How often do you cook the same meal?

I'm getting stuck for things to cook each week and in an effort to offer variety I'm just serving meals that aren't successful. So just wondering how often you serve the same meal or how many meals do you have in your rotation?

a few times lol...depending on what we have in

Depends on what we feel like.

We tend to have three things very often (like 2-4 times a fortnight):

Chicken Satay with Rice
Steak Dianne with Potato Bake
Honey Soy Beef Stirfry with Noodles

We usually have the same things once a month I'd say. I'm testing out new recipes & some of the better ones are being used more often at the moment.

I'd say every few weeks.
DH likes meat, mash & vegies, but I don't so we might have it 2 - 3 times a week, but always different meat.

Probably fortnightly for things like spaghetti and basic meals like meat and veg (chicken with vegies, gravey/ lamb chops, salad and chips...etc) I do try to cook something new at least once a fortnight too.

when DH is home, we don't have the same thing at all for at least a week - and we try to make sure it's stuff he doesn't have while he's away (lives in a truck, so he gets mostly casserole/slow cooker meals that heat up ok on the road). so we do steak, roast etc when he's home. when he's not home, i don't really care - i just cook whatever is there cos i'm a girl of pretty simple tastes really!

having said that, when i do cook something, i try to cook for two nights minimum - so if i do spag bol for me, i'll eat it tonight, then again tomorrow night (or the one after) because it's more financialy viable - and second night, i'll make it different anyway (pasta bake instead of spag bol)


our usual rotation if DH home for five days would go something like this
steak and veg
stirfry of some sort
lamb chops/steak and veg
fish and chips/chook and chips/praws and wedges - really depends on what is in the freezer - always home cooked
roast and all the trimmings - left over meat goes into shepherds pie for me for the next night when he leaves (or stretches further for him if he's still home)


you can really do a lot with these kinds of meals - stirfrys (if you're not confident in fresh) can come from a jar or packet and still taste good. fish and chips type meal can be pretty much anything that is simple to oven bake. or make a coating for chicken (you can buy these - we often use either southern fried coating, or a simple burrito mix YUM) lightly fried and serve with oven baked chips/wedges/baked spuds. throw a side of frozen vegies and it's a good meal


we then mix it up a bit if we're bored - throw in enchiladas (if we feel like chicken) burritos/tacos if we feel like mince. left over burrito/taco mince makes AWESOME toasted sandwiches, or can be kept to make a mexican baked spud the next night. two completely different meals, but both tasty

baked spuds are also really simple. you can do the one above, or just fry off some trim bacon bits, onion, throw in pineapple, bit of garlic/herb butter, cheese, and top with coleslaw (i get packets of dry slaw from the supermarket cos i don't like much mayo/dressing)... it can be fairly simple to add variety like that.


now, if you're working on what meat you have in the freezer, or you buy similar stuff each week, just jazz up your veg for something different. or add a rub to the meat (garlic/onion rub is always nice) to make it a bit different. we might have steak/mash/veg one night, but have the same steak a few nights later, with roast veg.

hope all that waffle helps a little bit!

Hardly ever - I try to cook produce that is in season, so that means that the available set of ingredients changes on a regular basis.

The whole food approach that we are using really helps ensuring that your diet is varied as you have to get inventive to use all the different bits of the animal or vegetable.
As an example...if we get some prawns, then I'll make a sauce or stock with the shells and heads (they have all the flavour), the sauce will require some seasonal veggie, and will probably be served with some sort of fish - at the moment that's fennel but will only use a little bit of the fennel bulb - so now I've got fennel to make into something, last night it was fennel, pumpkin and chicken risotto - the risotto needed a stock, so I bought a whole chook, made a stock with the bones, added the breasts to the risotto...but now I've got the legs and some left over stock, so I'm making cauliflower soup for lunch and have to decide what to do with the legs for dinner.

It takes a bit of time to get your head around doing your meal planning as a flow like this instead of thinking about individual meals - but it's a lot more efficient, and saves a lot of money as you waste much less.

