading straight to the supermarket with a shopping list. It’s something I’ve been doing for years, particularly in the week before payday when I’d rather make the most of what’s already in the cupboards and freezer than spend money on a load of new ingredients.
I started doing this when money was much tighter and we genuinely needed to make what we had last until payday, but these days it’s more about being intentional with what we’re spending and making sure we’re actually eating the food we’ve already paid for. I still love a good food bargain and I’m certainly not going to stop picking up yellow sticker bargains when I spot them, but there’s not much point buying things at a great price if they end up sitting in the freezer for months because I’ve forgotten they’re there.
And considering we have three freezers these days, forgetting what’s in them is something I’m rather good at. I can pop something in the freezer with every intention of using it the following week and then completely forget it exists until I have a proper rummage through the drawers. I’ve found all sorts of forgotten things when I’ve done a freezer audit in the past, so I actually quite enjoy seeing what I can come up with when I decide to plan a week of meals using what we’ve already got.
How I plan meals around what we already have
I usually start by having a look through the freezers to see what meat, vegetables and homemade meals we’ve already got. I love batch cooking and will often make double portions of things like Bolognese, mince and dumplings or curry, so there’s usually something in there that can be turned into an easy dinner. I’ll also check what fresh food needs using up in the fridge before having a quick look through the cupboards for things like pasta, rice, beans and sauces.
I’m not trying to avoid shopping completely and I’m certainly not going to make everyone eat something they don’t fancy just because I’ve found it at the bottom of the freezer. It’s more about working out what meals we can make with what we have, then buying anything extra that we actually need. Sometimes that means we already have everything for a meal and other times it means buying one or two ingredients rather than a whole shopping list.
This was the seven-day meal plan I put together using that approach and, as you’ll see, there’s nothing particularly complicated about any of the meals. They’re all things we enjoy eating and most of the main ingredients were already sitting in the freezer or cupboards waiting to be used.
Monday – Breakfast for Tea
We started the week with breakfast for tea, which is always a popular choice in our house. I don’t know why having bacon, eggs, beans and toast for tea feels like more of a treat than having exactly the same thing for breakfast, but it does and I’m not going to argue with that logic.
We buy bacon in bulk from a local farm shop and separate it into smaller portions before freezing it, so there’s usually some ready to defrost when we need it. We also get our eggs from the farm shop and I always have baked beans in the cupboard, which meant I already had pretty much everything I needed. I was also fairly sure there were some hash browns hiding in one of the freezers, so I had a rummage for those too.
It’s not a meal that needs much planning or preparation but that’s one of the reasons I like including it in our meal plan. Some nights I really enjoy cooking something from scratch and trying a new recipe, but other nights I’m more than happy with a plate of bacon and eggs, especially when it means I don’t have to buy anything extra.
Tuesday – Homemade Toad in the Hole
I nearly always have sausages in the freezer because I’m quite fussy about the ones I buy. I prefer good-quality sausages but don’t particularly like paying full price for them, so whenever I spot some on offer or with a yellow reduced sticker, I’ll buy a pack or two and pop them straight in the freezer. It’s a good way of getting decent sausages for less and means I can usually put something like toad in the hole on our meal plan without having to buy the main ingredient.
The Yorkshire pudding batter is made using ingredients I always have in the kitchen anyway, so I made a traditional toad in the hole with some vegetables from the freezer and plenty of gravy. My partner, however, is a ridiculously fussy eater and although he loves sausages and Yorkshire puddings, he would much rather have his sausages sitting next to his Yorkshire pudding than actually cooked inside it.
I genuinely couldn’t tell you why that makes such a difference to him, especially when he’s perfectly happy to pour gravy all over everything once it’s on his plate, but I’ve learned that some things just aren’t worth questioning. I cooked his sausages separately and made him a giant Yorkshire pudding to go alongside them, which meant he was happy and I didn’t need to make a completely different dinner. 😂
Wednesday – Cottage Pie
Wednesday’s cottage pie was another meal that didn’t need much preparation because I already had some cooked mince and vegetables in the freezer. I’d made extra when I was cooking previously and frozen it specifically to use for another dinner, so all I needed to do was defrost it, make some mashed potato and turn it into a cottage pie.
I love having portions of cooked mince in the freezer because there are so many different things you can do with them. Depending on how I’ve cooked it, I can turn it into cottage pie, serve it with mash or use it as the starting point for another meal without having to get everything out and start from scratch again.
I made enough cottage pie for my partner to take some to work for his lunch the following day too, which is something I often try to do when I’m cooking meals that reheat well. He’s quite happy taking leftovers to work and it’s an easy way to sort another meal without having to think about it too much.
Thursday – Chicken Pesto Pasta
Chicken pesto pasta is probably one of the easiest meals on this week’s plan because I almost always have everything I need to make it. There’s permanently a jar of pesto in the cupboard and let’s face it, who doesn’t have pasta in the cupboard? I also usually have some cooked, shredded chicken in the freezer along with peas and sweetcorn, so it’s one of those meals I can pull together without even thinking about it.
I cooked the pasta as usual, added the defrosted chicken and stirred through some pesto before adding the peas and sweetcorn. It’s such a simple dinner but it’s lovely and filling, and the frozen vegetables make it easy to add a bit more to the meal without having to chop or prepare anything.
