As the cost of living continues to skyrocket in the UK, a free recipe book has been created to help households slash their cooking times and energy bills.
Households across the UK have been investing in air fryers to reduce their energy bills but simply tweaking ingredients and ways of preparing meals, and clever cooking can reduce costs by up to 80% compared to traditional recipes.
Research shows it costs £208.93 a year to cook for an hour a day, so the free book could save individual families £49.32 a year – and the nation tens of millions. With high fuel bills and the cost-of-living crisis a concern to most, every saving helps.
A roast chicken dinner traybake can be out of the oven and on the table in just 40 minutes – simply by swapping a whole bird for chicken thighs – reducing cooking time by an hour and four minutes and using 62% less energy.
Or a Moroccan sausage and chickpea tagine cooked on the hob instead of traditionally in the oven could be ready a whole hour and 39 minutes sooner and cost 94p less.
Baking orzo instead of constantly stirring a pot of risotto is another tip – with the bonus of whacking the ingredients for the whole dish – along with a side of garlic bread – into the oven and job done.
According to the latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) data there are 19.4m families in the UK and if each family cooked for just an hour per day under current energy tariffs, it equates to a £4.1bn collective annual energy spend.
The cookbook – produced by cooking appliance brand Belling – also offers tips on how to bulk out dishes with beans and pulses and uses for leftover vegetables rescued from the bottom of the fridge.
Amy Hutchinson, spokesperson for Belling said: “Energy prices remain high, and many households are feeling the pinch, but every family deserves good quality home-cooked food on the table.
“Each dish is a time and money-saver which, over the course of a year, puts a nice sum back in the pockets of families across the country – and if every family got involved, collectively it’s a serious saving.
“Not every household has access to slow cookers and air fryers, which can contribute to energy saving, but most households have an oven.”
The Belling Energy-Saving Recipe Book is free to download from www.belling.co.uk
