How To Cook The Right Amount of Food

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Frugal living is all about making the things you already have stretch as far as they possibly can. One of the biggest areas most of us could save on is our food waste. Only cooking what we need for each meal could dramatically reduce the amount of food we waste and save money too. So, if you’re one of those people who always cooks way too much pasta or rice, this is the post for you.

One thing I’ve started doing in recent years if weighing out certain items before I cook them to avoid cooking too much.

While I know some people like extra food leftover to eat the next day, it’s worth being honest about whether this is something you do – do you always eat the leftovers or do they get left at the back of the fridge only to be discarded a few days later?

If it’s the latter then it might be worth changing the amount you cook in the first place.

Once you get into the habit of weighing out dried foods it does become second nature – it’s something I always do now with both rice and pasta. The amounts can be halved for children and quartered for toddlers.

Or you could add a little bit extra if you have some with a particularly big appetite –  for example, the recommendation for rice is 75 grams per person but my husband is quite a big eater so I do 90 grams each which covers enough for our toddler too. This means we don’t end up with any waste at all as I’m cooking exactly how much we need.

How To Cook The Right Amount of Food

Below I’ve listed the most common foods that we cook too much of, per person in grams. It also includes some dried grains such as lentils and couscous – the food we might be discovering at the back of the cupboard and using up to avoid going to the shops while we’re on lockdown.

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