How to Meal Plan for Two

Why Cooking for Two Wastes So Much

The same few things go wrong in most two-person kitchens.

• The recipe makes four. You halve it, and now you have half a can of tomatoes, half an onion and half a carton of cream with no plan for any of them. Or you do not halve it, and two portions sit in the fridge until they are thrown out.
• The pack is bigger than the dinner. A recipe wants three scallions and a handful of cilantro. The store sells the whole bunch. Whatever the recipe did not use is gone by Friday unless another dinner needs it.
• Every dinner is its own shopping trip. Five unrelated recipes means five sets of half-used ingredients. Nothing connects Tuesday to Thursday, so nothing gets finished.
• One of you will not eat it. A plan written by one person for both quietly fills up with dinners the other one picks at, and those are the leftovers nobody takes for lunch.
• The week is shorter than it looks. Two adults with jobs and friends rarely eat at home seven nights in a row. Plan seven dinners and two of them usually end up in the trash.

Step 1: Count the Nights You Both Eat at Home

Sit down together for two minutes, or send the week to each other as a message. Go through the days and cross out every night one of you is out, late or away. Then cross out the night you already know will be takeout.

What is left is usually four or five nights. Plan four or five dinners. If that sounds thin, remember that a dinner for two cooked at full size covers a second meal on its own, which is the next step.

Write down roughly how much time each night has. A twenty minute Tuesday wants a different dinner from a Sunday afternoon.

Step 2: Decide What Happens to the Second Portion

Every dinner for two faces the same question: halve the recipe, or cook the whole thing and plan for the rest. Decide before you shop, dinner by dinner.

• Halve the recipe when it does not reheat well or when halving it uses whole things. Fish, anything crisp and most salads belong here. A stir fry for two with one pepper and one bunch of scallions works. A meatloaf that wants half an egg does not.
• Cook it full and plan lunch for dishes that taste as good or better the next day: pasta sauces, curries, chili, soups, grain salads, roast chicken. Two leftover portions are two lunches, and that is one decision fewer on a busy morning.
• Cook it full and plan a second dinner when the leftovers can become something else. Roast chicken on Monday turns into fried rice on Wednesday. A pot of beans becomes tacos and then soup.
• Cook it full and freeze half for anything that freezes well: sauces, soups, chili, meatballs. Label it with the dish and the date. With three of those in the freezer, one night of a later week needs no plan at all.

Only do this for one or two dinners a week. A plan where every night produces leftovers ends with a fridge full of containers and nobody wanting any of them.

Step 3: Pair Dinners That Share an Ingredient

For two people this habit saves the most food. When a dinner needs part of something that only comes whole, put a second dinner in the same week that uses the rest.

• A cabbage. Half goes into slaw for tacos, the other half into fried rice or a quick sauté with sausage.
• A bunch of cilantro or parsley. Tacos on Tuesday, then a fried rice or a grain salad two days later. Soft herbs do not last a full week, so put the second dinner within three days.
• A bunch of scallions. They go into almost anything: fried rice, an omelet, noodles, a salad. Plan two or three dinners that use a few each and the bunch is gone.
• A carton of cream or a tub of yogurt. A sauce on one night, a dressing or a marinade on another.
• A pack of chicken thighs or sausages. Cook the whole pack. Eat some that night and use the rest in a second dinner, or freeze the raw half on the day you buy it.
• A bag of spinach. Wilted into pasta one night, folded into eggs the next.

When you choose the week’s dinners, choose them in pairs. Pick one dinner, look at what it leaves behind, and let that pick the next.

Step 4: Plan Around Two Sets of Tastes

Two people have two lists of things they will not eat, and they do not weigh the same.

Write each person’s hard no at the top of the plan once: an allergy, a diet, the one food somebody truly cannot face. These are fixed. A dinner with one of them in it comes off the list, however good it looks.

Keep the dislikes on a separate line. A dislike moves a dinner down the list and leaves it on the page. If one of you is not keen on mushrooms, cook them less often or leave them off one plate.

When the two of you eat differently, look for dinners that split at the end instead of at the start. A taco night, a grain bowl, a pasta where one person adds sausage and the other does not, a curry with the meat cooked on the side: each one is a single pot that ends as two different plates.

And take turns choosing. If each of you puts two dinners into the week, nobody ends up eating the other’s plan.

A Sample Week of Dinners for Two

Here is one week that follows the routine: five dinners and two open nights, and most of the perishables get used twice.

