Cooking basics

Cooking at home is a great way to save money on groceries, and you don't have to be a chef to do it! The resources in this section are geared towards beginners, but experienced home cooks might find some of the information helpful too.

Check out the Getting started section if you've never cooked before, and then move on to the Meal planning and prep section to level up your cooking. Special situations covers topics like accessible cooking, cooking for a small household, and meals you can make with just one appliance, like a microwave or slow cooker.

Links to great resources for a beginner cook!

Setting up a home kitchen:

Starter cooking techniques:

Cooking with a disability:

Disabled kitchen and garden: An accessible cooking and gardening resource maintained by disabled cook Jules Sherred. There are many great recipes, and also more general guidance about topics like helpful kitchen tools and tips to make meal prep more accessible
Accessible Chef: Visual recipes, cooking tips, safety information and videos geared towards people with learning disabilities.
CookABILITY: A similar resource of recipe videos meant to be accessible for people with learning disabilities.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People: A compilation of cooking resources and recipes for blind and visually impared people.

Cooking for small households:

Cooking with a microwave

Cooking with a slow cooker

Cooking with budget ingredients

Cooking on a budget means cooking with budget ingredients. If you've never made a meal out of frozen vegetables, canned meat and dried beans, it can be hard to know what to do with them. The resources in the Produce, Protein, Grains, Dairy, and Seasonings sections cover everything you need to know to cook with these and other inexpensive staples. Subtitutions covers tips for alternative ingredients you can use if you're missing something you need for a recipe.

General produce resources

Specific kinds of produce

Peanut butter

Tofu

All about tofu

Pulses

Meat

Fish

Grains

Flour

Eggs

Powdered milk

Cooking with powdered milk

Cooking oil

Choosing the right cooking oil

Herbs and spices

Recipes

Now that you're a pro cook, you'll probably need some recipes! Click on the tabs to see a few themed recipe lists for low-budget, delicious food as well as a master list of all of the recipes on the site. If you prefer to cook from books, the Free cookbooks tab has links to no-cost online cookbooks geared towards budget cooking.

25 ingredients, 50 meals: 50 recipes that can be made with 25 inexpensive pantry ingredients
Food Bank First: A compilation of 4 ingredient recipes that can be made on the stovetop
Where whole food and slow food meet: Healthy budget recipes made with a slow cooker
Food cents: A tasty, healthy, and cheap recipe book from the Mississauga Food Bank
Simple and nutritious recipes: A great beginner recipe book based around ingredients found in food hampers
Ancestral Recipes- From Grandma's Kitchen to Yours: A community-created cookbook featuring many Mexican recipes. Designed to be used by people living with diabetes (en espanol)
The Guelph Student Cookbook: Great inexpensive starter recipes for beginner cooks.

Thank you!

Food is Too Expensive! was funded by the City of Saskatoon through our Healthy Yards partnership, the Cyril Capling Trust Fund of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, and the Department of Plant Sciences. Focus group research to inform this work was collected by CHEP. Thank you all for helping us make healthy food more accessible!