I love to cook, but I’m also pretty lazy. There are definitely days when cooking a meal completely from scratch is the last thing I want to do. Using cheat ingredients helps me to create tasty meals with minimal fuss, even when I really don’t feel like it!

10 Cheat Ingredients For Quick & Easy Cooking

1. Carnation Caramel

Long gone are the days boiling condensed milk while still in the tin, hoping it didn’t explode in an attempt to make gooey caramel. Carnation now do all the hard work for you and you can pick up ready-made caramel in most supermarkets. What I love about this product is its versatility – from a delicious quick and easy filling for cakes and bakes to a topping for cheesecakes and other desserts.

Add the fresh double cream and warm through for an amazing ice cream sauce. My favourite use for carnation caramel though, is a super quick (read cheats) banoffee pie. Simply dollop into a readymade sweet pastry case, add fresh banana and top with squirty or freshly whipped cream. Indulgence in an instant.

2. Evaporated Milk

Evaporated milk may be quite an old-fashioned ingredient but it is very versatile and can be used in many dishes. I’ve recently discovered it makes an excellent creamy pasta sauce when added to chicken stock along with some flour to thicken. While I’d usually use milk or cream this is a great substitute if I’ve run out or if the fridge was to break down. It lasts ages as it is the perfect ingredient for keeping at the back of the cupboard, adding to stockpiles or if you’re at risk of being snowed in over winter.

3. Quick Cook Pasta

Quick cook pasta does exactly what it says on the tin – it cooks much quicker than normal dried pasta and is a godsend when making dinner in a hurry. It usually takes around five minutes to cook, saving ten minutes of cooking time on normal pasta. Brilliant if you need to feed hungry children as quickly as possible.

I tend to stock up the freezer once a month with homemade ragu and other pasta sauces and these can be defrosted and then heated in the microwave in less than ten minutes. I combine it with pasta for the quickest of dinners.

4. Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta has to be one of my favourite cheat ingredients. As well as being scrummy, it also cooks in no time at all, usually two to three minutes. Coupled with a super simple homemade pesto, it’s one of my favourite lazy weeknight dinners. Fresh pasta can also be frozen and cooked from frozen, just add a minute or so to the cooking time. As we usually have dried pasta, buying fresh from the supermarket really feels like a treat too and curbs the urge to get a takeaway when we want something super quick.

5. Ready-made Pastry

While I’ll often whip up a shortcrust pastry, puff pastry and filo pastry just aren’t worth the faff or time to prepare. Both of these can be store-bought and frozen until needed. Sheets of puff pastry can be topped with an array of ingredients to make an easy and delicious tart – my favourite toppings are goats cheese and balsamic onions or a classic tomato, basil and mozzarella combination.

6. Microgreens

Want to make your food look super fancy without even trying?

Microgreens might be the answer – super easy to grow on your kitchen windowsill (you can even get a weekly microgreens subscription!) and can make any dish look like it came from a Michlin Star restaurant.

7. Cookie Dough

Slightly shamefaced to admit that we get through quite a bit of cookie dough in our house! Cookie dough is actually surprisingly versatile and can be bought in a range of flavour combinations, even here in the UK.

My favourite recipes are Homemade Dominos Style Cookies and Pizza Hut Cookie dough. Of course, it’s also great for entertaining children with much less mess than making cookies from scratch, plus they can still be shaped and decorated as desired.

Where To Buy Cookie Dough in the UK

8. Frozen Herbs

While I do love fresh herbs they can be expensive to buy and keeping plants alive is definitely not my forte. On the rare occasions, I do buy fresh herbs, there’s always far more than I’m going to need so I tend to chop and freeze in portions – ice cube trays are perfect for this. Herbs can also be bought already portioned and frozen from the supermarket – easy to add a flash of flavour to soups and stews at the last minute.

9. Garlic Puree

It’s pure laziness but I find peeling and pressing garlic cloves such a faff, it’s messy too and then I feel like I smell of garlic for days afterwards too. While I will occasionally roast whole bulbs of garlic for certain recipes, I’ve given up crushing the odd clove here and there and just use purée instead. So much quicker and easier and less likely to go off if stored in the fridge.

10. Ginger Purée

Another one of my favourite cheat ingredients, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used actual fresh ginger in a recipe. While I  do use ginger in quite a bit of my cooking, it’s unlikely I’d use a whole stick/root of ginger in one go or before it started going off. It also just seems too fiddly to cut up and prepare.

Bonus Item: Jiff Lemon

While there is definitely something heady and potent about the scent of fresh lemons, I don’t use them often enough to buy them every week with my weekly shop. Having a bottle of Jiff Lemon in the cupboard means it is there if I do need it and it’s quick and easy too.