• Monday: roast chicken thighs with potatoes and carrots. Roast the whole pack of 6 thighs and all 6 potatoes with a few cloves of garlic. You eat 4 thighs and 4 potatoes. The other 2 thighs and 2 potatoes go into the fridge for Wednesday and Friday.
• Tuesday: black bean tacos with cabbage slaw. Half the cabbage goes into a slaw with lime, yogurt, a few scallions and some of the cilantro, and some of the feta goes on top. Cook twice the rice you need for two and put half in the fridge.
• Wednesday: chicken fried rice. Tuesday’s cold rice, Monday’s 2 chicken thighs, the other half of the cabbage, a carrot, peas, 3 eggs, garlic, scallions and the rest of the cilantro. About twenty minutes, mostly chopping.
• Thursday: pasta with sausage, tomatoes and spinach. Brown the whole pack of sausage with the onion and some garlic, then add the tomatoes and half the bag of spinach. Cook the whole box of pasta. Two portions are dinner, two are Friday’s lunches.
• Friday: frittata with potatoes, spinach and feta. Monday’s 2 potatoes, the rest of the spinach, 6 eggs, the rest of the feta from Tuesday’s tacos and the last of the scallions, with a spoon of the leftover yogurt on the side.
• Saturday and Sunday: open. One night out, one night for a pantry meal or whatever is left.

Look at what each dinner hands to the next. The chicken pack feeds two dinners and the rice is cooked once for two nights, while the cabbage, the cilantro, the spinach, the yogurt, the feta and the scallions each show up twice or more. By Saturday the fridge is close to empty.

The Grocery List for That Week

Here is the same week as one list, merged and grouped by aisle. The amounts are what two people need, rounded up to the way things are sold, and each line says which dinners use it. Check the fridge and the cupboard before you go and cross off what you already have.

• Produce. 6 medium potatoes (Mon, Fri). 4 carrots (Mon, Wed). 1 small green cabbage (Tue, Wed). 1 bunch cilantro (Tue, Wed). 1 bunch scallions (Tue, Wed, Fri). 2 limes (Tue). 1 onion (Thu). 1 head of garlic (Mon, Wed, Thu). 1 bag baby spinach (Thu, Fri).
• Meat. 1 pack of 6 bone-in chicken thighs (Mon, Wed). 1 pack Italian sausage (Thu).
• Dairy and eggs. 1 dozen eggs (Wed, Fri). 1 small tub plain Greek yogurt (Tue, Fri). 1 block feta (Tue, Fri).
• Bakery. 1 pack small corn or flour tortillas (Tue). The rest freeze well.
• Canned and pantry. 1 can black beans (Tue). 1 can crushed tomatoes (Thu). 1 box pasta (Thu). Rice (Tue, Wed). Soy sauce (Wed), if you are out.
• Frozen. 1 bag frozen peas (Wed). The rest of the bag keeps for weeks.

Oil, salt, pepper and the spices for the chicken and the tacos are assumed to be in the cupboard. If they are not, add them under canned and pantry.

That is a short list for five dinners and two lunches, and nearly every line on it is used up by Friday. Our guide to writing a grocery list by aisle explains the order and how to adjust it to your store.

Keeping It Cheap for Two

A plan for two saves money mainly by not throwing food away, and the steps above already do most of that. A few habits help on top.

• Buy whole and cook once. A whole pack of thighs, a whole cabbage and a whole box of pasta cost less per portion than the small versions. They are only cheaper if every part has a dinner, which is what the pairing in step 3 is for.
• Lean on the pantry and the freezer. Canned beans, canned tomatoes, rice, pasta, frozen peas and frozen spinach keep for months, and they turn half a pack of something fresh into a full dinner.
• Make lunch out of dinner. One dinner cooked at full size covers two lunches with no extra shopping.
• Repeat what works. A week like the sample above, cooked again two weeks later with a different pasta and a different taco filling, needs almost no new thinking and almost no new ingredients.
• Shop once. A second trip in the middle of the week is where the extra snacks and the second bag of salad come from.

Store brands of the pantry staples are usually fine, and the meat and the produce are where your money goes. If a week needs to be cheaper, swap one meat dinner for a bean or egg dinner before you cut anything else.

Where Simmerset Fits

All of the above works with a pen and the back of an envelope. The part that takes time is the arithmetic: scaling each recipe to two, adding up what repeats across the week and rewriting it in aisle order.

Simmerset does that part. You tell it how many people eat, and each dinner starts with that many servings. Turn one dinner up to four servings when you want leftovers for lunch, and the grocery list changes to match. It suggests three to seven dinners and writes one list for the week, grouped by aisle, with amounts added up across dinners where the units allow it. Every line says which dinner needs it, so when Thursday falls through you can see what to leave on the shelf.

Allergies and diets are entered apart from dislikes. An allergy or a diet takes a recipe out of the plan, while a dislike only moves it down the ranking. The Free plan shares the household, the week and the list with one other adult, so both of you see the same plan on your own phones. There is no retailer account and no store to pick, so you shop the list wherever you like.