Joe Swash is often hailed as the cook in his family with Stacey Solomon, and now he’s helping others craft the skill.
Along with his co-host and chef, Suzanne Mulholland, who specialises in batch cooking, Joe, 42, showed families how to save money and time.
The new Channel 4 show, Batch from Scratch: Cooking for Less, partners with Lidl to help families through the cost of living crisis with simple batch cooking recipes.
Tonight’s show was a hit as they shared two different dinners that can be made at the same time in less than 30 minutes.
Joe, who is husband to Loose Women panellist Stacey Solomon has five kids himself, so knows just how hectic getting dinner done can be.
The Powell family, who appeared on the show, spent over £256 a week on food – almost double the national average for their family of five.
And that’s not all, their indecisiveness wasn’t just costing them money but also time as they spent almost a day a week shopping and prepping food.
Wanting to change their ways, Joe and Suzanne stepped in to help sharing two delicious weekday dinner recipes.
Suzanne started by making a meat sauce using frozen chopped onions, garlic, dried oregano, 750 grams of minced beef, three grated carrots and two tins of chopped tomato.
To save time, buy pre-chopped frozen onion and don’t bother peeling your carrots before grating them to thicken your sauce.
Once it’s cooked, you can split the sauce in two to make two different recipes – the first being lasagne.
Savvy Suzanne recommends a time-saving recipe for the white sauce using creme fraiche, half a cup of milk and grated mozzarella.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”Stacey Solomon leaves fans in hysterics with Joe Swash’s X-rated roast potato for a ‘happy wife’ ” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6367029050112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]Once mixed into a smooth sauce you can layer it with the meet and lasagne sheets.
You can freeze it as soon as it is cooled down and it can be reheated from frozen to serve five people.
[authenticated-scripts src=”%3Cscript%20class%3D%22palin-poll%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesun.co.uk%2Fpollingwidgets%2Fv3%2Fwidget.js%3Fquestion_id%3D107014%26game%3Dpolling%22%3E%3C%2Fscript%3E” type=”embedded” width=”100″ /]With the other half of the meat mixture, you can add two tins of drained cook lentils to help bulk it out.
Lentils have lots of protein, are a similar texture to mince meat and are super cheap to add to meals and make them more filling.
You can then place it in an ovenproof dish and add ready made mash on top.
Suzanne says this can be a bit more expensive but is much quicker and will stop your pie from going soggy as fresh mash can produce lots of water.
The entire meal prep should take you just 25 minutes to complete and will save you a tonne of stress during the week.
The new show is available to watch on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday evenings.