Spending too much on meal delivery? 5 hacks to make takeaway meals at home

Splurging on takeaway, fast food and dinnertime home deliveries can take a big bite out of your budget. If you’re spending a lot of money ordering your dinner through apps and you need to cut your cost of living, swapping one or two takeout meals for some homemade alternatives can make a real difference.

‘But’, you say ‘it won’t taste as good’. If you think about what it is that makes your favourite takeaway meals, it’s probably the heady combination of indulgent sauces, frying and sheer convenience. The good news is, with a little planning, you can recreate some of your favourite flavours in your own kitchen at a fraction of the cost. These five top tips can get you started.

One of the top money-saving tips for eating at home is to plan your meals in advance. Take some time to decide which dishes you want to recreate and get the ingredients together. Meal planning lets you save money by buying only what you need, which reduces food waste. It also helps you avoid multiple trips to the supermarket, which can lead to frittering away more dollars on impulse purchases.

Once you’ve planned your meals for the week, you can save time on busy weekday evenings by preparing some veg ahead of time and storing it in containers with water in the fridge. If you can make a habit of putting aside half an hour at the weekend to prep some veggies for the week ahead, you’ll be amazed at how much simpler evening meals can be. This way, when you’re tired at the end of the work day and the temptation to tap the app is strong, most of the work has already been done. To make your meal prep even more efficient, use time-saving appliances like a food processor to quickly chop veggies.

Many takeaway dishes have signature sauces or seasonings that give them their distinct flavours - just ask Colonel Sanders! Using some online tutorials to learn how to make a handful of these essential components, from tangy teriyaki sauce to aromatic curry pastes, can truly elevate your home cooking. A multi-function blender or stick blender will let you effortlessly combine the ingredients for sauces, rubs and seasonings, and recreate the taste of your favorite dishes. You can often make big batches of these and freeze portions in airtight bags for future use.

With the abundance of great Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian restaurants in Australia, it’s no surprise that lots of Australians go for stir-fries, noodle and rice dishes when ordering takeaway.

The beauty of recreating Asian stir fries at home is the speed and simplicity of cooking - and if you’ve prepped your veggies in advance, you can whip up a mid-week stir fry even faster. If you’re learning how to make a stir fry to rival your favourite takeaway, it’s worthwhile investing in a good electric wok. The key to keeping the vibrant colours, textures and flavours that mark a good stir fry, is having a high but even heat that cooks all the ingredients at the same time, which is what a wok does. This prevents some ingredients from becoming overcooked while others remain undercooked, which can happen if you use a frying pan.