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Thrifty Kitchen: Over 120 Delicious, Money-Saving Recipes and Home Hacks
Thrifty Kitchen is Jack Monroe’s bumper collection of over 120 brand-new, delicious, low-cost recipes, plus household tricks guaranteed to save you money.
Number-one bestselling author and campaigner, Jack is one of the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. Through the gorgeous recipes and straightforward advice in Thrifty Kitchen, she proves that you don’t need to sacrifice flavour or settle for lacklustre meals when you’re spending less.
Featuring everything from warming curries and a hearty pie to tasty sauces and indulgent puds, this must-have cookbook shows how easy it can be to turn basic ingredients into nourishing, mouth-watering meals that you and your wallet will love.
Number-one bestselling author and campaigner, Jack is one of the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. Through the gorgeous recipes and straightforward advice in Thrifty Kitchen, she proves that you don’t need to sacrifice flavour or settle for lacklustre meals when you’re spending less.
Featuring everything from warming curries and a hearty pie to tasty sauces and indulgent puds, this must-have cookbook shows how easy it can be to turn basic ingredients into nourishing, mouth-watering meals that you and your wallet will love.
- GenresNonfiction
272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 5, 2023
About the author
Jack Monroe
23 books74 followersJack Monroe is a British food writer, journalist and activist known for campaigning on poverty issues, particularly hunger relief. Monroe has published a blog and several books of "austerity recipes", and has campaigned alongside various British charity organisations. Monroe initially rose to prominence for writing a blog titled A Girl Called Jack (now renamed Cooking on a Bootstrap), and has since written for publications such as The Echo, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. Monroe identifies as non-binary.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 12, 2023
The positive reviews are fake. Ridiculous ideas in this book include “money saving tips” such as washing the sauce off of canned pasta, thereby wasting paid for calories, instead of buying cheaper dried pasta, and ruining a knife to open cans, instead of buying a $1.00 can opener.
June 11, 2023
Thrifty Kitchen by Jack Monroe
I bought this whilst in a daze at the supermarket after runclub. It's never a good idea to go food shopping at night, after a run, but I do this far too often and end up with many random food and non food items! I've followed Jack for a couple of years on Twitter and have found her tweets and insights really interesting, giving an insight into just how hard it can be to feed yourself and your family on very little money. I recognise that I'm in a hugely privileged position to not have had to go through such hardship; even as a student I was fortunate that my student loan, part time jobs and help from my family more than covered what I needed and I was fortunately taught how to cook and budget pretty effectively. It was the budget aspect and the food waste aspects of Jack's book that compelled me to buy it. (In particular the curious recipe for Banana ketchup including skin which I've yet to make!)
Synopsis from goodreads:
Thrifty Kitchen is Jack Monroe’s bumper collection of over 120 brand-new, delicious, low-cost recipes, plus household tricks guaranteed to save you money.
Number-one bestselling author and campaigner, Jack is one of the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. Through the gorgeous recipes and straightforward advice in Thrifty Kitchen, she proves that you don’t need to sacrifice flavour or settle for lacklustre meals when you’re spending less.
Featuring everything from warming curries and a hearty pie to tasty sauces and indulgent puds, this must-have cookbook shows how easy it can be to turn basic ingredients into nourishing, mouth-watering meals that you and your wallet will love.
I'm not sure I've ever read a cook book from cover to cover in this way and I actually really enjoyed the process. It made me dig out and use long forgotten tins and packets that had been sat in my cupboards longer than they should have done as I was reading through. (For me I have a constant battle against my anxiety's desire to prepare me for an apocalypse with tins of pulses, fruit, vegetables and rice - I'm still not sure how effective this would be in reality, but none the less I'm all set for making my own hummus in the event of a world disaster)
I've so far made 3 recipes from the book - Chickpea, Chard and Lemon Pasta, Crab and Coconut Bisque (although I used Salmon paste instead as I couldn't find crab paste) and Chicken and Cannellini Soup. And they were all simple and had a greater depth of flavour to them than I'd have imagined. On a usual day to day basis I'm in a luxurious position of not really needing to think much at all about my cooking as I get recipe boxes delivered from either Mindful Chef or Gousto and so it's been useful to have recipes from the book to spark up new ideas. I especially like how Jack suggests easy substitutes for items as it encouraged me to embrace this approach to cooking that has long been ingrained on me by my family. (My dad has perhaps taken it too far in the past when he added banana to a vegetable soup, although swapping hot chocolate powder for gravy powder in a stew was actually delicious!)
It's hard for me not to read this book as an unbiased reader as I do agree with everything Jack stands for, but trying to push that aside I did find it a really useful and easy to follow set of recipes and lifehacks. Her quarterhack idea would be brilliant if I could be more organised as I am often guilty of buying things I already have squashed at the back of the cupboard. I bought this book hoping for ideas to save a bit of money on food as the prices are so inflated (£10 for a 750ml bottle of olive oil in Asda last week! At least I found another in Aldi for £5.79 so it's still worth shopping around!) The negative reviews on goodreads I suspect are more from people who dislike her and what she stands for than the recipe book itself, yes she's at times passionate in her attempts to eliminate poverty, but it's pretty bloody important, especially when so many children are going to school hungry. I am giving this book 5 stars because I've enjoyed all the recipes I've cooked from it, look forward to cooking more and enjoyed reading it and learned different ideas and techniques that will save me money and reduce food waste in the future and also because Jack is actually trying to do something positive to help people who are struggling.
