Ep.2: Brilliant Backup Meals

When life goes sideways, backup meals are your best friend. I open the pantry door on backup meals—the simple, reliable dishes that turn chaotic evenings into calm ones—and share how to build a dinner safety net you can trust when plans fall apart. From the split-second pivot when you realise the chicken is still frozen to the quiet relief of pulling a labelled foil tray from the freezer, we show how Plan B becomes a power move, not a compromise.

If this episode helps you breathe easier at dinner time, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a calmer kitchen, and leave us a quick review to help others find Cook and Nourish. What are the three items going on your backup list today?

Transcript

Welcome, Thanks, And A Funny Listener Story

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to Cook and Nourish. This is a place where dinner does not need to be fancy to be considered fantastic. I'm your host, Claire Serene, and I am a home cook who ended up making boozy trifles, giant roulards, and chicken balls on Mastershef. Today we're going to be talking about the power and brilliance of backup meals, something I am incredibly passionate about. But firstly, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who listened to my very first episode. I was going to be chuffed to bits if just my family and a few friends listened, but loads of you tuned in and I couldn't be more thrilled. It was incredible to get so many messages of support and appreciation, and I'm really glad that you found it helpful because that's the whole point. Your messages made me smile, some made me cry, and then I got a message from Julie in Manchester that made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my croissant. She took last week's episode entirely, literally, and proudly served up four portions of beans on toast, accompanied by two glasses of Chardonnay for the grown-ups, which just cracked me up that Julie's there wine pairing baked beans with Chardonnay, which obviously seems like a natural choice. And as she put the plates on the table, Julie announced to her family, I'm a big deal. These beans are good for your guts, and you're lucky to have me. So I think we can say that's mission accomplished for Julie. She has nothing more to learn. Thank you so much for the message, Julie. So back to today, and we're talking backup plans. Backup meals are a huge key to rolling with life's punches and staying sane. These meals are not a poor substitute or a second string. They are about setting yourself up to succeed. There isn't a kitchen or a life in the land where things don't go awry. And at some point you'll still need to eat no matter what's going on. And a backup meal can be the difference between a detour in your plans and a total derailment of your evening. Because at the end of a long day, when one small thing goes wrong, it can tip everything over and suddenly you're snapping, you're panicking, and you can feel awful about it. Knowing that you have backup choices can stop you feeling stressed, and stress is insidious. It only makes a difficult situation even harder, and that's not good for your mental or your physical health. So we're going to put backup plans in place so that we can protect your sanity. There are all sorts of ingredients you can keep on hand that will help you whip up a meal quickly when work runs late or you forget to defrost a chicken or you're just quite simply too exhausted to make any meal that you originally planned. You also need a backup plan when, if like me, you put a pan in the oven that you thought was totally oven safe, and then the handles melt all over the sausages, and the smell lingers in your house for three days. I don't know if anybody else has melted pans in the oven, but that smell sticks around. I have relied heavily on backup meals for years now, especially when my children were really young and life was very unpredictable. For example, my toddler turned the oven off after I'd put a chicken in there to roast and I didn't realise for an hour and went back expecting roast chicken and found basically a raw chicken just staring back at me. Without backup meals, I think I would have really struggled because I was also living with PTSD. So without a shadow of a doubt, backup meals were a huge part of my coping mechanisms. It's a big reason why I'm so passionate about simple meals because they literally help me survive. This hope for the best, prepare for the worst sort of tactic, it can bring you calm when your attention is pulled in lots of different directions. And calm is pure gold when other things are outside of your control. If you're not a confident cook or if you're teaching someone how to cook for the very first time, then backup meals, simple meals, are a great place to start. Simple meals that deliver tasty sustenance without any faff, because I hate faff, they are going to serve you for the rest of your life. I genuinely believe that knowing how to cook just a handful of meals is one of the greatest life skills that anyone can have. No matter what situation you find yourself in, you're going to need energy to deal with it. And that requires food. So knowing that you can whip up quick and tasty meals gives you a sense of independence, confidence, and the ability to manage your own nutrition, which is a basic pillar for your health. Last week I talked about the incredible achievement of just getting food on the table, and that counts double when you're short on time or