New Series | 5 ingredients 5 recipes

A new year means it’s time for a new recipe series. Last year was about seasonal eating, featuring an ingredient of the month that’s in season and a new recipe each week, hopefully providing some inspiration for what you can do with that ingredient. This year’s recipe series is of a similar nature, but with even stronger focus on seasonal ingredients – 5 ingredients, 5 recipes.  

What is 5 Ingredients, 5 Recipes?  

5 ingredients 5 recipes is going to be another series dedicated to seasonal eating, but this time it’s exclusively about seasonal ingredients, not just centred around them as it has been in previous years. This series will have 5 featured seasonal ingredients each month, and those 5 ingredients will be the only fresh produce ingredients in each recipe in this series.  

Each meal will comprise of some/ all of the 5 staple ingredients and pantry/ dry ingredients. The only additional refrigerated items allowed are things like vegan butter/ milk that people are likely to already have and don’t have a short expiry date. Allow me some fresh onions and garlic here and there too though, I think they fall into the staples/ basics category. 

How it’s different 

In previous years, there’s been a recipe a week in each series. This time, there will be a recipe week each month. The second week of each month will feature one post listing the five featured ingredients and the five recipes of the month underneath.   

Why the change? The same reason we’re focusing on 5 ingredients – to prevent food waste! I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of buying several things for one recipe, maybe two, but sometimes struggle to use up any leftover ingredients beyond the meal they were initially purchased for. By stacking the recipes together in one week, there should be a recipe right there next to the one you were initially looking at to give you some inspiration. I know anyone look up recipes using x ingredient(s), but by having all five using the same core ingredients that means any leftovers of any of the ingredients can be used up in the same recipes and you’re not going to fall into the trap of buying y ingredient for the recipe using up leftover x ingredient then needing to buy z ingredient to use up leftover y (and so on).  

It saves money too! 

And, of course, ingredient repetition means less ingredients need to be purchased to begin with. It’s much easier to manage your spending, keeps your grocery shopping to a minimum in terms of number of items and hopefully the whole process takes less time too. 

I know it sounds boring eating the same thing a few days in a row, but this series aims to show you how you can eat the same thing while never eating the same meals and getting bored. So, less ingredients need to be purchased and with them being in season that month too, they should be at peak freshness and affordability as well. Almost all supermarkets have designated shopping sections for in season ingredients, both online and in store, so shopping for these recipes couldn’t be easier.

Until next time, 

Sophie 

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