How to shop for ingredients

What to judge on, by category

Leafy greens and herbs

Perky rather than limp, no yellowing, no slime at the stem end, and they should smell of themselves.

Root vegetables

Firm all over, heavy for their size, no soft spots, no sprouting, no green on potatoes.

Fruit

Heavy for its size, fragrant at the stem end, giving very slightly to gentle pressure. Smell tells you more than colour.

Fish

Clear bright eyes, red gills, firm flesh springing back, and it should smell of the sea rather than of fish.

Meat

Firm, dry-surfaced, and with fat that looks creamy rather than grey. Ask when it was cut.

Eggs

Nothing visible tells you much. Date and provenance are what you have.

Dried goods

Turnover matters more than brand. A shop that sells a lot of a spice has fresher spice.

Bread

Weight, a proper crust, and a smell. A light loaf is mostly air and water.

Where money is worth spending

• Olive oil for finishing. The difference is enormous and you use small amounts. Buy cheaper oil for cooking.
• Salt. Cheap in absolute terms, used in everything, and flaky finishing salt is a genuine improvement.
• Anchovies, capers, mustard, vinegar. Small quantities, long life, large effect.
• Meat, when it is the point of the dish. Less often and better is a real trade.
• Parmesan and other hard cheeses, where the cheap version is a different product rather than a lesser one.
• Spices, bought whole and in small quantities, from somewhere with turnover.
• Butter, where it is tasted — on bread, in pastry, in a sauce.
• Not: stock cubes, tinned tomatoes at the top end, or flour, where the expensive versions rarely repay the difference in ordinary cooking.

Shopping so the food gets used

1. Plan two or three meals rather than seven. A week of plans survives contact with a Tuesday about as well as any other plan.
2. Buy the perishable things for the next two days and the robust things for the week.
3. Shop the reductions and the good-looking produce first, then decide what to make. This is the opposite of a list and it wastes less.
4. Check what you already have before leaving. Most households own four half-jars of the same thing.
5. Buy whole rather than prepared where you will actually do the work, and prepared where you honestly will not.
6. Ask the person behind the counter what is good today. It is the single highest-value thing available in a shop and almost nobody does it.
7. Put it away properly when you get home, which is where half of food waste is decided.

Seasonality, honestly

In-season produce grown nearby is usually better and usually cheaper, and that is a real effect rather than a romantic one — it was picked riper and travelled less.

But the effect varies enormously by crop. It is dramatic for tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus, peas and stone fruit, and nearly absent for onions, carrots, potatoes and cabbages, which store well and taste much the same all year.

And frozen is often better than fresh for anything picked at a distance. Frozen peas, sweetcorn, spinach and berries are frozen within hours of picking, and they beat their tired fresh equivalents comfortably.

Common questions