I bought this whilst in a daze at the supermarket after runclub. It's never a good idea to go food shopping at night, after a run, but I do this far too often and end up with many random food and non food items! I've followed Jack for a couple of years on Twitter and have found her tweets and insights really interesting, giving an insight into just how hard it can be to feed yourself and your family on very little money. I recognise that I'm in a hugely privileged position to not have had to go through such hardship; even as a student I was fortunate that my student loan, part time jobs and help from my family more than covered what I needed and I was fortunately taught how to cook and budget pretty effectively. It was the budget aspect and the food waste aspects of Jack's book that compelled me to buy it. (In particular the curious recipe for Banana ketchup including skin which I've yet to make!)
Synopsis from goodreads:
Thrifty Kitchen is Jack Monroe’s bumper collection of over 120 brand-new, delicious, low-cost recipes, plus household tricks guaranteed to save you money.
Number-one bestselling author and campaigner, Jack is one of the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. Through the gorgeous recipes and straightforward advice in Thrifty Kitchen, she proves that you don’t need to sacrifice flavour or settle for lacklustre meals when you’re spending less.
Featuring everything from warming curries and a hearty pie to tasty sauces and indulgent puds, this must-have cookbook shows how easy it can be to turn basic ingredients into nourishing, mouth-watering meals that you and your wallet will love.
I'm not sure I've ever read a cook book from cover to cover in this way and I actually really enjoyed the process. It made me dig out and use long forgotten tins and packets that had been sat in my cupboards longer than they should have done as I was reading through. (For me I have a constant battle against my anxiety's desire to prepare me for an apocalypse with tins of pulses, fruit, vegetables and rice - I'm still not sure how effective this would be in reality, but none the less I'm all set for making my own hummus in the event of a world disaster)
I've so far made 3 recipes from the book - Chickpea, Chard and Lemon Pasta, Crab and Coconut Bisque (although I used Salmon paste instead as I couldn't find crab paste) and Chicken and Cannellini Soup. And they were all simple and had a greater depth of flavour to them than I'd have imagined. On a usual day to day basis I'm in a luxurious position of not really needing to think much at all about my cooking as I get recipe boxes delivered from either Mindful Chef or Gousto and so it's been useful to have recipes from the book to spark up new ideas. I especially like how Jack suggests easy substitutes for items as it encouraged me to embrace this approach to cooking that has long been ingrained on me by my family. (My dad has perhaps taken it too far in the past when he added banana to a vegetable soup, although swapping hot chocolate powder for gravy powder in a stew was actually delicious!)
It's hard for me not to read this book as an unbiased reader as I do agree with everything Jack stands for, but trying to push that aside I did find it a really useful and easy to follow set of recipes and lifehacks. Her quarterhack idea would be brilliant if I could be more organised as I am often guilty of buying things I already have squashed at the back of the cupboard. I bought this book hoping for ideas to save a bit of money on food as the prices are so inflated (£10 for a 750ml bottle of olive oil in Asda last week! At least I found another in Aldi for £5.79 so it's still worth shopping around!) The negative reviews on goodreads I suspect are more from people who dislike her and what she stands for than the recipe book itself, yes she's at times passionate in her attempts to eliminate poverty, but it's pretty bloody important, especially when so many children are going to school hungry. I am giving this book 5 stars because I've enjoyed all the recipes I've cooked from it, look forward to cooking more and enjoyed reading it and learned different ideas and techniques that will save me money and reduce food waste in the future and also because Jack is actually trying to do something positive to help people who are struggling.
January 5, 2023
Terrible
January 10, 2023
Wasted my money unfortunately and would return if I could. Some unpleasant sounding recipes, many of which do not sound like they work (if you're a competent cook, it jumps out at you just by reading the ingredients/method). Silly section containing home 'hacks' which sound ridiculous at best, dangerous at worst (I now know things have had to be changed in this book due to that). Awful.
September 9, 2023
Some great ideas in a lovely chatty style. I will be trying out these recipes. Jack has done so much for highlighting food poverty and making more of us aware of what we can do to reduce waste and eat well! Thanks Jack!
January 14, 2023
This could honestly be the most pointless cook book I've ever read.
I bought it from Amazon UK for half the RRP
I flicked through the supposed 'Thrifty' recipes.
What really struck me was how opposite of 'Thrifty' most of them were and how pointless others were.
For example. A recipe to make simple crumpets..
Instructions were to poke with chopsticks to make the holes. If you're poking crumpet batter with chop sticks to form holes, you've made your batter wrong.
Another 'Secret Scrambled Egg' takes a whole page in the book and is basically scrambled egg cooked in oil instead of butter with mayo added to the mix. A whole page for that?
