How to save money in the kitchen

1. Don’t throw out overripe fruit; there are plenty of things you can bake that call for overripe fruit.
2. Take your lunch to work instead of buying it on-site.  This is one of the easiest ways to save money if you’re already making lunches for your kids to take to school.
3. Try hiring someone to cook your meals if you eat out often because you’re strapped for time. Erica at Erica.biz did this and got restaurant quality meals delivered to her house for less than the cost of going out.
4. Next time you cook, double the recipe and freeze half of it for a future meal.  Not only will this allow you to buy ingredients in bulk, saving money, but you’ll also have a meal on hand that’s nearly ready-to-eat, which will greatly reduce the likelihood that you’ll eat out just to save time.
5. Only wash full loads of dishes. This is one of the easiest ways to save money and energy.
6. Don’t open your oven while cooking. A lot of heat is lost.  Instead, use your oven light.  You’ll prevent a lot of heat from escaping, you won’t need to reheat the oven, and you will save money.
7. Buy spices (and/or Sriracha sauce).  Spices will allow you to modify your leftovers enough that you’ll actually eat them, meaning far less food will go to waste.
8. Eat eggs for breakfast. This is one of the simplest ways to save money. There’s research to suggest that eating eggs for breakfast significantly reduces hunger cravings throughout the day, which means you’ll spend less on food.
9. Don’t eat out as much as you usually do. Cook at home instead.
10. Use SuperCook.com. Don’t let the items in your fridge go to waste.  Visit SuperCook.com, which is a reverse cookbook; you enter the ingredients you have and it tells you what meals you can make.
11. Don’t buy a kitchen timer (or sell yours if you already have one). Save money by using an online kitchen timer instead.
12. Most microwaves are far more energy efficient than stoves. Can you use your microwave for tasks that you currently carry out on your stove top?  Boiling water, perhaps?
13. Never buy a cookbook. There are hundreds of thousands of recipes available for free online.  Just visit a site like AllRecipes.com.
14. Make cheaper microwave popcorn with these simple instructions from the New York Times.