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No-Recipe Cooking Is One Of 2024’s Biggest Food Trends

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A year in food: from pickle juice to scratch cooking

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Are you a fan of winging it in the kitchen? Prefer using cookbooks as inspiration rather than following recipes down to a tee? If so, you’re bang on trend, according to Waitrose’s annual report, which highlights instinctive cooking as one of 2024’s top food trends.

Waitrose’s 2024 Trends Report: What’s Hot In Food?

The Death Of The Recipe

TikTok is influencing our food choices like never before – but we’re increasingly using it to discover culinary hacks rather than strict recipes, says Waitrose. Over two thirds of young people (72 percent) feel confident making a meal without a recipe to follow, and ‘no-recipe recipe books’ are on the up, encouraging cooks to adapt dishes to suit the time and ingredients they have available.

Cookbooks like Anna Jones’ Easy Wins and Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, for instance, offer guiding principles – or as Paul Gamble, Waitrose senior brand development chef, puts it: ‘elements you can dial up and down, allowing the cook to express themselves’.

This ties into other key trends highlighted in the report, including a growing awareness surrounding food waste; rather than shelling out on long shopping lists, we’re using the veggies and herbs we’ve got in the fridge.

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It also taps into the ‘picky tea’ craze (or ‘girl dinner’ for TikTokers): throwing together cheese, meats, crudites and dips for no-fuss dinners or solo suppers. ‘It’s food as something flexible, rather than something that is either right or wrong,’ says Gamble. However, there’s clearly a generational divide here: 70 percent of customers aged over 45 are still using traditional recipe books.

Scratch Cooking

The report also highlights a surge in scratch cooking, as people aim to cut their consumption of ultra-processed foods – triggered by eye-opening deep dives into the topic, such as Dr Chris van Tulleken’s latest documentary. According to Waitrose’s research, 61 percent of home cooks are cooking from scratch more than they were a year ago as a result of concern around UPFs.

However, many of us remain time poor, so are looking for ‘culinary shortcuts that make scratch cooking quicker, cheaper or easier’. Waitrose senior brand development chef Zoë Simons says: ‘we’ve looked at how long people are prepared to cook for on a weekday evening, and we’ve found that 30 minutes is a real sweet spot.’

The quest for simple scratch cooking ideas has led to a rise in high-quality canned and jarred foods, particularly beans – spearheaded by buzzy brands like Bold Bean Co, as well as pre-made spice mixes from the likes of Ottolenghi.

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Protecting The Planet

We’re waking up to the ways in which personal and planetary health are connected. ‘Healthy eating has historically been focused on you and your body – but now that focus is expanding beyond our own wellness to the community and the environment,’ says Waitrose insight manager Marisa Arkle.

Shoppers are becoming increasingly aware of the links between healthy soil and nutritious produce, and as a result there has been a surge in demand for brands with labels like ‘regenerative’ and ‘organic’. For instance, sales of ancient wholegrains – renowned for the role they play in regenerative farming – are on the up, with Waitrose reporting an 17 percent increase in specialty flours like spelt and rye year-on-year.

Overall, a concern for the future of the planet is driving our shopping choices more than ever. Almost 60 percent of those surveyed said they were more likely to buy a product if it had eco-friendly credentials, while Mintel’s research shows 79 percent of shoppers choose products with a sustainability claim.