Okay, so culinary mastery might be a slight overstatement. But I will provide my experience and opinion on learning how to (properly) cook for yourself at uni. And it’s not too difficult!

I went off to university having never really cooked for myself (shameful, I know). I knew the basics of a kitchen and how to cook a stir fry – a student essential – but that was the extent of my skills. I was pretty clueless. My flatmates ranged from knowing how to cook quite a few decent meals to clearly never having cooked a meal in their life.

Despite my lack of knowledge, I wasn’t particularly worried. I knew I was good at following recipes, and I had a bunch of meal ideas on my phone. And I was right to not be worried. (I did have pasta seven days in a row once, but that was a money issue, rather than a cooking issue.) It hasn’t been difficult to pick up a repertoire of simple but wholesome meals, some of which are meals my family make and others from the Internet and my trusty cookbook – read below for some of my favourite meals.

I have one flatmate who still heats up frozen waffles in the oven, grabs a glass of Irn Bru and calls it dinner. I’m not sure I’ve seen him eat more than five vegetables since September. However, he is the exception, not the norm, and the rest of my flat are in a similar position to me, eating meals that don’t make our parents worry for our health.

Overall takeaway? Don’t stress about your cooking skills and think you have to spend hours practicing meals before uni. You’ll find meals that suit you and having no option but to cook for yourself is the fastest way to learn.

My 5 top tips:

• Buy a decent collection of spices
• Have meal ideas/recipes in your phone before you move in so you won’t stress about what to eat during that busy time
• Planning one large weekly food shop is much cheaper than buying food every few days
• Don’t eat exclusively pasta – other meals can be just as easy and much healthier
• Make multiple portions of your dinner and you’ll never have to make lunch

MOB Kitchen is my trusty cookbook. It has much more unique recipes than my friends’ student cookbooks and doesn’t break the bank. Plus, you can just leave out all the non-necessary ingredients to make it cheaper – a frequent habit of mine. They also have a veggie version.

I would recommend getting a cookbook, MOB Kitchen or otherwise. The meals are generally more interesting than ones I find online, and it looks nice on my bookshelf.