Cooking can be a bit like marmite: you either love it or you hate it. Or maybe you just never got taught how to cook and you’re nervous of it? There are many benefits to cooking your own food. It tends to be a healthier option than eating out or getting takeaways, which tend to be higher in salt and saturated fat. It allows for more flexibility over your food choices – you get to decide exactly what ingredients you want in your food and how much. It’s cheaper – cooking meals from scratch is a lot cheaper than buying ready meals or takeaways, especially if you have a few mouths to feed. Many of us know these benefits, but have excuses at the ready, such as not having enough time to cook. This article covers my top tips to get yourself back into nutritious cooking.

• Inspire yourself online – there are many cooking videos across all social media platforms – YouTube, Facebook, TikTok etc. You can find cooking hacks, how to videos, as well as many opportunities to cook along! ‘Tasty’ is a particular favourite of mine. Delve into this online cooking world to build your confidence.

• Invest in a good cookbook. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something which has a good variety of basic recipes from which you can go off. Chefs such as Mary Berry, Delia, and Nigella Lawson have easy to follow books for this purpose.

• Plan your week ahead of time. Plan your meals for the week ahead of the food shop so you can go to the supermarket with an accurate list of ingredients. Not only does this save money, it reduces potential for food waste.

• Batch cook – if you know that Tuesday evenings are always a rush to grab food, double up on your cooking the night before so that you can just heat it up the next day. Or is there some time you can set yourself aside at the weekend to pre-prepare your food for the whole week.

• Just before you start cooking, lay out all your ingredients ready to go. Everything is there and easy to grab. You’ll thank yourself when you don’t have to go rooting through a cupboard in a panic mid cook.

• Don’t be afraid to make recipes your own. You can find recipes everywhere and they will all be a slight variation of a similar thing! Doesn’t everyone have their own version of spag bol?! If you like the look of a recipe, except for one ingredient, don’t be afraid to play around with it and swap ingredients to make it your own.

• Where can you add in more veg? Many of us struggle to get in the recommended five portions of fruit and veg per day. This is a good baseline, but nutritionally, getting as many as you can into your diet is best for your health! Be on the lookout for opportunities to add more veg into a recipe e.g. adding carrots and peas to mince, adding spinach into a smoothie, getting red pepper into that cheese omelette etc!

• Make cooking enjoyable – are you somebody who finds cooking a boring chore? What can you do to make it fun? Put on some good music and dance around the kitchen? Or plug your earphones in and listen to a good audiobook or podcast whilst stood at the stove?

• Pre-prepare healthy snacks. If you had a fresh fruit salad already made up in the fridge would you be more inclined to choose it? Are you somebody that enjoys an organised fridge full of Tupperware which you could fill with cut up veggies? Would you enjoy snacking on homemade granola flapjack or banana muffins which you’ve made yourself as a healthier lighter baking option?

• Make use of your freezer – I’ve had the odd couple of nights where I didn’t fancy cooking but I could thank my former self for storing frozen portions of previously cooked meals in the freezer. If you have anything leftover from cooking, don’t throw it away, freeze it and thank yourself later!

There you have it, my top ten tips to get yourself back into nutritious cooking!