Meal planning for one: seven dinners from one shop

Why cooking for one goes wrong

Most recipes serve four, and most packs in the shop are sized for a family. Cook a recipe as written and you eat the same lasagne four nights running. Halve it and you're left with half a tin of chickpeas, most of a bag of spinach and three chicken thighs, all on a clock.

The fix is to plan the packs before the dinners. Decide what you'll buy, then make each pack feed two nights or go in the freezer.

The solo week, Monday to Sunday

One adult, one shop on Sunday afternoon, dinners on a weekday evening's time. Two nights cook big, one night reheats, and the rest are single portions built from what the big nights left behind.

You cook six times and reheat once, and the week ends with two portions of chilli and one of curry in the freezer. Put two of them on next week's plan and that week needs two fewer dinners from the shop. Cooked rice is the one leftover not worth keeping: cook it fresh each time, since the NHS advises eating leftover rice within a day.

The shopping list, pack by pack

From the cupboard: rice, pasta, onions, garlic, a jar of curry paste, a block of cheddar, stock cubes, chilli powder and cumin. Ten lines of shopping cover seven dinners, and you buy nothing for one night only. The same pack-first thinking runs through how to stop wasting groceries, written for a family's fridge.

Freezer portions for one

Every pot of four you cook leaves two or three portions you never cook again. Chilli, curry, bolognese, stew, soup, dal and cottage pie all freeze well in single portions. Cool each pot and get it into the freezer within two hours of cooking. Freeze portions flat in labelled bags with the dish and the date, so they stack like files and thaw overnight in the fridge.

Raw meat goes in the same way. Split a pack of chicken or mince when you unpack the shop, and freeze half before its use-by date gets close. Bread freezes in slices and toasts from frozen, which ends the half-loaf that goes green by Thursday.

Keep a short list of what's in the freezer on the fridge door, and cross portions off as you eat them.

Halving a recipe, and when to cook it whole

Cook the whole recipe when it freezes well and the pot does the work: chilli, curry, stews and soups. Halve it, or cut it to a quarter, when it doesn't: stir-fries, omelettes, pasta with a fresh sauce, anything with crisp vegetables.

To halve, cut every ingredient in half and round eggs up. Season to taste instead of by the spoon, and use a smaller pan so the sauce doesn't dry out. Smaller amounts cook a little faster on the hob, so start checking a few minutes early. Oven temperatures stay the same.

The half you didn't use needs a night of its own. Half a tin of chickpeas goes into Thursday's curry or a salad the day after, and half a block of feta lasts about four days once opened. If no night in the week wants it, freeze it the day you open it.

Move 1: Plan from the packs you will buy

Write down what each pack holds, then give every part-used pack a second dinner before you add a new ingredient to the week. The week above buys ten lines of shopping, and none of them feeds only one night. If a new dinner needs an eleventh, swap it for one that uses what's already on the list.

Move 2: Cook two pots of four a week

Pick two dinners that cook well in bulk, make four portions of each, eat one, keep one for later in the week, and freeze the rest. Two pots a week is enough: by the third week your freezer holds a choice of dinners, and you stop eating the same one on repeat.

Move 3: Freeze half a pack the day you shop

Put half the chicken, mince or bread in the freezer when you unpack, and write the night you will thaw it on the plan. The thighs in this week go in on Sunday and come out on Wednesday night, a day before Thursday's curry.

Move 4: Keep the last night for clearing the fridge

Make the last dinner of the week one built from what is left: eggs, the last pepper, a tin and some bread. Shakshuka, an omelette, fried rice or a frittata will take almost anything. Name the dish on the plan so Sunday doesn't turn into toast.

Move 5: Give every frozen portion a night

Write each frozen portion onto a night in the next two weeks, so the freezer empties as fast as it fills. A portion with no night on the plan stays in the freezer until you defrost it in March.

The second week costs less

Week two starts with three cooked dinners in the freezer. Put the two chillies and the curry on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, cook new pots on Tuesday and Saturday, and the shop shrinks to the fresh things for four dinners. After a month you plan the week from the freezer first and the shop second.

If you cook for one most nights and for two at the weekend, weekly dinner ideas for two has three full weeks sized for a couple. The pot-and-second-night method behind this week is the same one in cook once, eat twice, scaled down to one plate.

Where FamilyPlate fits

FamilyPlate for iPhone (getfamilyplate.com) opens as a guest, with no sign-in, and if you plan only for yourself you never need an account. The meal library and the weekly plan are free. Give a meal its servings, such as "4" for the chilli, so you remember which dinners make a pot. A note pinned to a day, like "thaw the thighs" on Wednesday, sits on the plan. History keeps your past weeks so you can repeat one.

Sign in with Apple when you want Pro. A 14-day free trial starts at your first sign-in, then it's $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Pro adds the shopping list that builds itself from the plan, and it scales recipes that state their servings to the number you cook for, set under Settings → Your kitchen. Set that to 1 and a four-serving recipe comes out as a single portion; set it to 2 and you get tonight's dinner plus one for the freezer. Generate-week and the Ask chat are Pro too.