Then there's a recipe for 'Garlic Bread Ribollita'
Which calls for 14 ingredients... One of which is 150g of Garlic bread...
How many people in poverty with low funds are going to buy 14 ingredients, one of which is garlic bread and risk those ingredients on an untested recipe? I'd wager, none. They'd be better off buying the garlic bread, eating the garlic bread with a tin of vegetable soup. Cheaper, more nutritious, less cook time etc.
Cook time is also a factor in these 'recipes'
For example: 'Chickpea, Chard and Lemon Pasta'
14 ingredients in this, but that's besides the point, the instructions have you simmering this dish for almost an hour. The cost of the ingredients pales in comparison to the costs these days of simmering for almost an hour.
How, precisely, is that 'Thrifty'?
Someone living in poverty, with a £5 to last them, a couple quid on the electric meter. They would be crazy to try any recipe from this book.
Not only would the £5 not cover the ingredients, the £2 on the electric would deplete faster than my patience reading this twaddle.
Now.. the home hacks.
Lots have been written about the home hacks.
From using frozen glass to roll pastry, don't do that.. if it shatters, your hands are victim.
Up to using a small knife and a mallet to open a tin instead of buying a 60p tin opener or borrowing a tin opener or making sure your cans have ring pulls etc.
Theres little I can add to that conversation.
So bad was it, The publisher released a statement in regard to health and safety and Trussel Trust are refusing to hand the book out until concerns are addressed in a future reprint.
How these got past the editor I have no idea.
(Also and finally. It's advertised as 120 brand new recipes. Theres 90 recipes for dishes. Over 30 recipes for stocks and gravies etc. A good few are not new and can be found in other Monroe books, her blog etc or just done better in free online recipes)
I bought it from Amazon UK for half the RRP
I flicked through the supposed 'Thrifty' recipes.
What really struck me was how opposite of 'Thrifty' most of them were and how pointless others were.
For example. A recipe to make simple crumpets..
Instructions were to poke with chopsticks to make the holes. If you're poking crumpet batter with chop sticks to form holes, you've made your batter wrong.
Another 'Secret Scrambled Egg' takes a whole page in the book and is basically scrambled egg cooked in oil instead of butter with mayo added to the mix. A whole page for that?
Then there's a recipe for 'Garlic Bread Ribollita'
Which calls for 14 ingredients... One of which is 150g of Garlic bread...
How many people in poverty with low funds are going to buy 14 ingredients, one of which is garlic bread and risk those ingredients on an untested recipe? I'd wager, none. They'd be better off buying the garlic bread, eating the garlic bread with a tin of vegetable soup. Cheaper, more nutritious, less cook time etc.
Cook time is also a factor in these 'recipes'
For example: 'Chickpea, Chard and Lemon Pasta'
14 ingredients in this, but that's besides the point, the instructions have you simmering this dish for almost an hour. The cost of the ingredients pales in comparison to the costs these days of simmering for almost an hour.
How, precisely, is that 'Thrifty'?
Someone living in poverty, with a £5 to last them, a couple quid on the electric meter. They would be crazy to try any recipe from this book.
Not only would the £5 not cover the ingredients, the £2 on the electric would deplete faster than my patience reading this twaddle.
Now.. the home hacks.
Lots have been written about the home hacks.
From using frozen glass to roll pastry, don't do that.. if it shatters, your hands are victim.
Up to using a small knife and a mallet to open a tin instead of buying a 60p tin opener or borrowing a tin opener or making sure your cans have ring pulls etc.
Theres little I can add to that conversation.
So bad was it, The publisher released a statement in regard to health and safety and Trussel Trust are refusing to hand the book out until concerns are addressed in a future reprint.
How these got past the editor I have no idea.
(Also and finally. It's advertised as 120 brand new recipes. Theres 90 recipes for dishes. Over 30 recipes for stocks and gravies etc. A good few are not new and can be found in other Monroe books, her blog etc or just done better in free online recipes)
January 8, 2023
I am always intrigued to see what delicious surprises Jack delivers in their cookbooks as some of my favourite recipes have been discovered via them.
It's neatly sectioned in to chapters such as breads, pasta, fish, puddings etc and each one has several recipes that offer comfort food, balanced meals and all ingredients that can be sourced on a tight budget. I think some of the ingredients are better swapped out for non-processed ingredients if you can afford to do so, but I love that Jack offers extra tips & help on how to prepare, cook & store the dishes. I always learn something new or some further inspiration from these books and the home hacks section was a great addition that marries the cost-saving meal thriftiness with other ways to save money and reduce waste in the home.
It's neatly sectioned in to chapters such as breads, pasta, fish, puddings etc and each one has several recipes that offer comfort food, balanced meals and all ingredients that can be sourced on a tight budget. I think some of the ingredients are better swapped out for non-processed ingredients if you can afford to do so, but I love that Jack offers extra tips & help on how to prepare, cook & store the dishes. I always learn something new or some further inspiration from these books and the home hacks section was a great addition that marries the cost-saving meal thriftiness with other ways to save money and reduce waste in the home.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews