Batch cooking is an easy and effective way to prep your meals ahead of dinnertime, but that doesn’t mean your batch-cooked meals have to be boring. Far from lacking in inspiration, there’s a growing selection of books tailor-made for the batch cooking method, packed with inventive, easy, and budget-conscious recipes and meal plan ideas.
Whether you’re looking for simple dinners to make in a time crunch, one-pot dishes that save on washing up, or tasty bakes to fill up your freezer, these cookbooks promise simple recipes and genius tips that will help you save time, money and waste less.
Looking for more batch cooking inspiration? Discover meal plan ideas for five dinners in 30 minutes from The Batch Lady Rapid Dinners and author Suzanne Mulholland’s tips for freezing and defrosting your meals.
100 prep-ahead meals that will make dinner a breeze.
Grab-and-cook recipes you can keep in the fridge or freezer.
With recipes suitable for the hob, oven, slow cooker and air fryer.
The Batch Lady Rapid Dinners
Using her “shop once, cook once, eat well all week” ethos, Suzanne Mulholland (better known to her many online followers as The Batch Lady) has created a one-stop-shop for quick, easy batch cooking recipes. Her book packs an impressive 100 make-ahead meals alongside freezing, storing and reheating guides, as well as an array of weekly meal plans that will help you prep five dinners in just 30 minutes.
Creative, efficient, and cost-effective recipes that hero simple fresh ingredients.
Clever ideas for meal planning and transforming leftovers into delicious meals.
Stretch the weekly shop further with batch-cooked dinners and freezer-friendly bakes.
Cook Once, Eat Twice
From fakeaway treats to everyday staples, Nadiya Hussain’s Cook Once, Eat Twice is packed with approachable recipes designed with batch cooking in mind. Expect family-friendly recipes with creative twists like Scissor Cut Pesto Pasta, Meatball Parathas, and Sloppy Joes, as well as clever ways to make the most of your leftovers.
The Batch Lady Grab and Cook
Suzanne Mulholland’s “Grab and Cook” iteration of her Batch Lady cookbooks focuses on speedy recipes you can store and reheat throughout the week. Each of Suzanne’s 100 recipes takes no longer than 15 minutes to prepare, with meals like Chicken Shawarma Traybake and Creamy Sausage and Cannellini Bean One-Pot ready for the week in a jiffy.
The Full Freezer Method
While not strictly a cookbook, Kate Hall’s essential guide to overhauling one of the kitchen’s most unglamorous storage areas – the freezer – is a handy companion for any to meal-prepping home cook. The helpful tips, illustrations and Kate’s famed five-step guide all aim to help you transform your freezer from a place fit for only relegated miscellaneous leftovers to an essential part of your cooking process.
70 batch baking recipes to make it easier to enjoy your favourite treats
From cookies and pastries, to doughs and frostings
Make ahead now for easy baking later
Batch Baking
Batch cooking isn’t just for dinnertime. With baking expert Cynthia Barcomi’s cookbook, a kitchen full of freezable cake batter, dry mixes and doughs waiting to be customised into delightful bakes can easily be yours. Learn how to be mere minutes away from freshly baked Peanut Butter Miso Cookies, Spiced Fruit and Nut Scones, and plenty of other recipes with Cynthia’s inventive prep-ahead tips.
Over 100 simple one-dish recipes.
Make your life easier without any compromise on flavour.
Chapters include chicken, pasta, batch cooking and more.
One: Simple One-Pan Wonders
Jamie Oliver’s transformational cookbooks have had us cooking meals in 15 minutes, with five ingredients, and now, in just one pan. One is full of one-pot recipes that are as vibrant as they are accessible, each with no more than eight ingredients. What’s more, the batch cooking chapter includes large-scale recipes to cook up over the weekend, like Jamie’s Sweet Potato Chilli, as well as ways to turn them into different meals.
Real Healthy
Thinking about incorporating more whole, unprocessed foods into your meals? This cookbook from Melissa Hemsley promises to inspire a healthier way of enjoying food with veg-forward recipes for everyday cooking. You’ll find an entire chapter dedicated to batch cooking, including Store Cupboard Tomato Butter Beans with Feta and Dill and One for Now, One for Later Banana Bread.
