The people who struggle most with cooking for one are usually the best cooks. After forty years of feeding five, the hand still measures for five, and a pot that serves one looks like a waste of a good stove. So the meal gets skipped, or replaced with biscuits and a cup of tea.

Cook the full recipe, eat it three times

The instinct is to halve every recipe. A better answer is to cook the full quantity once and build the week around it. A pot of curry, a tray of braised chicken or a large pot of soup takes the same effort as a small one, and it means three or four meals where the cooking is already done.

  • Portion into single servings while it is still hot, not after it has sat in the fridge
  • Label with the date, and eat oldest first — most dishes keep three days chilled
  • Keep one portion for tonight, one for tomorrow, and freeze the rest
  • Cook the rice fresh — reheated rice kept too long is a genuine food-safety risk
Cooking for yourself is not a lesser job than cooking for a family. It is the same job with a smaller audience.

When eating has stopped mattering

If weight is dropping without trying, or food has lost all appeal for more than a fortnight, that is worth raising with a doctor rather than solving with more recipes. Loss of appetite can be a symptom, a medication side effect, or a sign of low mood, and all three have answers that a cookbook does not.

Questions readers ask

How long can I keep cooked food in the fridge?
Three days for most cooked dishes is a safe working rule, counting the day you cooked it as day one. Freeze anything you will not eat within that window, and reheat until it is steaming hot throughout. Rice is the one to be careful with — cool it quickly, refrigerate it promptly and eat it within a day rather than leaving it out on the counter.
Is it cheaper to just eat out?
For one person, hawker food is often genuinely competitive on price and saves the cooking entirely. Where home cooking wins is control: salt, oil, portion and the vegetables you actually get. For most people living alone the answer is a mix — cook two or three times a week and eat out the rest, rather than forcing one habit to cover every meal.

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