Healthy dinner ideas for cold winter nights | BHF

Our dietitian suggests lighter dinners for dark nights, plus tips for stocking up your store cupboard.

A lighter evening meal may be in order if you’ve had a big meal at lunchtime. It can still be warming, but your portion may need adjusting depending on what you’ve already eaten that day. If that’s the case, try vegetable soup with a small sandwich, or something like sardines or poached egg on toast with some sliced tomato alongside.

A pattern of two smaller meals and one main meal a day is a simple thing you can do to help you avoid winter weight gain 

When you are at home more, there is a temptation to keep grazing and snacking over the day it’s good to keep an eye on the scales. A pattern of two smaller meals and one main meal a day is a simple thing you can do to help you avoid winter weight gain.

If you’re looking for more ideas to keep you warm this winter, take a look at our recipe finder.

Why not try: 

Or take inspiration from our 10 easy meals with four ingredients.

Store cupboard tips

Keeping a store cupboard of ingredients is a great way to make sure you have healthy options to hand. And by doing that, there is less chance that you’ll be tempted by quick takeaway or ready meal options, which, although convenient, can come loaded with salt and saturated fat.

To make healthy meals more interesting, stock up on spices to add flavour.

When you stock up your cupboards, make sure you have easy, warming and also healthy options that you can put together to make a balanced meal quickly. You’ll need starchy carbohydrates such as brown rice, wholewheat pasta and couscous, and some proteins such as tinned fish in spring water or tomato sauce (which you can use for our wholewheat spaghetti with sardines and cherry tomatoes recipe, pictured below).

Don’t forget about dried or tinned beans and other pulses (try these in our Tuscan bean and vegetable stew recipe) and, of course, vegetables and fruit. These can be tinned or frozen and kept in your freezer.

To make healthy meals more interesting, stock up on spices to add flavour. Chilli or curry powder can provide a different kind of heat to your meals too.

Updated December 2022