Meal planning for a household of one

Portion before it goes in the fridge

Portioning is the step that saves the most food, and it takes five minutes when you unpack the shopping. The idea is simple: turn a family-sized pack into single meals straight away, while everything is fresh.

1. 1Meat and fish. Split packs into single portions. Keep what you will cook in the next day or two in the fridge, at or below 5 °C, and freeze the rest flat in labelled bags on the same day. Do it well before the "use by" date, not on it.
2. 2Bread. Slice it and freeze most of the loaf. Toast slices straight from frozen.
3. 3Herbs. Chop what you will not use this week and freeze it in a little oil.
4. 4Cheese. Grate half a block and freeze it in a bag. It melts perfectly from frozen onto pasta or toast.

Chicken thigh fillets are especially good for this. They come in manageable sizes, freeze well and stay juicy when cooked, so a single pack can become four separate dinners.

Cook once, eat twice, freeze once

The most useful habit for one person is to cook a dish that makes three portions. You eat one that night. One goes in the fridge for lunch or dinner within the next two days. One goes in the freezer for a night when you cannot face cooking.

The rules that keep this safe are few, but they matter:

• Cool leftovers quickly and get them into the fridge or freezer within two hours of cooking. Spreading food out in a shallow container helps it cool faster.
• Eat fridge leftovers within two days.
• Keep the freezer at −18 °C. Freezing keeps food safe, but its quality slowly drops, so aim to eat frozen meals within about three months.
• Reheat until piping hot all the way through, and reheat only once.

Soups, stews, curries, chilli and pasta sauces all work well for this. Rice and pasta are better cooked fresh, since they take minutes. If you do keep cooked rice, cool it fast and eat it within a day.

For a lighter version of this approach, batch cooking for people who hate batch cooking builds a week from three simple parts.

Shop small without paying more

Buying loose and buying small can cost more per kilo, but only if you would have eaten the whole large pack. Most single people do not. Paying slightly more per kilo for exactly what you need is usually cheaper than buying a bigger bag and throwing a third away.

A few ways to shop small well:

• Buy loose fruit and vegetables by the piece: two peppers, three apples, one courgette.
• Buy the big pack only for things that freeze or keep. Oats, rice, lentils, frozen peas and frozen berries are all fine in bulk.
• Shop twice a week if you can, or once a week with a smaller top-up. Fresh food bought for three days is eaten. Fresh food bought for seven often is not.
• Use the freezer for your vegetables too. Frozen peas and spinach are picked and frozen quickly and are ready whenever you are.

Puy lentils earn a place on this list. They cook in about 20 minutes, hold their shape, and a small bag makes many single portions: warm with roast vegetables, cold in a salad, or stirred into soup.

A sample week for one

Here is how a week can look with just a cabbage, a pack of chicken thighs, a bag of lentils, a few peppers and a box of eggs:

1. 1Monday: roast chicken thigh with peppers and lentils. Cook two extra thighs.
2. 2Tuesday: the extra chicken, sliced cold into a cabbage and carrot slaw.
3. 3Wednesday: omelette with the last roast peppers and grated cheese.
4. 4Thursday: lentil and cabbage soup. Make three portions and freeze two.
5. 5Friday: pasta with frozen peas, garlic, olive oil and cheese.
6. 6Saturday: a frozen soup from the stash, with toast.
7. 7Sunday: the last of the cabbage, stir-fried with egg and rice.

Nothing is repeated, nothing is thrown out, and the freezer holds a spare dinner for next week.

Your next step

On your next shop, pick three fresh ingredients and give each one two jobs before you put it in the basket. Portion the meat as soon as you get home. You will likely throw away less by the end of the week. Everything above is in the vegetables aisle and the frozen vegetables aisle, sold in quantities that suit one.