10 ideas for dinner
We’ve raided our fridges and spoken to expert chefs to come up with ten totally delicious, super easy dinner recipes. All of our dinner ideas have an environmental twist, so get your apron on and help your purse and the planet at the same time!
If you’re missing ingredients for these quick meals, either leave the ingredients out or get creative and make a substitute. Our top ten top ten hard to find ingredient swaps might help!
This delicious veggie lasagne is not only a great way of using up whatever veg is left over in the fridge, but also using milk which is currently one of the most wasted foods in the UK.
Leftover lasagne
Glamorgan sausages
This leftover chicken pie by Masterchef winner Natalie Coleman is a great way of using leftovers after a roast chicken dinner. Pair with seasonal veg to make a delicious meal.
Leftover chicken pie
These frittatas by natural-chef Nena Foster are made from the very versatile pulse, the chickpea. Pair them up with a seasonal salad to make a quick dinner. Chickpea flour is essentially dried, ground chickpeas—fancy that? Chickpea flour can be used to make pancakes or flatbreads as well as these little eggless frittatas.
Eggless mushroom and greens frittata
This is an easy meal. Basil and other herb stalks often end up being wasted after we’ve used the leaves. There is lots of flavour in the stalks, so it would be a waste of flavour not to use them. Pair this passata with pasta or on pizzas.
Tomato and basil stalk passata pasta
Glamorgan sausage is a traditional Welsh vegetarian sausage for which the main ingredients are cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs. This is a great use for leftover bread. Pair with a seasonal salad to make a delicious meal.
Bowl food (perfectly layered and nourishing
A big bowl of colourful, nourishing food is good for the body and the mind. Eco-chef Tom Hunt shows us it can be good for the planet too. Tom explains how to prepare ingredients very simply, use his guide to help you invent combinations using what you have available.
Kedgeree combines the dual traditional British Friday night foods of fish and curry, and is so full of flavour that it works without the fish too. It is traditionally a breakfast dish, but is also great for lunch or dinner. What’s more, it’s a perfect home for leftover rice, and odds and ends of herbs and greens. What’s not to like?
Kedge or vedge
We subscribe to the less and better approach to meat, with a largely plant based diet helping us to reduce our planet warming emissions, and the occasional bit of meat as a treat. This mouth-watering Irish stew from in-house chef Mark Breen is given the full Hubbub treatment, with plant based sausages and fluffy spelt dumplings.
Veggie Irish stew
Hake branade and poached eggs
This recipe provided by head chef Mike Brown from Hood restaurant in Streatham is popular in France, Spain and across the Mediterranean. A great way to use up leftover milk, potato, bread and cooked fish or fish trimmings, which are some of the most wasted foods in the UK. A wonderful, creamy dish with a deep taste of the sea.
Moussaka with charred aubergine and ricotta
This easy moussaka with charred aubergine, live yoghurt and ricotta by food activist and eco-chef Tom Hunt is full of flavour and sustenance. Tom shows us how to put fresh, flavoursome produce centre stage in recipes that make use of every ounce of an ingredient.
Food Savvy tip:
If cooking every night isn’t your thang, then get to grips with cooking ahead of time.
Hungry for more?
Find out what food is in season. Eating local fruit and veg at the right time of the year has loads of benefits. Nutrients and flavours are fully developed, the food is likely to have travelled fewer miles and it will probably save you a few £££s.