energy. Sometimes even ordering a takeaway can be too much hassle or it's going to take too long, and you need immediate solutions in your kitchen that can help you there and then. There's no one size fits all for backup meals. It'll be different depending on what your family likes to eat, what kind of skills you have, but they all have one thing in common. They are all things that can sit in a freezer or a cupboard for weeks and weeks and then spring into action when you need them most, and they should get dinner on the table in minutes. There's a specific moment that I want to talk about, the sort of pivot point when you have to make a decision. It's that split second when you realize that the chicken is still frozen or the milk's gone off or the sausages are all covered in melted plastic, or you've simply hit a wall of exhaustion. That is a prime moment for the massively unwelcome inner critic to show up and start a campaign of guilt and shame. You know, the kind of voice that whispers, you're too disorganized, you're failing, you're not a proper cook, they wouldn't have burnt the handles on the casserole dish. I want you to recognize that moment is not failure, it's an opportunity for choice. Choosing a backup meal at that point isn't giving up, it's an executive decision. It's you being the CEO in your kitchen and saying, okay, abandon plan A. Don't worry, I've got a plan B. I'd much rather serve my kids a slightly freezer-burned pizza in a house that feels calm than struggle on with an elaborate meal plan and then be so stressed out I look like I'm about to burst into tears. That moment of choice is a power move and you deserve to own it. Backup meals take on a whole new level of heroics when someone in your house gets ill, especially if that's someone is you. I keep a bag of dumplings in the freezer, and there's always a Tupperware container of homemade chicken stock. For those of you who follow me on socials, you know I have a couple of food devotions. One is gravy. I believe that gravy is the holy grail of cooking. And the other one is stock, because it's cheap, it's a great use of leftovers, and it delivers a huge amount of nutrition at the drop of a hat. So when anyone gets ill at our house, I know I can defrost the chicken stock in a pan, chuck in the frozen dumplings, then stir in a few staple flavours that I always have on hand, like soy sauce, sesame oil, or ginger paste. And in 20 minutes, I have a protein, nutrition, and vitamin-rich dinner that will help boost the immune system. Now, all that just sits around waiting, and sometimes we have it because we like it. But equally, I know that I have an edible first aid kit on hand, and that makes me feel a lot calmer long before anyone's ill. Knowing it's there is the real gift. The funny thing about backup meals is that they're often the ones you remember. I don't think my kids could tell you much about the eight-hour smoked ribs I did last summer, but they'll fondly retell the story about when we had a lengthy power cut in our old house. I couldn't use the electric cooker, and so we decided to create a candlelit picnic in the living room. I literally only had some dairy lee, a bit of leftover cheddar, and a very tired end of stilton. There were some grapes that were going a bit soft, there was just ends of crackers knocking about. I served it all up, we ate it on the floor by candlelight, and the kids still recall that five years on. When the pressure to perform is gone, we're often more present. We laugh more, we tell better stories, and those nourish our souls as well as our tummies. So if you're worried that your backup meal is somehow lesser, remember dinner is not a test, it is about eating with people we love. I keep a list of backup meals cellotaped to the inside of my tins cupboard, so that when my plans go sideways, I pick one of them and I know that all the ingredients are on hand. Basically, anything that means I don't have to think is what I'm after here. You don't need loads of options on your list. In fact, just a few options will serve you better because too many options mean having to think and that defeats the point. My backup meals break down into freezer meals, cupboard meals, and fridge meals. So let's start with the freezer meals. In the freezer, I always have two large foil containers of leftovers like lasagna, curry, or sweet chili chicken. I buy a whack of foil takeaway containers from the supermarket or shops like BM, and then when I make a freezeable meal like curry or fish pie, I make a little extra, decant it into the foil tray, write the name on the lid and pop it into the freezer. I love these foiled takeaway containers because I can bung the whole thing in the oven and reheat it while I sort out other things. I don't have to worry about defrosting out of Tupperware. It's literally straight from the freezer into the oven. Most things take 30 to 40 minutes to cook from frozen in a 200-degree fan oven. This is your saviour in waiting because one large foil tray feeds a couple of people. When I've used it, I note it down and know to replace it the next time I make a freezeable meal. I keep things like microwaveable rice on hand as well, so that I've got rice really quickly to serve with reheated curry. There's always a frozen pizza knocking about somewhere in my freezer too, because the kids love it, it's ready in 20 minutes, and I can just zhuz it up with bits out of the fridge, or I can serve it alongside apple slices or carrot sticks for something fresh, and it's just