When you’re juggling a heap of essays, making friends with new house mates and learning your way around campus, cooking can often end up bottom of the pile. Diet can affect your academic performance, improve your mood and give you more energy to face those long lectures. With some simple direction you can easily get prepared, organised and able to make nutritious but fast meals. Once you have built up confidence in your abilities, cooking for others – be it peers or parents – can become a satisfying activity.

Essential Kit

• Frying Pan – A great tool for making classic quick meals like stir fry or omelette.
• Saucepan With a Lid – Stop your food from sticking to the pan by keeping all the moisture in.
• Large Mixing Spoon – When cooking large batches of food, your implements need to be larger too.
• Sieve – Most of your daily carbs will need draining, be it potatoes, pasta, noodles or rice.
• Timer – Whether it’s an alarm on your phone or an egg timer, you have to remember when to turn off the heat or all your hard work will be sliding straight into the bin.

Budgeting

Decide how much you can afford to spend on your weekly food shop, and stick to it. This may be slightly trial-and-error at first, but don’t be tempted to pick up daily extras as this makes it harder to keep track of your spending.

• Shop around. One luxury of being a student is that you have time to be selective in where you shop, and although this may not mean splashing out it does mean you can get to know where your staple items are cheapest.
• Buy in bulk – if your store cupboard (or under the bed!) can take it, then a 1kg bag of pasta is the cheapest way to buy it and will last you all term.
• Remember that food is an important necessity, especially when you are tempted to forgo breakfast for a week in order to afford a night out at the weekend.

Cooking Basics

When boiling potatoes, put them in a saucepan of cold water and gradually bring them up to the boil. Straight in boiling water would leave them unevenly cooked. Get rice right every time by measuring it out in a jug, and then using double that amount of water to cover it in a saucepan. Cook with the lid on for the time given on the packet and you can’t go wrong.

• Check your chicken is cooked by inserting a skewer or fork into the thickest part and making sure the juices run clear. If still unsure cut it open and check the flesh is not still pink.

• Pasta is best cooked with a pinch of salt in the water. After you have added the pasta to the boiling water, make sure you give it a good stir to avoid any sticking to your saucepan.