How to plan a week of family meals on a budget

Start with what you already have

Before choosing a single meal, look in the fridge, freezer and cupboards. Love Food Hate Waste, the food waste campaign from WRAP, suggests doing this before you plan and write the list, so you cook what needs using and do not buy the same thing twice. Move older food to the front of the shelf as you go.

Then work out how many dinners you really need. Count the evenings everyone is home, the nights someone is out, and the nights that will need a meal on the table in fifteen minutes. Leave one slot for a “use up the fridge” meal, which Love Food Hate Waste also recommends: it is the simplest way to make sure nothing gets forgotten at the back.

Build meals around the Eatwell Guide

The NHS Eatwell Guide shows the balance to aim for. You do not need to hit it at every meal; the NHS says to try to get the balance right over a day or even a week, which is exactly what a weekly plan is for.

• Fruit and vegetables: at least five portions a day, making up just over a third of what you eat. Fresh, frozen and tinned all count, and 80g is one portion.
• Starchy foods: base meals on potatoes, bread, rice, pasta or other starchy carbohydrates, which should also make up just over a third of what you eat. Choose wholegrain or higher-fibre versions where you can.
• Protein: some beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other protein foods. Aim for at least two portions of fish a week, one of them oily, and cut down on red and processed meat.
• Dairy or alternatives: some milk, cheese or yoghurt, or alternatives such as soya drinks, choosing lower-fat and lower-sugar options.
• Oils and spreads: unsaturated types, in small amounts.
• Drinks: 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid a day.

After the age of 2, children should move to eating the same foods as the rest of the family. The Eatwell Guide does not apply to children under 2, whose needs are different.

A sample seven-day plan

This plan uses everyday family dinners whose ingredients overlap: one roast feeds two nights, one pot of chilli covers tonight and a night next week, and spare vegetables end up in soup. Swap any dish for one your family prefers; the pattern matters more than the recipes.

Next week, the frozen chilli becomes a night off: move it to the fridge the day before to defrost, then eat it within 24 hours, perhaps with jacket potatoes and salad. If there is spare rice on Tuesday, cool it quickly and eat it the next day at the latest.

Keep breakfasts and lunches simple and repeatable: porridge or wholegrain cereal with fruit, wholemeal toast, eggs, and lunches made from soup, leftovers or sandwiches with salad. Repeating a few breakfasts all week keeps the shopping list short and predictable.

Batch cooking without the stress

Batch cooking means making a larger quantity once and eating it more than once, either over the next two days or from the freezer. Chillies, stews, curries, pasta sauces and soups all suit it. The safety steps are the same every time:

1. Divide the food into smaller portions in containers or freezer bags so it cools quickly.
2. Get it into the fridge or freezer within one to two hours of cooking. Do not put hot or warm food straight into the fridge.
3. Label each container with what it is and the date you made it.
4. Use frozen meals while they are at their best. The Food Standards Agency says meats are usually best eaten within 2 to 3 months; that is about quality rather than safety.

One longer cooking session on a quieter day, often the weekend, can produce two or three bases for the week. It goes faster with two people: one cooks while the other portions, labels and washes up.

Leftovers and freezing: the safety rules

These come from the Food Standards Agency's guidance:

• Keep the fridge between 0 and 5°C and the freezer at around -18°C.
• Cool, cover and refrigerate or freeze leftovers within one to two hours, and eat leftovers from the fridge within 48 hours.
• Rice is stricter: cool it as quickly as possible, ideally within one hour, keep it in the fridge for no more than one day, and never reheat it more than once.
• Reheat food until it is steaming hot all the way through, and only reheat leftovers once.
• You can freeze food right up to its use-by date.
• Defrost in the fridge, or in the microwave on the defrost setting directly before cooking, never at room temperature. Once food has defrosted, cook and eat it within 24 hours.

Turn the plan into a shopping list

Write the list while you have the recipes in front of you; Love Food Hate Waste points out this makes it easy to spot simple swaps. Then:

• Cross off anything already in the cupboard, fridge or freezer.
• Combine quantities across meals: if three dinners use onions, buy onions once, in the right amount.
• Group the list the way the shop is laid out, with similar foods together, so you are not doubling back.
• Glance in the fridge and cupboards again just before you leave, and check whether anyone's plans have changed.

In Dom, the meal planner (88 original recipes, with scenarios such as a budget week and a batch-cook Sunday) builds a shared shopping list from your plan, and changes show on everyone's devices within seconds, so whoever is at the shop sees the latest version.

Cut food waste

WRAP estimates that UK households threw away 6.0 million tonnes of food and drink in 2022, and that 4.4 million tonnes of it was edible. A plan helps because you buy for meals you have already chosen. These habits help too:

• Know the date labels. A use-by date is about safety, so do not eat food after it. A best before date is about quality: the food is safe after that date but may not be at its best.
• Keep an “eat me first” shelf at the front of the fridge for food close to the end of its life.
• Freeze in time. If you will not eat something before its use-by date, freeze it. Bread can be toasted straight from frozen.
• Keep frozen and tinned vegetables in. They count towards 5 A Day and wait patiently for a busy night. For tins, the NHS suggests ones packed in water or natural juice.
• Stretch the protein. Swap some of the mince in a chilli or bolognese for lentils or beans. They are a protein food in the Eatwell Guide and count towards 5 A Day, though only once a day however many you eat.

A simple weekly routine

1. Pick one evening to check the fridge, freezer and cupboards, and look at the family calendar for busy nights.
2. Choose the dinners, putting quick meals on busy nights and the batch cook on the quietest day.
3. Write the shopping list straight from the plan.
4. Shop once, then cook, cool, label and freeze as you go.
5. Before the next plan, note which meals worked and which leftovers came back, and adjust.

Children can help with simple kitchen jobs such as washing vegetables or laying the table; our guide to age-appropriate chores for children has ideas by age. If the plan is shared between two households or busy schedules, see how to share a family calendar.