Cook once eat twice

Batch cooking doesn’t always mean that we have to cook vast quantities of food or always double up on ingredients. Smaller portions are really useful when people are eating at different times.

Don’t want to eat the same every day?

Cook once eat twice does not mean that we have to keep eating the same. By making little changes to main meals, swapping the side dishes or adding in new flavours from the cupboard, you can transform a basic meal.

We are all familiar with the idea of using the Sunday roast in Monday's shepherd’s pie, but here are some other ideas:

• last night’s supper is perfect for lunch - a basic meat and tomato sauce can be served with pasta to make a spaghetti Bolognese, but add a tin of kidney beans and some chilli to left over portions as a different meal
• topping ideas - beef in beer makes a lovely casserole, but by making extra you will have the basis of a great cottage pie by adding mash, or a traditional pie by quickly adding a top of ready-made pastry before putting it on the oven
• savoury crumble (150g flour, rubbed into 75g butter, 25g grated cheese), a topping made of bread crumbs, herbs and grated cheese, or if you have forgotten to defrost it, grated almost-frozen pastry makes a great pie from a meat, fish or vegetable stew and makes it go further
• savoury scones make an interesting topping