How to make cooking for one enjoyable and varied, with sensible portions, useful leftovers and less waste.
Cooking for one gives you considerable freedom over dinner, although recipes for four and generous supermarket packs can make the practicalities awkward. A few familiar dishes, ingredients that work across several meals and a useful freezer supply can make feeding yourself easier. There is also pleasure in cooking exactly what you fancy, serving it how you like and sitting down to enjoy something you have made.
Top Tips for Cooking for One
- Start with something you want to eat. Keep a short list of favourite meals that suit different levels of time and enthusiasm.
- Check what needs using. Look through the fridge before shopping and build a meal around something already there.
- Buy quantities you can manage. Loose vegetables, smaller packs and foods you can freeze give you more control over waste.
- Give fresh ingredients several uses. Choose ingredients that will work in a couple of meals you would enjoy.
- Keep frozen ingredients handy. Peas, spinach and other vegetables let you take out the amount you need.
- Learn your usual portions. Notice how much pasta, couscous or potato satisfies you, allowing for your appetite that day.
- Cook extra when it suits the dish. Soups, stews and sauces can provide another meal with relatively little additional work.
- Freeze portions separately. Label containers with the contents and date, and keep a simple record of what is available.
- Store leftovers promptly. Cool and refrigerate them within one to two hours, following the storage and reheating guidance below.
- Give yourself time to eat. Put dinner on a plate, find somewhere comfortable and enjoy the meal while it is ready.
Cook Something You Fancy
Cooking for one happens in all sorts of households. You might live alone, work different hours from your partner or have an evening when everyone else is elsewhere. Sometimes it is a welcome opportunity to make the dish nobody else particularly likes.
The difficulty often arrives before the cooking begins. You open a recipe that serves four, discover it needs half a carton of something and start calculating how many evenings you would be willing to eat the result.
A small collection of dependable meals helps. Think of dishes you can make comfortably in the quantity you need: a baked potato with a favourite filling, mushrooms and beans on toast, a quick noodle bowl or a tray of vegetables with chickpeas and a yoghurt or tahini dressing.
Shop for a Few Connected Meals
A shopping basket becomes easier to use when its ingredients have somewhere to go. Spinach could join pasta one evening and a chickpea curry the next. Roasted carrots might accompany dinner, with a separate portion kept for a lunch of couscous and hummus.
Choose these combinations around your tastes. Buying a large bag of something you only occasionally enjoy can leave you repeatedly negotiating with it from the fridge door.
Compare the price with the quantity you expect to use. A larger pack may offer good value if you can divide and freeze it promptly. A smaller pack may be more practical when freezer space is limited.
For variety, include vegetables, a source of protein and some starchy food across your meals. The NHS Eatwell Guide describes balance over a day or week, which leaves plenty of flexibility for individual dinners.
Make the Quantities Work
Some recipes reduce easily. Pasta sauces, soups and many stews can be made in smaller quantities by adjusting the ingredients and using an appropriately sized pan.
Cooking time needs its own judgement. Half the ingredients will often take a similar amount of time to soften or cook through, although a smaller or shallower dish may be ready sooner. Check as you go.
You can also cook the original quantity when it suits your plans. Before starting, decide which portion is for tonight, which you will eat soon and which you will freeze.
Keep the parts of a meal separate when that gives you more choice. A tomato and lentil sauce might accompany pasta today and fill a baked potato another evening.
Give the Extra Portion a Plan
Leftovers are easier to enjoy when you know what you intend to do with them. Put tomorrow’s lunch in its own container and freeze portions you are unlikely to eat soon. A label prevents the familiar experience of holding a frozen container up to the light and trying to identify its contents.
For most cooked leftovers, Food Standards Agency guidance is to cool them and put them in the fridge within one to two hours. Dividing food into smaller containers helps it cool. Eat refrigerated leftovers within 48 hours or freeze them promptly if you will need longer.
Defrost food in the fridge and use it within 24 hours of fully thawing. Reheat leftovers only once, until steaming hot throughout.
Cooked rice needs particular care: cool it quickly, ideally within an hour, refrigerate it and use it within 24 hours. Reheat it only once.
When changing a leftover into another dish, keep its original storage time in mind. Adding a new ingredient does not restart the clock.
Sit Down to Dinner
Cooking for yourself can include small preferences that would barely register on a recipe page: the vegetables browned a little more, the sauce made thicker, the bread toasted exactly how you like it.
Serve the food while it is ready and give yourself somewhere comfortable to eat. Clear enough space for your plate, pour a drink and put on some music if you enjoy it. A few ordinary details can make the evening meal pleasant.
Some nights, dinner will be something assembled from the fridge. On others, you may feel like trying a recipe or taking longer over the cooking. Having a few options makes room for both.
After a few weeks, you may find that cooking for one requires less calculation. You know the amount of pasta you usually want, which vegetables you finish and what is waiting in the freezer. Dinner becomes something you can make with confidence, including on an entirely ordinary evening when you are the only person at the table.