an easy win all round. Your cupboards are a great place for backup meals. My cupboard always has 12-minute pasta meals standing by. We all love spaghetti, so there's always a package in there. And then you could keep a jar of your favourite pasta sauce in there to stir through freshly cooked pasta. You can also make pasta sauce really quickly with passata, salt, sugar, and dried herbs. Don't forget to add a little pasta water in there as well because the starches make pasta sauce so much more exciting. None of this is terribly fancy, but it's wholly delicious and it's easy to pad out with things like tinned corn, jarred olives or peppers. These are ingredients that can sit in a cupboard for ages and then add veggie deliciousness when needed. Olive oil and a tin of anchovies with some chili flakes stirred through hot pasta with a little of that extra pasta water is a stellar meal with ingredients that last ages in your cupboard. My fridge always has eggs, and omelets for dinner has saved me on more than one occasion. Plain or jazzed up with some cheese, chopped ham or veggies. You can add more nutrition with some baked beans, a simple salad, or just some toast, and all of a sudden you've got an entirely nutritious meal ready in minutes. These aren't glamorous meals, but they're quiet heroes that you can rely on when the proverbial hits the fan. Backup meals are literally self-care that you can eat. They say, I know that life gets messy, but I respect my own energy and calm enough to have them in the cupboard. A great way to start building your backup meals store is to pick just one or two meals that everyone at your table will eat. There's no point having a backup meal that someone will complain about. You don't need that added frustration or ingratitude. So pick something that everyone will eat. Add the ingredients for these meals to your next shop, then squirrel them away in your kitchen and give yourself the peace of mind that dinner can be ready at the drop of a hat. Future you is gonna love you for it. Here are some quick ingredient ideas to help you plan your save the day meals. Jars of pasta sauces or pesto that can just be stirred straight through cooked pasta are terrific. And don't forget that parmesan lasts ages in the fridge, so you can grate it over the top for a bit of extra flavour. Tins of veggies or bags of frozen veggies can be chucked onto pasta or stirred into curry and they add nutrition and flavour. Tins of chickpeas or lentils can be added to pre-bought curry sauces and then serve it with rice and all of a sudden you've got a nutrition-packed dinner that's ready in less than 10 minutes. Freezer bags of pre-made paella or risotto offer a lot of nutrition because flash frozen veggies often retain more of their goodness compared to fresh ones. Tinned tuna is an absolute hero because it can be stirred into hot pasta with mayo, mustard and sweet corn. You can pile it onto a microwave jacket potato, or you can add it to a cheese toasty for a protein-packed oozy delight. It is one of my staples in my emergency cupboard. When you're stocking a save the day cupboard, I find it helps to think in terms of textures. To make a cupboard meal feel more substantial and considered, I always keep a few ingredients to jazz it up. So my jazz up ingredients are things like tubs of crispy fried onions, bottles of hot sauce, croutons, seed mixes, or even just a bag of salted peanuts. Because when you've made a 12-minute pasta or two-minute noodles, throwing something crunchy or spicy on top tricks your brain into thinking, oh, we're having an actual dish. It's not just survival rations. It's that tiny extra ingredient that jazzes up your brilliant backup meal because it's worth having a delicious experience when things have gone sideways. Perhaps if you looked in your kitchen right now, you'd find that you already have the beginnings of a brilliant backup plan, and you just need to look at them in a slightly new light. If tonight is one of those nights where all the plans go out of the window, I hope you think about getting a takeaway without guilt, because that's a perfectly reasonable backup plan, or I hope you serve up beans on toast with the confidence and delight of Julie from Manchester and know that you crushed that backup plan. Whatever happens, I hope you remember the central mantra of cook and nourish. Food on the table means you did a good job. Full stop. If your backup plan tonight ends up being you eating a bowl of cereal over the sink whilst you scroll through your phone in total silence, I am not going to judge you for it. Because sometimes the backup isn't just about the food, it's about the silence. It's about five minutes of not being on, not being needed, not being in demand for anybody else. So if that bowl of cornflakes helps you reset so that you can wake up tomorrow feeling a bit more human, then that bowl of cereal is the most important meal you ate today. It served its purpose, it nourished the cook, and it did its job. I can't promise you that your rice won't burn or that the boiler won't pack in minutes before lots of people are turning up for dinner, but I know that having backup meals that fit into your life, fit in with your family, can help you feel a little bit more confident about being a home cook with a real and unpredictable life. Thank you for spending this time with me. I hope you'll come back again to cook and nourish because you'll always matter more here than what's for dinner. So until next time, happy cooking.