5 Ways to Cut Down Your Grocery Bill

Every aisle in your supermarket is designed to get money out of your wallet and into their tills. The layout, the music, the packaging, the way things sit on the shelves, all of it. After 20 years as a professional chef costing every ingredient down to the last cent, I can tell you the good news: once you know how they price things, you can absolutely beat them. Here are the five rules I use on every single shop.

What's Included

Five practical rules for spending less at the supermarket without eating worse, each one paired with recipes from the site that put it into practice. Nothing here asks you to give up flavour, and nothing asks you to spend your Saturday meal planning. Let's get into it!

Rule One: Learn When the Yellow Stickers Go On

Supermarkets hate waste almost as much as I do, so they mark down anything heading for its best before date. Most shoppers only ever spot these by accident. Go at the same time every week, morning in my shop, maybe evening in yours, and you will learn exactly when they appear. Buy it, freeze it, cook it later. And stay flexible: if you planned chicken but the lamb is on sticker, cook lamb.

Pork Rissoles with Leek and Mushroom Sauce - Rissoles are the perfect sticker recipe because they work with whatever mince you find.

Asian Rissoles with Rice and Slaw - The same trick with a completely different flavour, so you never get bored of it.

Pea and Ham Soup with Flatbread - Reduced ham hock or gammon turns into a huge pot of soup for almost nothing.

Rule Two: Buy What Is Actually in Season

Out of season produce carries a premium for transport, cold storage and often a flight from the other side of the world. Strawberries in the middle of winter are watery and expensive. Seasonal veg is cheaper, it is usually on special, and it tastes its best. Recipes are not meant to be rigid, so swap the asparagus for broccoli if that is what is good this week.

Springtime Risoni with Peas and Asparagus - Built entirely around what is cheap and good in spring.

Classic Minestrone Soup with Winter Vegetables - The winter version of the same thinking, and endlessly adaptable.

Leek and Ricotta Tart with Asparagus - Leeks are one of the best value vegetables in the shop and almost nobody buys them.

Rule Three: Ask for the Amount You Actually Need

This is the one I guarantee 90% of you have never done. You are not obliged to buy the pre-packed size. I recently wanted one chicken breast, not the 600g tray, so I asked at the butchery counter. He wrapped me a single breast, then portioned the rest up for other shoppers. You pay six or seven dollars instead of sixteen, and nothing rots in the fridge. Just ask. They nearly always will.

15-Minute Spicy Prawn Noodles with Cabbage - A small amount of expensive protein stretched across a proper dinner.

Fridge Raid Salad with Herb Stalk Dressing - For the week you buy a little too much anyway, which happens to all of us.

Rule Four: Go Own Brand on Pantry Staples

People assume budget ranges mean an inferior product. Read the back of the cans. The own brand tomatoes and the big name tomatoes frequently list the same ingredients in the same quantities, at less than half the price. Flour, sugar, oats, tinned pulses, tinned tomatoes: these are where own brand wins every time. Save ten or fifteen dollars a shop and that is a couple of hundred back in your pocket by the end of the year.

Tarka Dal - Almost entirely cupboard ingredients, and better than most things costing five times as much.

Deep and Rich Tomato Sauce - The recipe that proves cheap tinned tomatoes are all you ever needed.

5 Easy Asian Sauces from Pantry Staples - Build a small pantry once and weeknight dinners get dramatically cheaper.

Rule Five: Read the Shelf Label, Not the Deal

I mean the little price ticket on the shelf, not the label on the packet. A loyalty card deal printed in red does not always beat the unit price of the brand sitting next to it. Cross reference the price per 100g or per kilo before you drop it in the trolley. Sometimes the deal is a genuine deal. Quite often it is not.

3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD: Greek Soup, Cabbage Rolls and Mexican Chicken - Three dinners from one shop, costed properly so you can see where the money goes.

3 Budget Dinners Under $50 NZD: Prawns, Dahl and Pizza - Another full week built on crossover ingredients and unit price thinking.

Why This Collection Works

Costing a menu to the cent was my job for 20 years, and the habits transfer straight to a household shop. None of these five rules asks you to eat worse food. They just stop you paying the markup that supermarkets rely on most of us never noticing: the convenience of a pre-packed tray, the premium on imported produce, the brand name on a tin of tomatoes that came off the same farm as the cheap one. Put all five together and a weekly shop that cost you $120 starts landing nearer $90, with better flavour, because seasonal food simply tastes better. That is the whole idea behind the budget dinners on this site.

Related Pages

Don't Throw That Away: Zero Waste Recipes for Every Kitchen Scrap - The companion collection, because money saved at the till is wasted if it ends up in the bin.

Air Fryer Recipes: Everything I Have Tested and What Actually Works - Cheaper to run than the oven, and honest about what it is not good at.

The Food Waste Banquet - A full feast built entirely from the bits most people throw out.

Start with one rule rather than all five. For most people the yellow sticker is the quickest win, because it needs nothing more than turning up at a slightly different time. Once that becomes a habit, add the shelf label check, then the butchery counter. Within a month you will be doing all five without thinking about it, and your trolley will cost noticeably less than it does today.

Enjoy!

Del x

Five practical rules from a professional chef for spending less at the supermarket, with the recipes that put each one to work.