How to: cook a simple vegetable stew

I've got a pretty good recipe for you all today - it's warm and filling (perfect for the rainy dark nights we're still having), and is super cheap, healthy, and quick to cook.

To make it even cheaper I've also teamed up with mySupermarket - a site that recommends the cheapest place to shop online for groceries by comparing prices from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Ocado and Waitrose.

I'm in the pretty lucky position that I live near six pretty massive supermarkets (the benefits of living on the edge of town!), which is a huge step up from my student days relying on the tiny co-op by my flat... so in theory I should be in a great position to pick & choose my local shop based on who gives me the best deal! The reality is that I am super lazy - especially when it comes to the weekly shop, so I was intrigued to see how mySupermarket would shape up.

First, get your list of ingredients. Here's what you'll need for the stew.

• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• 2 parsnips
• 1 big leek
• 2 celery stalks
• 1 smallish swede
• mushrooms 
• 1 pint of vegetable stock
• 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• small tin (200g-ish tin) of red kidney beans
• small tin (200g-ish tin) of chickpeas

On mySupermarket it asks you to select a supermarket (I went with Tesco, as that's where we normally end up shopping), and as you add items into your basket it makes suggestions when multi-buys & cheaper items pop up - letting you compare prices for all supermarkets at once.

As I'm lazy I just copied and pasted my list into the Shopping List bit at the top & tweaked it a bit (apparently "1 smallish swede" isn't compatible with computer search engines, ha) until each item was in my basket. It turned out that Asda was £1.24 cheaper than Tesco... which yeah, is a fairly small amount, but this is just one recipe - I imagine if you used this site for each big shop you'd save quite a bit within a year for the same food!

Once you've picked the best shop for you, you can either checkout online (it directs you onto your chosen retailer's website, with the basket all filled up & ready to go), or if you'd rather buy instore, you can print off a shopping list with your chosen items (some deals are online-only though, so keep that in mind!). It's pretty cool & definitely one to bookmark if you are thrifty minded!

Once you have your ingredients in hand (which have only cost you £6.21, hooray), here's how you make the stew.

First, put some olive oil in a large pan & fry the onions slowly for five minutes. While they are cooking, chop up all of your vegetables into smallish chunks. Add them to the pan, cover with a lid and fry it all over a medium heat for five minutes.

The vegetables will have started to soften up at this point. Add in the tomatoes and vegetable stock, bring to the boil, then pop the lid back on and simmer for ten minutes.

Add in the beans, give it a good stir & simmer for another five minutes. Then sprinkle with a handful of parsley and enjoy. The vegetables are really nice and tender, and it's such an easy way of filling yourself up with good food. Yum!

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