Great cooking tips for students

Rather than splashing out on expensive restaurant meals or takeaways, you can save a lot of money by cooking yourself.

Try these few tips:

Use more food seasoning
A good bit of seasoning can transform even the blandest food into something spectacular they can really spice up a 15p can of beans or a 12p pack of noodles. Chilli or paprika can give a nice kick to any meal or dried herbs are great to add an Italian aroma to pasta dishes.

Stock up on basic cupboard ingredients
A lot of recipes use the same base ingredients and it's a lot easier to do quick meals if you have the majority of the ingredients already to hand.

Salt & Pepper
Tabasco
Mix dried herbs
Cooking Oil
Pasta & Rice
Chopped Tomatoes & Tomato Puree
Flour & Sugar
Bread
Baked Beans
Potatoes
Onions & garlic
Soy Sauce
Stock Cubes
Ketchup

Learn an easy tomato sauce recipe
Aside from its nutritional value, tomato sauce offers a bit of variety if you switch up the ingredients, and it's also cheap to make. It keeps well in the fridge and tastes great for days afterwards. Try this recipe from the BBC Good Food site.

Buy the right kitchen pans
You really just need two pans. If you can, try to get one good one and one cheap one.

A quality non-stick frying pan that has a bit of depth to it and a lid (non-sticks are much easier to clean).
then a cheaper, deeper pan (for soup cooking).

Use a microwave more
Your microwave can become a trusty ally in producing a top-class meal - they will never be as good as hobs or an oven at making quality food - but it requires a lot less effort to use and leads to a lot less washing up too.

Start freezing food
Freezers are ideal for students who are living on a budget, as they can make your food last months longer. Use freezer bags rather than boxes - as they take up a lot less room. Use smaller bags to freeze individual meals and save on cooking energy and cleaning up.

Try one-pot recipes
hey're easy to cook, and can be divided up into different portions and eaten throughout the week. One-pot meals also tend to be cheap to make and involve minimal washing up.

Cook with vegetarian mince
Try alternatives to meat like Quorn. Aside from having a much lower fat content and almost as much protein as regular mince, it's also much cheaper. What's more, you can keep it in the freezer for months.

Learn cooking skills from friends and family
Cooking with friends and flatmates is a great way to improve your skills in the kitchen and share the cost of any meals.

Go food shopping with friends
You can then benefit from supermarkets run buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) offers, or multibuys that can work out much cheaper than buying products individually. Make sure you know what to look out for, and always do the maths before finally making a purchase.