How to plan a week of plant-based meals

Start with the overlap, not the recipes

The usual approach is to choose seven meals you fancy and then write down everything they need. That produces a long list with a lot of half-used ingredients in it, and a bunch of herbs going soft in the drawer by Thursday.

The better approach is to choose meals that lean on the same things. Plant-based cooking is unusually well suited to this: onions, garlic, lemons, tinned tomatoes, chickpeas and a couple of spices carry an enormous number of dishes. Two recipes that share four ingredients are not two shopping trips, they are one trip and a bit.

Scale by servings, not by doubling

Cooking for four instead of two does not double everything, and a plan that pretends otherwise sends you home with too much of the wrong things.

• Most things scale straight. Vegetables, beans, grains, liquids. Twice the servings, twice the amount.
• Fats and spices do not. The oil in a pan is coating a surface, not feeding people, and doubling the cumin in a curry makes it taste of cumin rather than of curry. These want somewhere between the same amount and half as much again.
• Salt and pepper are to taste, always. They never belong on a shopping list as a quantity.

This is the rule almost every printable meal plan gets wrong, and it is the difference between a list you can shop from and a list you have to think about.

Order the list the way you walk the shop

A list written in recipe order sends you back and forth across a supermarket. A list written in aisle order is walked once. The order that works, near enough anywhere:

1. 1.Produce
2. 2.Refrigerated
3. 3.Plant-based dairy
4. 4.Frozen
5. 5.Canned & jarred
6. 6.Dry goods
7. 7.Grains & pasta
8. 8.Baking
9. 9.Spices & seasonings
10. 10.Condiments & sauces
11. 11.Bakery
12. 12.Beverages
13. 13.Other

Produce first because it is by the door and you want it on top of the trolley, not under the tins. Frozen last because it should spend the least time out of the cold.

What that produces

Here is the whole thing done: 9 recipes, merged, scaled to their own servings and grouped by aisle. This list is generated by the same code the site uses, so it is the real output rather than an illustration of one.

Always check the label on every product for allergens before cooking.

Every recipe in that list is free to cook here, with no account: Buffalo Cauliflower Wings, Aloo Gobi, Loaded Nachos, Chana Chaat, Fried Pineapple Rings, Blueberry Grilled Cheese, Agua de Jamaica, West African Peanut Stew, Creamy Cashew Mac and Cheese.

The weekly shop is not the pantry

Two different lists get muddled together constantly. The weekly shop is the fresh things a particular week needs. The pantry is the small set of staples that quietly unlock hundreds of dishes, bought once and topped up rarely — and getting that set right is what makes a weeknight plan possible at all.