Enjoy the comforts of home cooking, with none of the stress. Photo / 123RF
Cookbook writer and social media phenomenon Amy Sheppard offers her advice on how to serve up hassle-free home cooking.
The Instagram account of 44-year-old cook Amy Sheppard (@amysheppardfood) reminds you of home.
Golden pie crusts, steaming bowls of soup, gooey lasagnes, cheese-smothered shepherd’s pie, gravy, and thick sauces; it’s the most comforting of comfort food.
“I’m an autumn cook, I suppose,” laughs Sheppard, heating up a bowl of homemade soup in the wood-panelled family kitchen in her home on the south coast of Cornwall.
“I love cheese, I love hearty foods. It’s all about those dishes which make you feel cosy.”
Mum to two teenage boys, Sam and Elliot, Sheppard’s career as a cookbook writer and social media phenomenon was born from the meals she was already making for her family.
“I’ve always loved food, and because I was a stay-at-home mum and we only had one income I got into budget cooking,” Sheppard explains.
“I didn’t tell anyone apart from my husband, Paul, and my mum that I was writing my first cookbook.”
The Aldi Lover’s Guide To Cooking was published as an eBook in early 2016 and became an overnight sensation in the United Kingdom.
“I was ahead of Joe Wicks on the Amazon charts!” enthuses Sheppard, her cocker spaniel, Scout, excitedly bustling around her feet.
“I was completely unprepared for it. It was rough around the edges to say the least.”
Soon literary agents were circling and Sheppard’s sophomore effort, The Savvy Shopper’s Cookbook received a proper print publication the following year.
Perhaps it’s no wonder, people are interested – according to the British Nutrition Foundation, the overall price of food in the UK rose about 25% between 2022 and 2024. Social media acclaim and nearly half a million followers came next.
“I’ve always known there was something to this: budget cooking that’s simple but tastes delicious,” says Sheppard.
“It’s not about buying cheap food or unhealthy basics. If you can get people to enjoy cooking and take the faff out of it, there’s less chance they’ll buy ready meals and pizzas.
“We’re option-rich and time-poor, so that stuff is tempting but I want to remind people that home cooking is the best and most cost-efficient way to eat.”
With that in mind, Sheppard shared some of her top tips for saving time, money and energy to make sure you can enjoy the comforts of home cooking, with none of the stress.
“Food falls into four price brackets. Supermarket luxury items are most expensive. Branded items like Heinz or Hellmann’s are next. The cheaper products tend to be supermarket own, followed by budget versions.
If you want to save money, swap 10 of your regularly bought items to one or two brackets down.
“Almost everything I buy is supermarket own-brand. A lot of people think it’s worth paying for branded versions of products such as baked beans or ketchup but in recent years the supermarket brands have become just as good.
I’ve never found a bad supermarket brand mayonnaise. Couscous is another thing that can be hugely overpriced when you buy branded. I never buy tinned soup any more because it has become much more expensive in recent years – make your own.”
“A good rule of thumb is that if you’re making a meal with less than five ingredients, that’s when to buy as good as you can afford because you’ll taste the difference.
“Speciality cheeses like feta and mozzarella are better when you pay more (normal cheddar is fine to buy cheaply, but buy mild because it’s often cheaper than mature and it grills better.) Tinned tomatoes and passata are worth spending money on too.
They do make such a difference to chilli and bolognese. If you’re a regular eater of chickpeas the upgrade from tinned to jarred is huge, and lean mince is worth having.
“Get good bread. You can cover a multitude of sins by serving a cheap meal with nice bread. We’ve also moved onto proper butter after years of using spread – now they cost the same and butter is much better.
“Pay for good pasta and rice. They’re the base of the meal and it lifts the whole thing.”
“My best tip to save money on cooking and shopping is: meal planning. People think it takes ages and it’s boring but once you get into it, it’s easy and you’ll stop wasting food.
“I decide my meals for four nights at a time, then use that to write a shopping list.
“I try to come up with meals that will use the whole of the ingredient, then I’ll know what the leftovers are and how I can use them. If you have a plan for everything then nothing gets wasted.”
“You’ll spend a fortune if you do lots of little shops, but there are disadvantages to doing one big weekly shop too. I do two medium shops, usually on a Monday and a Friday. For my family of four, I spend £60 ($129) on the Monday shop, and £40 ($86) on Friday. It used to be less but food prices have increased so much.
“One advantage of doing two shops is that I shop at different supermarkets. Prices are constantly fluctuating so that allows you to get the lie of the land. There’s no one supermarket which is the cheapest across the board. Get used to comparing the price per kg rather than total.
“Make sure you have all the loyalty cards because the discounts are huge nowadays.”
“A lot of budget cooks are into yellow stickers (heavily reduced) but it’s hard to find deals. It’s usually a way for supermarkets to offload premium items.
“Unless you’re shopping first thing in the morning or very late, you’re unlikely to find fantastic yellow sticker deals. What they will do, however, is distract you from your shopping list, encouraging you to buy stuff you never normally would.