Having cooked chicken in the freezer is something I find really useful because I can use it for so many different meals. It’s handy for pasta, fried rice, wraps and all sorts of things that would take much longer if I had to start by cooking the chicken. I don’t always know exactly what I’m going to use it for when I freeze it, but I know it’ll come in handy at some point.
Friday – Homemade Chilli Con Carne
Friday’s dinner was already sorted thanks to a huge batch of homemade chilli con carne that I’d made the week before, although the reason I ended up making it in the first place was a bit of a change of plan.
I’d originally bought some mince to make a cottage pie for tea one night but when I popped to the shop to pick up my prescription, I spotted some lovely steak in the reduced section. Obviously, I couldn’t leave a bargain like that behind, so I bought the steak and decided we’d have that for tea instead.
That left me with a pack of mince that needed using up and I also had some green peppers in the fridge that were getting to the point where I needed to do something with them. I had plenty of onions, tinned tomatoes and spices in the cupboards, so I decided to make a big batch of chilli rather than leave anything sitting around for another day.
I don’t put kidney beans in my chilli because I absolutely hate them, although I’ve made it with baked beans before and more recently I’ve been using butter beans instead. It’s one of those recipes that’s easy to adapt depending on what you’ve got in and I much prefer making a big batch so I can freeze some for another day.
Once the chilli had cooked and cooled down, I portioned it up and popped it into the freezer, which meant Friday’s dinner was already taken care of before I’d even started planning the week. I was quite pleased with that considering the whole thing had started with an unexpected trip to the reduced section when all I’d actually gone out for was my prescription. 😂
Saturday – Pork in Gravy
We’d picked up a large pack of reduced pork steaks a couple of weeks earlier and I’d cooked them in gravy before freezing them in portions. I like doing this when I get a good deal on meat because it means I’ve already done most of the cooking and can just get a portion out when we need an easy dinner.
For Saturday, I took some of the pork in gravy out of the freezer and served it with vegetables and whatever else we fancied alongside it. I’ve always got a good selection of frozen vegetables in, so there was no need to buy anything extra and it was a lovely easy dinner for a weekend.
I enjoy cooking but I don’t particularly want to spend hours in the kitchen every single day, especially at weekends when we’ve usually got other things going on. Having a few portions of homemade meals tucked away in the freezer makes such a difference on those days because we can still have something we’ve cooked ourselves without all the preparation that normally goes with it.
Sunday – Homemade Pizza
Sunday is often homemade pizza night in our house and it’s one of my favourite meals for using up whatever little bits and pieces are left in the fridge at the end of the week. I make the pizza dough myself and then everyone can choose their own toppings, which works really well for us because we don’t all like the same things.
I made the dough earlier in the day so it was ready for us to make the pizzas later on, then had a look through the fridge to see what we could use. Little bits of cheese, leftover meat and vegetables are all perfect for pizza toppings and it’s a good way to use things that might otherwise get forgotten about.
Homemade pizza is also handy when you’ve got a fussy eater in the house because everyone can make their own without me having to cook completely different dinners. I actually quite like putting all the toppings out and letting everyone get on with making their pizzas, although I do sometimes wonder how we can all start with exactly the same pizza base and end up with such different dinners.
What did I actually need to buy?
After planning all seven meals, there really wasn’t much I needed to add to the shopping list. Most of the main ingredients were already in the freezer or cupboards and I had plenty of vegetables to go alongside the meals, so the things I needed were mainly milk, some fresh salad and whatever fruit we’d run out of.
I wasn’t trying to have a completely no-spend week and I’m certainly not against popping to the supermarket if there’s something we need. I just wanted to make sure we were using the food we’d already bought before spending money on more, particularly when there were so many easy meals we could put together without buying anything new.
It also meant I’d made a bit more space in the freezers, which is always useful when I come across a good yellow sticker bargain. There’s nothing worse than finding something reduced to a brilliant price and then realising you’ve got absolutely nowhere to put it, although that doesn’t always stop me trying to squeeze it in somewhere. 😂
Why I like planning meals this way
I’ve been meal planning for years and I think one of the most useful habits I’ve developed is checking what we have before deciding what we need to buy. It’s very easy to sit down with a blank meal planner, think of seven meals you’d like to eat and then write a shopping list for all the ingredients without remembering that you’ve already got perfectly good food sitting in the freezer.
I’ve definitely done that myself in the past, which is why I now try to start with what we’ve already got. It doesn’t mean we have to eat boring meals or that I can’t buy something just because I fancy it, but it does make me think a bit more about how to use what we’ve already paid for.
I also love that having a few batch-cooked meals in the freezer makes it so much easier to put together a week’s meal plan. When you’ve already got portions of chilli, cooked mince or pork in gravy ready to use, you’re not starting from scratch every night and it takes some of the pressure off cooking during a busy week.
For me, meal planning has never been about having everything organised down to the last detail or sticking rigidly to a plan regardless of what happens. If I spot some lovely reduced steak when I’m out picking up a prescription, I’m quite happy to change what we’re having for tea and use the original ingredients for something else. That’s exactly what happened with the chilli and it worked out brilliantly because we got a lovely dinner and a few extra portions for the freezer.
I still enjoy trying new recipes and there’ll always be things I want to buy when I’m shopping, but I get just as much satisfaction from putting together a week of meals using what we already have. We eat well, waste less food and save money without feeling like we’re missing out on anything, which is exactly how I like meal planning to work.
Thank you for reading, Cass x
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