There are a few recipes that appear regularly, but even those don't tend to crop up more than once a month - I keep an eye on the cookery channel, look at restaurant reviews, menus, magazine articles and then see if I can find a matching recipes on the internet when something catches my eye.

TheBear - you are one super husband!! Can you teach my DH some tricks? hehe

I try to always cook something different & OFTEN try to make someth8ng that will do 2 nights or so..


Like roast we will have with everything, but next night it might be the Roast meat with fried rice & steamed greens, then the next night might be pasta & the following will be left over pasta in baked potatoes or pies or something... So it's leftovers but a bit different, I try to not cook same thing within 3-4 wks!!!

I try to avoid making the same thing twice in 1 month.
My brother and his GF come over here every Wednesday night for dinner, and have been dong so since the end of Jan, and they have never had the same thing twice since coming here, which is great for them as they are Uni students and don't get much of a chance to try different things very often, so they try them at my house :)

We have our favourites, and I probably cook some repeat meals about twice a month.
I like to use Continental meal flavour bases. Stroganoff, Apricot chicken, pork in plum sauce, greek pita pockets etc. They are quick and easy, tho I don't always follow them exactly. I add extra vegies to bulk it out a bit. I try and make sure every meal makes at least 4 serves. I try things that I wouldn't normally try and if I don't like them I don't buy them again! Jar sauces are great too. Add meat and vege and pasta or rice. use different kinds of pasta...try gnocchi or raviolli etc to add variety.
HTH :)

As I cant cook my poor family has to eat the same thing every FN... wish I could cook I have just brought myself the recipes + mag which has some great ideas so this FN I hope I can pull my finger out and make something different... Doesnt help I really HATE food its so dull....:wall:

We definitely have weekly favourites but we go through phases, at the moment we're in slow cooker phase so lots of soups, stews, casseroles etc. Things like spag bol or meat and veg we have at least once a week or once a fortnight.

For ages we were in stir fry phase but we're over that now and haven't had one for ages. Lately I've been doing potato bake and a roast once a fortnight too.

Oh Tali I almost wish I had your problem!!! I love food too much, as does my DH, so we spend too much time thinking about it, planning it, cooking it and eating it LOL. We get so much enjoyment out of food. Well DH loves the planning and eating parts, I love all of it, particularly reading about it, cooking it and eating it!

And I wonder why I can't lose that 8 kgs!!!!!!

Depends on the season, there are some old favourites that get pulled out every fortnight or so, others we go for awhile without. Bear, I wish I had the time to cook and eat like you do, I think it's a wonderful way to live, so does DH!

We rotate our meals weekly and after reading this thread I feel slack for not doing new recipes! LOL :redface:

We do spag bol, lamb casserole, beef stir fry, roast chicken pieces with veg, and DP makes a yummy pasta and also a lamb steaks with a balsamic sauce and mashed sweet potato...sometimes I'll do a tuna bake or a curry...been avoiding curries while breastfeeding as they don't go down too well with bubs, which is a bummer cause I love curries. Most of our meals we aim to have leftovers for lunch the next day.

Once DS starts going longer between feeds and having longer sleeps I hope to start making some new yummy meals as I love cooking when I have lots of time :)

If it was up to DP it would be the same every night, some store bought chicken stuffed with ham and cheese (the name escapes me for the moment) packet pasta (usually alfredo) and peas, carrots and corn (frozen of course).

I on the other hand prefer some variety but I have my favorites. We tend to go over the same menu every month but sometimes those favorites will pop up twice in that month. Hope that made sense :lol:

LOL we have the same thing every week :redface: We're boring meat and vege people so that's pretty much three times a week. A stirfry gets chucked in and a pasta and a lasagne. Makes it easier to shop and DF is a fussy eater so makes it easy for us I guess. I used to be a really adventurous cook but DF limits my imagination. :rolleyes: