There are 101 places to start when thinking about healthy eating on a budget. I’d like to start with the important topic of kitchen staples. We’ll look at some ‘essentials’ to stock up on and then in our next segment we’ll go on to some essential cooking tools.

The reason for having essential kitchen staples is to make your life easier. These are the things that you can not only make something tasty out of with little effort, but these will be able to bulk out meals and hopefully save you time.

When we’re looking at healthy eating, we’re looking at where we can get the best nutrients from. This will be vegetables and fruit for sure and then, a healthy intake of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

Often the cheapest foods or those that bulk out our meals are carbs. It doesn’t mean that these can’t be kitchen staples, for most of us they will contribute. But, we don’t want to have an overly heavily laden carb diet, especially if we have digestive issues.

It is estimated that the ‘average’ adult should aim to obtain 50% of their daily intake from carbohydrates and approximately 260g. This doesn’t simply mean wheat products, carbohydrates are all those products which break down in to glucose the valuable sugar that our body needs. So, think widely here and wholegrains which have more fibre, absorb more fluid and bulk out meals

When it comes to tins and packets, I’m a fan. They can be great kitchen staples. You have to be mindful that tinned foods may have high levels of salt, brine or sugars to preserve and maintain taste, but you can buy products that have less of these or with beans and legumes, simply wash the water off. The good thing about tinned goods is that they are sealed when produce is often the ripest. With beans, you save a lot of time because they have already been pre-cooked and need minimal cooking time

Here are some useful kitchen staples

Product	Beneficial nutrients	Makes/for/found in
Brown rice	B vits	Curries, kedgeree, add to soups
Oats	Low GI, fibre	Porridge, crumble toppings, flapjacks
Tinned tomatoes	Lycopene	Soup – Tomato, vegetable, minestrone, bolognaise, nacho sauce, curries
Beans and legumes	Protein and fibre	Chickpeas, butter beans, lentils, kidney beans, split peas, blackeye beans, for more ideas look at (link)
Whole wheat pasta/spaghetti	B vits/fibre	*Pasta can be made in bulk and frozen
Noodles	Iron, phosphorous	Soup, stir fry, warm salads
Grain (particularly brown varieties)	Fibre, b vits, selenium	Salad or alternative to rice – Pearl barley, cous cous, bulghar wheat
Vegetable oils	Lowering cholesterol (LDL) improving healthy cholesterol (HLD), vitamin E, cell membrane protection, omega-6	Olive oil, sunflower, rapeseed, flaxseed
Vegetable/stock	Onion, carrots, parsnips, parsley, turmeric	Soup, a drink, to enhance rice dishes
Bovril	Protein, b vits, iron and zinc	As a meat product, may enhance meat dishes, but can be taken alone as a drink
Marmite	B vits (thiamin, riboflavin) B12, folic acid	To add to soups, pasta dishes, as a spread to liven up sandwiches, great with egg on toast
Tomato ketchup	Vitamin C and lycopene	Soup, curry, with pasta or spaghetti or as an accompaniment in sandwiches
Miso	Iron, zinc, folate	Soup, as stock, bean casseroles, stir fry dishes
Chilli paste	Anti-inflammatory, reducing unhealthy cholesterol (LDL), detoxifying	Stir fries, bolognaise, chilli’s, nachos,
Curry paste	Calcium and potassium	Curry, pilau rice, with eggs
Mustard	B vits and iron	With vegetables, with meats, in sandwiches
Tinned fish	Omega 3 fatty acids, calcium, vitamin B12	With salads, with eggs, in salads, with rice or pasta
Chutney		With salads and salsa
Dried herbs	Diuretic, immune boosting, digestive aid, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory	Parsley, coriander, thyme, basil, sage, turmeric, chilli
Spices		Cinnamon, nutmeg,
Cocoa	B vits	Hot spicy drinks, cakes

Freezer friends

One of the best things that we can do is to batch or bulk cook. This could be by making extra portions when we’re making a meal or setting out to make several meals at the weekend that we freeze ready for defrosting, reheating and eating during the week.

This saves both time and cuts out on wastage during the week. We have to note that not everything freezes well, but many things do. Here are a few tips:

Vegetables – You can either par boil your own and freeze them or buy frozen veg. The main thing to go for here is the best quality. If making your own, you want the vegetables to be slightly harder so that they won’t be all soggy when you go to reheat them.

Soup – This is a great one. Freeze in small tubs in the size of the portions you’re likely to use. I use old yogurt tubs (the collective dairy or similar are a good size).

Curry – This is one of the easiest freeze, heat up and go dishes.

Rice – Similarly to soup, put in small bags or tubs in the portion size that you want to serve.

Sauces – Tomato, bolognaise, cheese sauce are easy to freeze if you’ve made too much when you’re cooking or if you’ve purposely made a little more.

Bread – A great way to reduce wastage. Freeze in small batches that are put in separate bags.

Mince/Veggie mince – Freeze in small tubs in the portions that you’re likely to make dishes with.

You can of course put bigger dishes like casseroles, shepherds/fish/veggie pies and bakes, macaroni cheese or parts of these in proportions that are suitable for you

A few extra tips

Rotate goods – It’s so easy for us to forget what’s in our cupboards and find that things are actually past or sometimes well past their sell by dates. A key thing to remember is to rotate tins like the supermarkets do on a regular basis and make sure that they’re still in date.

Buy in bulk – We’re trying to watch the pennies, but when tins are on offer see if you can buy one or two more, especially on the things on the staple list.

Experiment – Start searching out and collecting recipes which contain the staples and get used to cooking them.

I’d love to hear how you get on and of course if you have any tips or things that you do to help with your kitchen staples – do let me know!