The Batch Lady: Cooking on a Budget

by Suzanne Mulholland

The Sunday Times best-selling author The Batch Lady is back with a budget-busting book to create fresh and satisfying meals without breaking the purse strings. Shop once.
Get organised, plan ahead and create fresh and satisfying meals without breaking the bank. Cook once.
Over 100 delicious, simple and energy-efficient batch-cooking recipes that will satisfy the whole family and fill your freezer. Save money all week.
Learn to hack your monthly bill, save your hard-earned money and eat well on a budget.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

256 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 5, 2023

Reviews

[Spangles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve now had three of The Batch Lady’s cookbooks on loan from my local library. The latest one has lots of good advice and good range of achievable recipes.

I think it is very difficult to please everyone with a cookbook because we all have different abilities, access to ingredients (for many reasons) and of course we all have our own food preferences and dislikes.

I feel that this book and her other two ate predominantly aimed at young families. My only criticism of all of these books is that the font size is small and much of it is set on vibrant colour backgrounds. Whilst this looks very pretty it simply isn’t practical when using them as a working cookbook. Not the author’s fault I’m sure, but it is frustrating. Realise that I’m substantially older than the target demographic so perhaps this isn’t an issue for younger readers.

Definitely worth loaning from my library but I probably wouldn’t use it enough to justify buying a personal copy. I always try and issue cookbooks from my local library first and this has substantially reduced me buying new cookbooks that sit on a shelf gathering dust!

[Sara Thompson Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. For those new to the Batch Cooking approach, I would suggest this is not your best starter book, and would recommend one of Suzanne Mulholland’s earlier Batch Lady books, or following her on social media first.
Her ideas are creative, family-friendly, practical and real. And now they are budget-friendly too. Perfect for 2023!
If you are an experienced cook, there will be little here that you haven’t cooked before. Will you have made it with a “one meal for today, one for the freezer” perspective before? Maybe not. And you probably won’t have made 10 Meals in an Hour before either; that’s the game changer!
So, clear your freezer space, buy your freezer bags and Pyrex dishes with lids, grab a notebook and a planner and claim your free time back.

[Laurla2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

-4 stars. in addition to the recipes, she has has a few batch cooking setups where she cooks MULTIPLE recipes at once.

"the recipes in this book are designed to be low cost and have been pared back to make sure there are no unnecessary pinches or dashes of ingredients that simply aren't needed." - reading this phrase made me wary, as a previous book of hers was sorely lacking in herbs, spices, and any other flavorings. this book seems better.

--published in the UK and has ingredients we don't have here. UK terms i'm not familiar with: a joint of meat, passata, rasher, gammon, treacle, premade shortcrust pastry, garlic granules, double cream.
near as i can figure from googling:
-joint of meat - i *think* this just means any 'cut' of meat with the bone or bone joint in it.
-passata - plain and uncooked tomato purée that’s been skinned, deseeded, and then sieved and packed into jars. suggested US substitutes are canned tomatoes (puree them), tomato paste (watered down and thickened with flour), or jarred pasta sauce (adjust recipe to account for the already flavored sweetened sauce).
-rasher seems to be about the equivalent of a single slice of bacon
-gammon is uncooked ham hock, ham is cooked. i think.
-treacle - substitute molasses 1:1
-premade shortcrust pastry - substitute premade pie crust pastry
-garlic granules are dehydrated, ground up garlic. no direct equivalent here. substitute half as much garlic powder as granules, or sub 1 clove of fresh garlic per 1/4 or 1/8 tsp granules.
-double cream is 48% fat - substitute heavy cream (which is only 40% fat). 1:1

--recipes that looked good
--all the recipes have instructions on how to make ahead, freeze, then cook from frozen. or to cook right now.
-croque monsieur
-beef empanadas
-ham and cheese croquette cakes
-half and half lentil bolognese - use half the beef as normal and add lentils in its place
-minced beef hotpot - beef and veggies topped with sliced potatoes
-breaded halloumi fries - cheese sticks!
-chip shop fish and chips
-beetroot and feta filo pie
-spanish chicken traybake - chicken drumsticks, potatoes, onions, zucchini
-caramel crunch speculoos traybake - crushed up speculoos cookes, butter, condensed milk, topped with melted white chocolate and sprinkled with more speculoos crumbs
-wonky fruit tarts - muffin tin with pastry, jam, and frozen berries.

---has sections on
20 chicken meals in 1 hour
20 minced based meals in 1 hour
10 mushroom meals in 1 hour
10 tinned tuna and salmon meals in 1 hour
10 butternut squash and sweet potato meals in 1 hour
roast chicken 4 ways
baked ham 4 ways
beef brisket 4 ways
-these batch cooking sessions use recipes in this book, but are combined with one grocery shopping list, one prep the ingredients list, steps to cook them all at one time, planning for freezing them all, and steps to cook them after freezing. very organized. takes the intimidation out of batch cooking when its all organized that way.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up. This was a bit of a miss for me and I can’t figure out why. I love cooking in batches so this should have been right up my alley. Sadly, it wasn’t. I think it might have been because the recipes were, as a whole, underwhelming and not very inspiring.

[Ginger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Underwhelming recipes and most of them i would never try.

[Vikki Herrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great easy to follow simple recipes with actual ingredients you can get or would have .