“That said, if you’re used to shopping around and you know which things are more expensive than they used to be, that can guide you towards good yellow sticker deals. At the moment, olive oil is off the scale – if I saw that discounted, I’d buy it in bulk.”
“With a bit of creative cooking, you can stretch out your meat. One roast chicken can be three dinners. Get an extra-large roast chicken and cook it normally. Then divide the meat into three portions. People always tell me a third of a chicken isn’t enough for four people, but it is if you bulk it out.
This week I did sliders (add a bit of stock and spice to the chicken, put some cheese on it and serve in burger buns); made chicken bakes (pies with chicken in white sauce); then a chicken and chorizo bake where I bulked out the chicken with a ring of chorizo. Use lentils, chickpeas and beans to make it into soup or stews. Tinned and packet foods are a great way to make a small amount of protein go further.
“Batch cooking is a great way to save time and money but it means you don’t have much flexibility. Instead, I’ll do parts of a meal. You can do a huge batch of mashed potato then freeze it, for example, then you can use it in cottage pies, sausage and mash, whatever.
“Bolognese, any kind of ragu I will make as a batch. You can have it on a jacket potato, you could mix it up and do it with a cheesy orzo, you can water it down with stock and make it into a soup. Have the ragu in a wrap or flatbread with a bit of salad and cheese and it’s a great lunch for the next day.
“It costs so much electricity to have the oven running now, so I’ll always try to stick in as much as I can when I do have it turned on. Roast vegetables are really easy and they can be frozen then used in soups, stews, or on the side of your main meal. It saves so much time.”
“Yes, you could cook up the entire chicken carcass to make stock, but it takes hours and once you’ve added all your vegetables and had the hob running for hours, it’s no longer a money saver. Homemade stock is great, but there’s a reason 50p stock cubes exist.
“Pesto is another example. I’m not going to say pesto you buy in a jar is better but you’re not going to make pesto for less than £10 ($21.52) realistically, so just buy it.”
“Fresh herbs have become expensive and they don’t last long, so grow them on your window sill. Basics like parsley, thyme, and chives last all year and they’re much fresher.
“I also recommend growing chilli. We planted from seed and it was incredibly easy to grow, and we had dozens of chillis growing from it. Plus it’s a nice plant to look at so it’s a good one to have in your kitchen anyway.”
“Sometimes you have to take the quick wins when you’re busy and at times like that, I think cutting corners is the best thing to do.
“For example, orzo is brilliant because it cooks so much more quickly than any other kind of pasta. Don’t cook rice – just use the microwaveable packets, the supermarket brands do them incredibly cheap, just as good as Uncle Ben’s, and they’re great for sticking in soups, or soaking up leftover portions of chilli.
“The potato waffle-topped cottage pie I do has been controversial but I can’t believe how many people have made it. That’s a great time-saver. Instead of making mash, just put potato waffles on top of the mince and sprinkle cheese over it.
“If you must have mash, I just discovered you can buy it frozen. Stick it in the microwave, add milk, salt and pepper and you’re done. Frozen vegetables are brilliant in general, frozen sweet potato is perfect for a cottage pie too. It’s loads cheaper than fresh and lasts much longer.”
“You don’t have to pay a lot for a slow cooker, even a supermarket one will be fine, but they can save you so much money on cooking, especially meat. Cheap cuts like brisket taste just as good after being slow-cooked. Often these cheap cuts have much more flavour too as anyone who prefers chicken thigh to breast will know.
“I cook whole joints in the slow cooker. Roast beef is excellent, as is a whole roast chicken. They’re also good for vegetarian things like chickpeas, lentils and potatoes.
“You might also consider air frying. While I know it’s an expensive bit of kit, in the long term, they’re cheaper to use and quicker than the oven. One of my favourite things to air fry is meat. Air fry a whole gammon joint then slice it up to use as ham, instead of buying packets. Likewise, you can do a whole chicken and cut it up – it’s more economical than buying small packets.”
“Tinned potatoes are a great, cheap ingredient. People turned off them because they used to taste rubbish, but tinned new potatoes are excellent for curries, stews, and bulking-out dishes now. Tinned fish has come a really long way too. Mackerel, sardines, all of those used to have a terrible reputation for not being good but nowadays I use a lot of tinned fish.
“Frozen food, especially frozen vegetables, has also changed a lot over the past decade. Because they get frozen at the point of fishing or picking – lots of the time they’re fresher than the ‘fresh’ stuff.
“Frozen fruit and veg is significantly cheaper than fresh. It means you can carry a wider selection and it’s easy to defrost exactly what you need for smoothies and quick desserts.”
“A quick way to save money on your cooking is to simply cook with less meat. You can make significant savings by cutting out meat two nights per week.
“However, I avoid buying meat alternatives. The newer ones are more expensive than meat. Instead look at things like chickpeas and lentils – if you blend them, you can add them to a soup for a meaty texture.”
“Our tastes are constantly changing, especially as we move between seasons. Keep a diary of the food that you’re throwing away and if the same things keep coming up, stop buying them. Again, making a shopping list will help you cut down on waste like this.”
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.