Students can use this 3-step hack for cheap, healthy meals

When you’re living away from home, balancing studying and socialising will already give you more than enough to do. But you’ll still need to find time to cook and eat.

As a student, it’s easy to fall into a diet that’s 90% toast or ramen, or succumb to the dubious pleasures of fast food – which isn’t great for your budget or your health.

But with a very small amount of effort and investment, you can eat well. Here are our top tips.

Stock up on spices and seasonings

What makes other people’s cooking taste so good? The answer is spices and seasonings. Whether you’re cooking meat, vegetables, fish, rice, pasta or stews, adding a little sprinkle of something while you’re cooking makes all the difference.

You can pick up a few spices or seasonings for £10/$10 and it’ll transform pretty much every cheap-to-make dish, from pasta, to baked potatoes, to stews and chilli.

As well as the basics (salt and pepper), here are some essentials to try:

• Smoked paprika (UK: Morrisons, £1.15/ US: Whole Foods, $2.49)
• Garlic granules (UK: Schwartz, £2.15/US: Whole Foods, $2.51))
• Chilli powder (UK: Morrisons, £1.15/US: Amazon $0.99)
• Cumin (UK: Schwartz £1.90/US: McCormick, $2.69)
• Basil (UK: Morrisons: £4.48/US: Amazon, $1.99)
• Oregano (UK: Morrisons: £1.15/US: Amazon, $1.29)

Batch cook

Cooking in bulk is faster and cheaper than starting from the beginning every time you’re hungry. For every time you cook, you’ll be able to eat several times. And it means you always have something to warm up when it’s late and you’re tempted to stop off for something deep fried and served in a paper bag.

All you need to a few Tupperware containers to store food – and these are cheap to buy. You can get a set of 3 Amazon Basics leakproof BPA-free containers for £8.76, or, in the US, a 10-piece set for $12.99.

Invest in an air fryer or multicooker

A shared kitchen can mean fighting for time on the hob/stovetop. It probably also means cleaning away the burnt-on crust before you do. But if you bring your own countertop cooker with you, you’ll have much more freedom for cooking and eating when you want.

There are several options you could go for, depending on the type of food you most often cook.

Air fryer

An air fryer will give you a range of cooking possibilities: you can roast meat and veg, reheat leftovers and cook food from frozen. You can even make a cheese toastie in one. It’s best used for dry foods though: it’s not the best place to cook a stew, for example.

If your meals tend to be composed of chicken or fish and vegetables, an air fryer is a good buy.

We have plenty of tried-and-tested buying options in our round-up of the best air fryers, but for students, we’d recommend investing in a single-drawer Cosori air fryer.

Cosori isn’t as well-known as Ninja, but its air fryers are robust and well-priced. We’ve tested and reviewed the mid-sized Cosori TurboBlaze, which is capacious at 6QT/6L, without being too absurdly sized to take away.

If you’d like something smaller and even more budget-friendly, Cosori has a range of air fryers in its Amazon store in the UK and in the US. As there’s a sale on at the moment, prices start from £49.99/$49.99.

Another option is the even more compact Xiaomi Mi smart air fryer, which has the added advantage of connected features, so you can control it via an app on your phone, access recipes and get alerts.

Multicooker

A more versatile option than an air fryer is a multicooker, which will give you a range of cooking options.

One of the best-value options we’ve tested is the Drew & Cole CleverChef, which you can currently buy from Amazon for under £45. Sadly, it’s not available in the US.

You can read our review for in-depth information but the CleverChef has 14 cooking programmes, and you can use it to bake, roast, steam, poach, cook rice and pasta and more. It’s even got a carry handle, so it’s easy to transport.

A pricier option is the Instant Pot Duo Crisp, which we’ve also reviewed and rate highly. It will let you air fry and make wet foods like stews. It pressure cooks, slow cooks, sautés, as well as grilling, roasting, baking and proofing.

To see more recommendations for air fryers and countertop cookers, browse our round-ups of the best air fryers, the best Ninja air fryers and cookers, the best dual-drawer air fryers and the best air fryer ovens.