Recipes

Cooking made easy: Simple, low budget, healthy dishes for young people living independently.

Age UK: 6 easy meals for one person: This article provides meal ideas that are great for people who live alone and only need to cook for one person.

Cooking together recipes: Skills for life, independent living recipe book: A beginner-friendly recipe book from Hertfordshire County Council, created to help people learn basic cooking skills and prepare simple, healthy meals for independent living.

Age UK: Eating well affordably: Simple recipes to help people eat healthily on a limited budget. Most recipes are aimed at one to two people.

Age UK: Simple recipes for one to use with food parcel contents: Simple, low-cost meal ideas for one person using typical food-parcel ingredients. 

Healthworks Airfryer Cookbook: A simple PDF cookbook of air-fryer recipes and tips by Healthworks Northeast, with clear ingredients and step-by-step instructions. The recipes are well suited to one-person meals, as portions easy to scale down.

Just4one: Recipes for one: Meals, quick snacks and pudding recipes for one.

Love Your Leftovers: A set of budget-friendly recipes that help to prevent food waste and utilise leftovers.

Food Cycle: Recipes to Reduce Food Waste at Home: FoodCycle offers a collection of 10 easy and delicious recipes designed to help use up leftovers and reduce food waste.

From Brent to Bowl: Brent residents and budding chefs have showcased their commitment to tackling climate change through their love of food, by sharing tantalising recipes for a community cookbook, which promotes using up leftovers and reducing food waste.

BDA Paella: Originally from Spain, this dish combines small amounts of meat, fish and vegetables – that might be left over from other recipes – all brought together with rice.

BDA Chicken and butternut sage risotto: Creamy risotto with cooked chicken, roasted butternut squash, sage and risotto rice, designed as a tasty way to use up leftover chicken and make a balanced meal.

BDA Roasted squash soup: This hearty soup has a lovely roasted vegetable flavour and is simple to make. It’s a perfect way to use up leftover vegetables and it freezes well.

BDA Mixed vegetable pie: You can use any vegetables – fresh, frozen or canned, even leftovers – to make this tasty alternative to shepherd’s pie.

BDA Vegetable soup: This delicious soup can be made using almost any cooked vegetables you have leftover in the fridge. This recipe is great for lunch.

BDA Vegetable risotto: A simple risotto made with rice, mixed vegetables and stock using a quick microwave method that's great for using up leftover vegetables.

Growing Communities: Zero waste: A large collection of free, seasonal and mostly plant-based recipes that focus on zero waste. 

Better Health, Healthier Families - Healthy Recipes: Practical, low-cost recipes for families and individuals.

Full Time Meals: Tom Kerridge and Marcus Rashford launched Full Time Meals during the pandemic and created pocket-friendly, tasty recipes that the whole family can cook. These recipes are simple and easy to follow with an emphasis on limited equipment and inclusion of store cupboard goods with a longer shelf life. 

Food- A Fact for Life: A selection of recipes that support the teaching and learning of handling a range of ingredients, food skills and cooking techniques. Recipes can be filtered by age range, recipe complexity, cooking methods and more. A great resources to explore recipes that are suitable for children to get involved in. 

Queen of Greens Recipe Book: This recipe book features nutritious and delicious meals that can be cooked easily with the whole family. 

Eat Them to Defeat Them: A selection of recipes aimed at increasing children's interest in vegetables. 

VegPower Recipes: Through their website, VegPower have produced a vast array of recipe ideas which can be searched depending on the complexity, cost or effort required of the meal.

Food: A Fact for Life: Bring learning to life with simple, nutritious recipes that help children cook in the classroom with confidence using seasonal food.

Look Who's Cooking: This resource provides simple recipes for delicious meals that children and young people and get involved in making. The recipe cards includes ingredients and equipment required for the recipe, prep and cooking time, and offers a step-by-step method. Additionally, the resource also provides healthy eating cards and food skills cards that can be printed off.

HENRY Healthy family recipes: Simple, family‑friendly healthy meal ideas for young children. 

Growing Communities: Family-friendly recipes: A large collection of free, seasonal and mostly plant-based recipes that our family-friendly.

Nourish Food School: A list of cook-at-home recipes, showing a variety of simple dishes with ingredients and instructions to help you cook at home.

Food and Fuel: Recipes and Top Tips: A downloadable booklet based on the Food and Fuel project which includes cost-efficient recipes, a range of informational resources and cook-along videos designed for everyone. 

