Savvy shopper saves £80 a month by batch cooking all her lunch and dinners a month in advance
A SAVVY shopper has revealed how she saves £80 a month by batch cooking one month of lunches and dinners in advance.
Shannon Bannon, 25, decided to start meal prepping when her husband was first deployed to Afghanistan in order to always have home-cooked meals ready to eat.
The housewife from North Yorkshire plates up the meals in portion-sized trays and stores them in a freezer, and only buys perishables during the week.
She told : "I wanted to make sure I had homemade meals in portions for just myself.
"I hate cooking meals for just myself so I thought this would be a great way to make sure I was eating a nice home cooked meal every day with little effort."
Shannon told The Sun batch cooking means her monthly food spend has dropped from around £140 to between £60 and £80 a month, plus she no longer spends the usual £50 on takeaways.
It also frees up time for the evenings that she's not in the kitchen, and removes the problem of deciding what to cook every night.
She added: "You know what meals you have in your freezer after meal prepping and can work out what you are going to eat each day.
"Batch cooking for one day a week frees up a lot of time for the rest of the week.
"I’m saving around £60 to £80 a month on meal prepping and I’m not wasting food as I’m making sure everything is used up.
"I batch cook enough meals to last me the month, so all that I have to buy is perishables.
"This means I know how much I’m spending and stops me ordering fast food."
A typical menu for Shannon during the week
Shannon told The Sun what she eats during a typical week.
Monday
Lunch: Chicken salad - 40p per meal per person
Dinner: Mince fajitas - 60p per meal per person
Tuesday
Lunch: Chicken salad wrap - 45p per meal per person
Dinner: Sausage, mash and gravy - 50p per meal per person
Wednesday
Lunch: Sausage bean and cheese pasty - 40p per meal per person
Dinner: Pasta bolognese - 55p per meal per person
Thursday
Lunch: Scrambled eggs on toast- 30p per meal per person
Dinner: Cottage pie - 50p per meal per person
Friday
Lunch: Leftovers from Thursday's dinner
Dinner: Spaghetti and meatballs - 55p per meal per person
Saturday
Lunch: Bacon sandwich - 40p per meal per person
Dinner: Chinese chicken curry - 65p per meal per person
Sunday
Lunch: A fry-up for breakfast and then eats dinner early
Dinner: Sunday dinner - 80p per meal per person
The key to make meal prepping as efficient as possible is to be organised from the start.
Shannon recommends listing all the ingredients you have at home and then write a list of meals that can be made from these.
She cooks everything from cottage pie and bolognese to pasties, fajita wraps and oatmeal pancakes.
Shannon said: "It’s surprising how many meals can be made from what you already have.
"I usually make two at a time as most dishes have the same basic ingredients."
She added: "If you're going shopping, make sure to write a list of meals you're going to batch cook and only buy the items you need for these.
"This stops you spending money on items you don’t need.
"It’s really rewarding seeing how just a day of batch cooking can feed you for the whole month.
"There’s nothing better than seeing a freezer full of home cooked meals."
Keen to batch cook? Keep in mind that the NHS recommends you to eat cooked meals within two days if you store them in the fridge to prevent food poisoning.
Or if you store cooked meals in the freezer, they're generally good to eat within three months.
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Last month, a mum-of-three revealed how she saves £100 by cooking a week's worth of meals at once.
Another mum recently also said she saves the same amount by batch cooking with cut-price meat and veg.
Meanwhile, a mum dubbed "The Batch Lady" can cook 20 meals in less than an HOUR using frozen ingredients.