Cooking for one is a strange sort of maths. Recipes are written for four, supermarket packs are built for families, and by Wednesday you are either eating the same chilli for the third night running or binning half a cabbage. Two popular answers sit at opposite ends of the scale: a weekly fresh meal kit, or one long batch-cooking session. Both work. Neither suits everyone, and the honest answer depends on how you spend money, time and freezer space.
Two Ways to Solve the Same Problem
A fresh meal kit arrives with pre-portioned ingredients and a recipe card for each dinner. You still chop, cook and wash up. What you have outsourced is the planning, the shopping and the measuring — and for a lot of people, that is the part that makes dinner feel like a chore. Plenty of companies now offer boxes sized for one or two people, which is a genuine change from the family-sized boxes of a few years ago.
Batch cooking goes the other way. You pick two or three recipes, buy the ingredients in whatever quantity makes sense, cook them in one session, then portion and chill or freeze. The effort happens up front; the rest of the week is largely reheating and choosing what you fancy.
To compare them fairly, look at the same four things: cost per portion, waste, time, and how you actually feel at seven in the evening on a Tuesday.
Cost: Compare Per Portion, Not Per Box
Meal kits price in convenience. You are paying for someone else to plan and shop, plus the packaging and the delivery. Per portion, they usually cost more than buying the same ingredients yourself — though often less than a takeaway, and sometimes roughly in line with a decent supermarket ready meal. Box size matters: deliveries with more portions tend to bring the price per portion down, so a larger box eaten across the week can work out better than a smaller one ordered twice. Check the minimum order and the delivery charge too, because those quietly change the maths.
Batch cooking is cheaper in theory, but the reality for one person is messier. Bulk packs are better value, yet you might only need a quarter of what is in them. A bunch of herbs costs the same whether you use it all or not. The savings come from small decisions: pick recipes that share ingredients in the same week, and build a cupboard of staples you will genuinely use rather than a shelf of half-empty jars.
Two habits make the comparison honest:
- Keep every receipt for a fortnight and divide your total food spend by the number of dinners you actually ate. That figure is your real cost per portion.
- Count the extras on both sides: delivery fees, the takeaway you order when a kit night falls through, the spices and oils you buy once to start batch cooking.
If a subscription is squeezing your budget, it is worth checking current prices and trial terms carefully before committing, and free, impartial guidance from a service such as Citizens Advice is there if you need it.
Waste: Packaging Versus Leftovers
Meal kits produce very little food waste because the portions are measured to the gram. They do produce packaging: sachets, film, insulated liners, ice packs. Some companies run recycling schemes or take back their insulation, and some councils collect soft plastics, so check both before you sign up rather than after.
Batch cooking flips that equation. You will barely add to your packaging beyond what the shopping already came in, but it is easy to cook more than you will eat in a week. Portioning with intent is the whole skill.
- Cool cooked food within a couple of hours, then freeze in single portions. Flat bags take less space than tubs and thaw far faster.
- Label everything with the name and the date. Mystery containers never get eaten.
- Keep a "use first" shelf in the fridge for anything within a day or two of its date.
- Chop leftover herbs and freeze them in a little oil or water in an ice cube tray.
- Buy loose vegetables where you can. A big bag is only cheaper if you get through it.
Follow standard food safety guidance on cooling, storing and reheating — cool food promptly before chilling or freezing, and reheat until piping hot throughout.
Time: Front-Loaded Versus Spread Out
The time comparison is rarely about total minutes. A kit dinner usually means twenty to forty minutes of hands-on cooking, plus washing up, and nothing else. No shopping trip, no planning, no decisions. Batch cooking takes a longer session, often two to three hours, which then buys you four to six dinners that need only reheating.
Which is better depends on when your energy runs out. If your evenings are short and unpredictable, a kit night removes decisions and lowers the odds of an expensive takeaway. If you have one quiet afternoon a week and dislike shopping, a batch session feels like a favour to your future self.
There is also the washing-up, which nobody mentions. One big cook means one big pile of pans and then almost nothing for days. Kits spread the same dishes across the week. It is a small thing that shapes how the whole week feels.
Where Each One Genuinely Wins
Meal kits suit you if
- You have little or no freezer space.
- You want variety without committing to a whole jar or a whole bag of something.
- You are still learning to cook and like having a card to follow.
- You shop on foot or without a car.
- You would rather someone else decided what is for dinner.
Batch cooking suits you if
- You have freezer space and a decent set of containers.
- You like controlling the seasoning, the salt and the ingredients.
- You do not mind eating the same meal twice in a week.
- Cost per portion matters more than novelty.
- You want a stock of dinners for the days that go sideways.
How to Decide in a Month
Rather than reasoning it out on paper, run a short experiment and let the receipts decide.
- In week one, batch cook on your usual free afternoon. Note what the ingredients cost, how many portions you got, and how long the session took including the washing up.
- In week two, order a box sized for one or two. Note the cost per portion, how much packaging came through the door, and whether you enjoyed the cooking itself.
- Throughout both weeks, write down anything you threw away and any night you abandoned the plan for a takeaway.
- At the end, compare cost per portion, waste and how you felt on the busy nights. That comparison will tell you more than any general rule.
A lot of solo cooks end up somewhere in the middle: one or two kit dinners for the nights when decisions are hard, plus a single batch session a week to keep the freezer stocked. That is not a compromise so much as using each option where it is strongest. Start with the month-long test, keep what earns its place, and drop the rest.
Photo: Nataliya Vaitkevich / Pexels