Food Wise Leeds Recipe Hub: A collection of tasty, nutritious and affordable recipes which also include their carbon footprint too. 

Staple Cupboard Recipes: This guide from Age UK offers simple, affordable recipes using pantry staples to help individuals prepare nutritious meals with ingredients commonly found in cupboards. 

Food Parcel Meal Ideas: The Food Parcel Meal Ideas booklet created by Food Active provide some basic meal ideas for all meals using non-perishable ingredients you might find in a food parcel.

Feed Your Family For Less: Through Sheffield’s Sweet Enough campaign, this booklet has been developed to provide a guide on feeding your family for less and seeing whether you can make your budget go further. It has a selection of recipes which support healthy eating.

Heart UK: Mediterranean soup: Healthy Mediterranean vegetable soup using budget-friendly ingredients. 

Heart UK: Red chilli and bean soup: Healthy red chilli and mixed bean soup for a filling one-pot lunch or dinner.

Heart UK: Herb and garlic baked chicken: A budget-friendly baked chicken dish with lightly cooked vegetables. 

Heart UK: Spanish omelette: This classic Spanish omelette filled with sauteed potatoes, red pepper and onion makes a delicious  vegetarian lunch for two.

Heart UK: Tuna pasta bake: A family favourite, budget-friendly tuna pasta bake. 

Heart UK: Basil-infused Mediterranean mushroom and butter bean delight: A warm and comforting Mediterranean-inspired vegetarian dish.

Heart UK: Chicken and chickpea tikka masala rice bowl: This rice bowl boasts not only a rich medley of flavours but is also low in fat and saturated fat. As a wholesome bonus, it also contributes to your daily vegetable intake by providing three of your five-a-day portions. This dish maximizes value by incorporating frozen vegetables, sparing both your wallet and reducing waste.

Help for the early years: Cost-effective healthy food: Tips, recipes and guidance on how to prepare and serve healthy, balanced, and cost-effective meals and snacks for children while keeping food costs down.

Cooking food: Transforming communities through food and wellness: Nutritious, budget-friendly recipe ideas. 

Havens Food Cooperative's slow cooker scheme: The project ran a scheme in October 2022 that distributed 10 slow cookers and 52 ingredient packs to a total of 22 families across 3 weeks. The aim of the scheme was to provide cost of living support to families- encouraging the use of slow cookers and surplus food from the community pantry to create budget friendly family meals. Slow cookers are an energy-efficient piece of kitchen equipment that can help families save money on their energy bills when used frequently. 

Multicultural Nutrition: The NHS Forth Valley's Multicultural Nutrition page offers a valuable resource for individuals working in community food settings. It provides culturally tailored nutrition information and resources aimed at supporting diverse communities. 

Healthy Hermie Multicultural Cookbook: Produced by Edinburgh Community Food, this cookbook features recipes developed by participants of the 'Feeding Hermie Healthy Futures' pilot project. It offers a diverse range of healthy, low-cost, and simple-to-prepare dishes from various cultures.

A Taste of the World From One Community: This community cookbook features recipes from local residents, reflecting the diverse cultures within the community. It's a valuable resource for exploring different culinary traditions and fostering cultural appreciation.

Intercultural Recipe Share: The University of Exeter's 'Intercultural Recipe Share' e-book offers a collection of recipes contributed by international students, showcasing the rich culinary traditions from various cultures.

Community Cookbook by Chilypep: This cookbook was created as one of these culture shares. Through this we have tried new foods, learnt how to make these ourselves and heard the stories behind the recipes and the cooks who made them.

Notting Dale Community Cookbook: This recipe booklet is a legacy project. Nourish Hub have collaborated with previous and current community partners, schools, religious organisations and housing associations to contribute to a recipe book which reflect the diets and lives of our neighbours and residents of Notting Dale ward.

NHS Your Healthy Kitchen: Working with local people at the heart of our communities to bring you delicious traditional Indian food with all the flavour you know and love, but with a healthy twist. The recipes are easy to follow and have been developed to be cost effective.

Co-produced culturally appropriate multi-ethnic healthy eating resources: Free, co-produced recipe cards of culturally appropriate, healthier versions of traditional African and Caribbean dishes to help people from multi-ethnic communities make healthier food choices while respecting their food culture.

Food a Fact for Life: Global Cuisine Recipes: These recipes are designed to enable students to develop, acquire and secure practical food skills through using recipes that are suitable and practical for schools and their budgets, promote healthier eating, reflect more global cuisine, and encourage dialogue around culture and inclusivity.