Bulk Cooking and Menu Planning for One Person

Many people find that most meal plans and guidance on Bulk Cooking are aimed at buying and cooking huge amounts of food.
If you are just one person on your own it is important that you make the most of your space, your time and your money of course. I have had exactly this experience as once upon a time we were a family of five and now we are three.
As the family have grown up we often eat separately so my focus is sometimes just around cooking for myself-cooking for one.

Saving Time

To make the most of my time, ingredients and gas I tend to cook things that I can freeze. Your freezer really is your best friend. I cook on average 4 to 6 portions of any one meal so that I have variety.

Some of the recipes on this website you may notice have been “tubbed up”. I have cooked enough for 4-6 servings and frozen all or most of them.

Using a meal planner

When you are meal planning, a monthly planner will give you the most variety as you can spread out your batch cooked meals.

For instance, if you have cooked 4 portions of bolognese you can allocate one portion for each week.

Cooking for the Freezer

When I batch cook I tend to say I  am “cooking for the freezer”.  Cooking meals with similar ingredients on the same day or at the same time is the easiest way to approach this.

For instance, if I want to make mince based meals or lentil-based meals I think about what those meals are. Generally, my choices are Lasage, Chilli Con Carne, Spaghetti Bolognese.

All of those use mine/lentils, diced onions, diced vegetables of your choice, such as mushrooms, peppers or chilli. 

Choose your meals

Therefore I would prep enough of these for 12 meals and cook 3 different dishes.

Prepping enough onion, for instance, to make a Chilli, a Bolognese, and a Cottage Pie.

That is the basis of saving time. It also means that you can buy larger packs of food items and that instead of prepping onions and softening them 3 times you are doing it just once.

This actually makes it worthwhile messing up your food processor!

Prep and freeze

If you don’t have time to do all of the dishes at once you can then always freeze the prepped vegetables in containers or bags to use later.

Label the container with your meal idea if you do this. 

You can also of course also cook all of your mince at once and maybe add the cooked onion to it.

If your dishes are all tomato-based you can add the Ragu to it.

Then all you would need to add is individual spices, kidney beans etc.

Meals with Mince

So, having cooked the mince and onions, and having added the Ragu, I would then divide it into 3 containers/pans.

To these 3 containers, I would then add the specific additional ingredients for each dish.
Your 12 meals are now prepped and half of it is cooked.

So now just add your extra ingredients to the pan or container, depending on how many pans you own. 

I portion mine up into plastic takeaway style tubs as these are suitable for the freezer and the microwave.
They are reusable and last a long time.

You may of course prefer to use foil containers with cardboard lids. If you use these and want to save money, cover the lid with foil before first use. You then have a clean lid to reuse

Meals with Chicken

If you are cooking chicken meals it is best to buy a whole chicken-it is the most economical way. I cook mine in a slow cooker as it just falls off the bones when it is cooked. Appearance is not going to matter as you will be stripping it down to make many different meals.

I cook mine then reserve the juices in a jug. I let these cool then I pop them in the fridge.

Once the fat has settled on the top it can be skimmed off so that your food doesn’t taste fatty.

This is my personal preference of course as some people love this also.
Underneath the fat, you will now have your jellified stock. This can be used in your chicken meals.

From the cooked chicken I remove the breasts and thinly slice. Depending on the size of the chicken you cooked you could use this for 4 or more Sunday Dinner, or sandwiches.

Otherwise, you could cut it up for curries or other chicken dishes. I always keep it for my Sunday Dinners and use the darker meat for everything else. Once it is sliced you can portion it according to what you would eat and bag/tub it up for your freezer. 

Now to use up the rest. I often just prepare the chicken and tub it up according to what I think it will be used for. Larger pieces of the legs for instance I would set aside for curries whereas small pieces and the scrappy bits from underneath the chicken I set aside to make risottos or soups. You can either make these now or freeze the chicken for a later date. 

Using your planner, you may now have, 4 portions of chilli, 4 portions of bolognese,4 portions of cottage pie,4 portions of roast chicken,4 portions of chicken noodle soup,4 portions of risotto.

This is what I would expect to get from one large chicken and 500g of mince plus 500g cooked weight of lentils. If you prefer use 1 kilo of mince. 

That is the basis of bulk cooking for one person and if bulk cooking for more-just multiplies your ingredients accordingly.