Meal planningfor beginners

Start with three dinners

Three dinners leave room for the nights you cannot cook, and they waste less food. You also learn how a shopping list works before you add more dinners.

Pick three nights you know you will be home. That is the whole plan for the first week.

Keep the first week small on purpose. With three dinners, a missed night leaves you a free evening, so one skipped dinner costs you very little.

When three dinners feel normal, add a fourth. Then add a fifth when that feels normal too.

Think of the first three dinners as practice. If one of them flops, you have learned something useful about that recipe and about your week.

Start with dinners you already enjoy eating. Planning is easier when you want to eat the food, and a new dish you have never tried is a gamble.

Pick easy dinners that share ingredients

Choose dinners that take 20 to 25 minutes and share a few items.

• Black bean tacos, 20 minutes
• Black bean rice bowl, 20 minutes
• Chicken fajitas, 25 minutes

The first two share black beans, sweetcorn, avocado, onion, garlic and paprika, so one shop covers both. The fajitas also use tortillas and share onion and olive oil with the other two.

Check the tools too. Before you pick a recipe, look at whether it needs a hob, an oven or both, so you know it fits your kitchen.

Common beginner mistakes

These are the mistakes to avoid in your first weeks.

• Planning seven dinners in week one. Three is enough to learn the routine.
• Picking dinners that each need a different fresh item. Every extra item is one more thing that can go off in the fridge.
• Skipping the pantry check and buying olive oil or rice again. Look in the cupboard first, as the grocery list guide shows.
• Trying a new recipe on your busiest night. Cook new dishes on a free evening, and keep the easy ones for the hard nights.
• Forgetting small items, like a lime or a spice mix. Read the ingredient list of each recipe before you write the shop.
• Writing a list with no days. Note the day each item is cooked, so you know what to buy first.

Each mistake has a simple fix. Plan fewer dinners, pick dinners that share items, check the cupboard first and write the day next to each item. Those four habits are enough for the first month.

A first week, step by step

Here is a first week that uses three dinners from this site. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are the cooking nights: black bean tacos, black bean rice bowl and chicken fajitas.

The two black bean dinners need 800 g of black beans in total, which is two 400 g tins. They also share 300 g of sweetcorn, two avocados, two cloves of garlic and three teaspoons of smoked paprika, two in the tacos and one in the bowl.

Add the rest: 6 tortillas for the tacos, 4 for the fajitas, 160 g of rice for the bowl, 300 g of chicken breast, 2 bell peppers, 1 lime, 100 ml of crème fraîche and 1 tbsp of chili spice mix for the fajitas.

You also need three onions, one per dinner, and three tablespoons of olive oil. Buy the shelf items on the first shop.

Cook one dinner on each planned night. If you miss a night, move that dinner to the next free night, and check that its fresh food still looks good before you cook it.

On the shopping day, buy the shelf items and the black beans, sweetcorn and tortillas first. The chicken breast and the peppers are for Friday, so buy them on Thursday if you can. That keeps the fresh food fresher in your fridge.

After the first week

Keep the dinners you liked and drop the ones you did not. Then add a fourth dinner.

Write down what went wrong: a missing item, a dinner that took longer than planned, or food you did not finish. Fix one thing each week.

Share the plan with whoever you cook for, so they know which nights to expect dinner.

When three dinners feel easy, try a full week of five quick dinners with one list.

For the full method behind this, read how to meal plan for the week.

Keep a short note of what you cooked and how it went. Two lines per dinner are enough. After a month you will have a list of dinners you can repeat without thinking.

More guides

• Free meal planning apps: what you get and where they stop
• Best meal planning apps compared
• Mealime alternatives, and what to do with your recipes
• Grocery list for the week, built from a dinner plan
• How to meal plan for the week