Cheap student meals from whatever is in the fridge

Student cooking has its own rules. You get one shelf in a fridge shared with four other people, a budget that has to last until the next loan payment, and a kitchen with one decent pan if you are lucky. Recipe sites assume a full spice rack and a trip to the shops. What you actually need is dinner from what is on your shelf, tonight.

How Make Do works for students

1. Photograph your shelf. Just yours, not the whole fridge. A close shot catches more than a wide one; add the cupboard if you like.
2. Check the list. Everything it spots becomes a tag you can remove or correct, so your flatmate's yogurt does not end up in your dinner.
3. Tell it what you have to cook with. Just a microwave? One hob? No oven? It only suggests recipes you can actually make.
4. Pick one of five recipes. Dishes that need nothing extra come first. Each names the ingredient it uses up, so the chicken you bought on Monday gets cooked before it turns.

Your staples (salt, oil, the soy sauce you always have) are remembered, so recipes never tell you to buy them. There is a cook mode with big text and timers, and it scales every recipe to one person or to the whole flat.

The student store cupboard

A handful of cheap things turns random leftovers into a meal. If you only stock ten things, make it these:

• Rice and pasta
• Eggs
• Tinned tomatoes and a tin of beans or chickpeas
• Onions and garlic
• Stock cubes
• Soy sauce
• Frozen peas or mixed vegetables
• One spice you like: cumin, curry powder or chilli flakes

Five cheap student dinners

Egg fried rice

Leftover rice, eggs, frozen peas, soy sauce. Ten minutes, one pan, next to nothing per portion. Use rice cooked the day before, and eat it within a day.

One-pot chilli

Beans, tinned tomatoes, onion, spice, plus mince if the budget allows. Make four portions and freeze three: that is three nights you do not have to think about.

Pasta with whatever is there

Soften any vegetables in oil and garlic, toss with pasta and cheese. Works with the half a pepper and the sad courgette (zucchini).

Loaded jacket potato

Microwave a potato for 8 to 10 minutes and top it with beans, cheese, tuna or leftover chilli. It needs no oven.

Dal

Red lentils, onion, garlic, curry powder, a tin of tomatoes. Very cheap, very filling, and even better the next day.

More ideas: cheap dinners from what you have and meals from pantry basics.

Shared-fridge survival

• Label and date anything opened. Especially leftovers. Cooked food is good for 3 to 4 days; cooked rice for 1.
• Keep raw meat on the bottom shelf, sealed, so it cannot drip onto anyone else's food.
• Freeze in portions. A freezer drawer full of single portions is the best defence against a week of takeaways.
• Split the basics. Oil, salt, spices and condiments are cheaper shared, and nobody needs five bottles of ketchup.

For the full storage guide, see how long food lasts in the fridge.

What it costs

Make Do is free to start: three fridge scans, twelve recipe searches and ten saved recipes, with no card and no trial that runs out on a date. If you use it every week, Pro is $7.99 a month or $59 a year, a fraction of one takeaway a month.