Moving to university, or even just moving away from home for the first time, brings with it a lot of new challenges and things to learn. One of the biggest of these, perhaps, is learning how to cook for yourself. Cooking for one can be enough of a challenge on its own, and that’s before you even have to think about making sure you have a decent and somewhat healthy/ balanced diet (I hate to tell you, but the novelty of the beige food does start to wear off eventually)! When I first moved to uni I had very little clue about what I was doing in terms of cooking (cue a 9am phone call to my dad so he could remind me how long to boil an egg for), so it was a big lesson in learning what I wanted and trying new things for myself. If you’re a fresher, student, or are thinking of going to university soon, here are my top food tips for freshers that I think would have really helped me in those early weeks.
Utilise your Freezer!
Although small, my little freezer drawer was a godsend during my first year at uni. Sharing a fridge with a flat full of other students can somehow end up leaving you with a microscopic amount of fridge space. I learned to make the most of my freezer space by opting for a lot of frozen vegetables, and if you’re cooking for one, this can work to your advantage. A bag of chopped frozen onions, for example, will last you ages – and you don’t have to worry about an onion going off before you can use it, any of it being wasted, or even having to chop it yourself for that matter! I also loved to buy bags of frozen salmon pieces, as they were so easy to cook and went with basically any veg I had bought that week. I love salmon too, and found this to be a little cheaper than buying it fresh! While I did still buy some fresh veg, when you’re a student money is a big deal, so in my experience, it worked out to be a lot more budget-friendly to buy frozen bags of vegetables that I knew weren’t going to go off before I got round to eating them. This is probably one of my biggest food tips for freshers in those early weeks, as it really makes the cooking and budgeting process a whole lot easier – as well as making sure you get some veggies in!
Try Making Meals That Remind You of Home
When I first started university, I was very nervous about moving away from home. To help me settle in during those early weeks, I spent a lot of time making my uni room feel as homely as possible, and this is something you can do with food too. Whether you try and learn a home recipe before you move, or ask a loved one to send a recipe from home for you to try – it’s a welcome distraction from any homesickness, and the taste of something familiar can help you feel a lot more settled. It’s nice to have a familiar meal in a place that doesn’t feel quite so familiar yet – and it’s also good practice at cooking for yourself too.
A good cookbook can also help with this, and luckily there are plenty on the market which are tailored specifically to students. Before I moved to university, some friends bought me this NOSH Student Cookbook for my birthday, which came in super handy. One of the things that I like the most about this cookbook in particular is that all the ingredients are measured in ‘mugs’, so you don’t have to worry about having kitchen scales or loads of measuring spoons. This cookbook from BBC Good Food was something I also used a lot too. I also found Pinterest very useful for finding recipe ideas, as there are thousands of recipes on there, and it’s a great place to scroll through for inspiration if you’re not sure what you fancy.
Grated Cheese (Lazy but Game Changing)
Okay, this might sound like a silly one, but buying pre-grated cheese was never something that had previously crossed my mind, yet it has revolutionised my whole cheese experience. It’s just so handy and low effort!
Don’t Forget Tea
I am a huge lover of a hot drink! Again, for me, this is one of those little home comforts that can help make you feel a little bit more settled. You should check with your uni beforehand, but I took a cheap kettle with me to keep in my room. For me, it was nice to know that I had my own kettle in my own space – and that it was clean (my kitchen in halls in first year was certainly not the cleanest)! The kettle was also perfect for middle-of-the-night hot water bottle filling in the winter, without worrying about waking anybody else up. That being said, if you like it, tea can be a very social drink too. Although I had my own kettle, over freshers week I was very conscious of making sure I went and made myself tea in the kitchen and sat and chatted and got to know my new flatmates. It was the perfect comfort whilst doing something that absolutely terrified me. Roll onto second and third year, and tea became the perfect healer too. Whenever a friend or housemate was a bit stressed, upset, or needed to talk, cups of tea would be made in the biggest mugs we had (the ‘therapy mugs’ as we called them), and it helped soothe problems so many times.
Bring Popcorn!
While I was doing my first university food shop before my dad left to go back home, he bought me a big box of popcorn in case I wanted to have a movie night with anyone. I was grateful for the thought, but secretly didn’t think I was going to be very good at making friends. But lo and behold, I was soon taking boxes of popcorn with me for movie nights with my new friends. I kind of don’t even want to know how much popcorn I made my way through while being at uni! It became a staple. No movie night with friends is complete without popcorn! Thanks dad 😊
Invest in a Slow Cooker
While this wasn’t actually something I thought about until the second year of my degree – it has been so useful, and is now one of my favourite food tips for freshers! Having a slow cooker makes it so easy to cook for yourself, or even for your housemates too. Throw everything together before going off to a lecture, and by the time you come home, you’ve got a hot home cooked meal ready to go! Fresh food with little effort. You can get individually sized ones, but the regular sized ones are handy for either cooking for your flatmates/ housemates, or even just having batches of leftovers to freeze and have another time, which is also useful on a student budget. I got this 3.5 litre one from amazon for £19, but you can get a variety of sizes and styles to suit any budget.
Have you been to uni? What food tips would you give to freshers? Let me know in the comments below what your favourite meal to cook is!
This is a post ‘from the archive’, meaning it was previously published on my (now deleted) lifestyle blog Thginkcm. Original upload date has been included in the post title. Post content has mostly been kept the same, unless an updated authors note has been added. For more info see my post ‘Hello, I’m Back!’
