How to Cook at Home More

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I’m not a great cook and I don’t particularly enjoy cooking either but it is essential to lowering your food budget so today I’m walking you through how to cook at home more so you can stop eating out to save money!

My whole goal here is to help you spend less money so you have more disposable income to do great things with it and there is no place that people spend more money than on housing and food. 

And since you’re already paying all that money for the house, might as well get your money’s worth and eat in it!

I recently made a few videos to help you lower grocery spending, the first was tips for lowering your grocery budget and the other focused on one aspect of that which is how to start meal planning. Today I’m talking about how to follow through with your meal plan so you don’t waste those groceries you bought.

How to Cook at Home More so You Can Stop Eating Out!

You guys love the grocery videos so I will be making more so subscribe to the Modern Frugality YouTube Channel and let me know in the comments what you’re struggling with so I know which video to make next.

Now on to the six tips for cooking at home more so you can stop eating out and save money

1. Spring for the meal planning service

Yeah, the first thing I’m telling you to do to save money is to spend some, but stay with me.

For less than $2 per week, you can eliminate the time-sucking task of coming up with ideas, finding recipes, and figuring out how it fits with your diet/ macros/ whatever. This is such a barrier for people to stick with meal planning long term. And seriously, the time I save is worth every penny.

There are several meal planning services out there. I have two favorites: Cook Smarts and Eat at Home. 

Cook Smarts is the one I use most and I have been quoted saying I am obsessed with everything about it. It’s great for home cooks who are just starting out. You get four dinner recipes per week leaving room to eat out, make a frozen pizza, or drink wine for dinner should you need to. 

The meal plans curated in a way that utilizes similar ingredients to reduce food waste while still maintaining variety. There are unique recipes that include tutorial videos but nothing is too hard that I’d give up, and that’s saying something.

Eat at Home is a new meal planning service I discovered that I think is great for bigger families. In addition to 6 dinner recipes per week, every month you’ll get a menu of six freezer meals that can be assembled in an hour and 1 dessert every week.

Both plans offer different diet plans every week so it’s really easy for everyone to find something. Cook Smarts has a Paleo and a vegetarian while Eat at Home has a vegan and gluten-free so just slight nuances.

The moral of the story is that when you are learning how to cook at home more, don’t be afraid to pay for assistance, it’s affordable, it’s not forever, and it will pay dividends in the long run. Both have free intro meal plans available so I’ll link to them in the comments.

If you are absolutely against it then theme your nights. Stick to a meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Italian Wednesday, etc schedule so you can at least have a guide to go off of when planning.

2. Make friends with the freezer

One of the things that attracted me to the Eat at Home plan was that monthly freezer stash.

When learning how to cook at home more, you have to accept that you won’t be able to cook at home every night. But just because you don’t have time to cook doesn’t mean you can’t eat at home.

Spend one day every month assembling 4-8 freezer meals, start with 4, that you can pop in the slow cooker or instant pot and have dinner ready without the work. 

3. Meal prep

An hour of meal prepping on Sunday will save you tons of time during the week and make it way more likely you will cook at home.

On Sunday while everyone’s napping or while dinner is cooking look at your recipes for the week to chop, measure, and store vegetables and seasoning together. This obviously saves you chopping time during the week but it also saves you time measuring ingredients and you only have to wash all your prep materials once.

You can take it a step further and precook and proportion your meals for the week but I prefer a freshly cooked meal to leftovers so I rarely do.

4. Put eating out in the schedule

Don’t totally eliminate restaurants from your life but instead of resorting to them, make them a treat! Schedule a weekly eating out night that you can look forward to and enjoy without guilt or shame. Also, when you plan it you’re more likely to try new restaurants and foods like it’s an activity rather than just a last-minute way to feed yourself.

5. Stay stocked with essentials

I’m a big fan of the capsule pantry. It’s like a capsule wardrobe but with food which I much prefer. It just means keeping your pantry simple yet stocked to make it as easy as possible to cook at home. 

Figure out the meals and snacks you buy out most often and try to keep those things stocked in your pantry at home so you don’t have an excuse to buy them out. So if you love a morning latte, you have a milk frother and keep good coffee and milk on hand. If you like Italian keep a frozen pizza and a box of pasta, it’s up to you but if you like what’s in your pantry you are much more likely to eat it.

6. Be flexible

Sometimes things will come up that will cause you to change your meal plan. Instead of resorting to fast food or quick service, this is where you throw in that freezer meal or maybe a meal made with some quick essentials.

Life isn’t perfect so you have to be flexible and prepared to pivot.

Those are the six rules I live by to limit my eating out and how I learned to make cooking at home a habit. If you liked em give this vid a thumbs up and I will make more videos like it! And don’t forget to subscribe to get more frugal living tips every week!