Cooking skills show up in more than recipes. They include how often people prepare meals, where techniques are learned, how food is stored, and how households adapt to time and cost pressures. UK survey results from 2014 and 2020–2025, alongside U.S. time-use data for 2025, provide a useful picture of these everyday habits.
Contents
- How often people cook at home
- Where cooking skills come from
- Scratch cooking and batch preparation
- Food-safety habits in the kitchen
- Leftovers, storage, and defrosting
- Budgets and cooking choices
- Time spent preparing food
How often people cook at home
The Food and You UK 2014 bulletin found that 60% of UK respondents cooked or prepared food for themselves every day. That was the majority pattern in the survey, although daily cooking varied by sex and age.
Among women, 74% reported preparing food for themselves daily, compared with 45% of men. Respondents aged 16–24 were also less likely to report daily self-cooking: 45% did so, compared with 62% of respondents aged 25 and over. These results describe reported behavior in 2014 and should not be read as a current estimate for every UK household.
Cooking for other people showed a similar difference. In 2014, 55% of UK women said they prepared food for others daily, compared with 19% of men. Just 19% of respondents aged 16–24 reported cooking for others daily, compared with 42% of those aged 25–74. Among respondents aged 75 and over, 25% reported doing so daily.
| Measure in the UK, 2014 | Reported daily share |
|---|---|
| Cooking for oneself, all respondents | 60% |
| Cooking for oneself, women | 74% |
| Cooking for oneself, men | 45% |
| Cooking for oneself, ages 16–24 | 45% |
| Cooking for oneself, ages 25 and over | 62% |
| Cooking for others, women | 55% |
| Cooking for others, men | 19% |
Together, these figures suggest that cooking frequency was connected with both age and the social role of preparing food for other people. They do not measure technical ability directly, but regular preparation creates repeated opportunities to practice planning, timing, seasoning, and basic kitchen techniques.
Where cooking skills come from
Family members were the most commonly reported source of cooking instruction in the 2014 UK bulletin. Overall, 73% of respondents said they learned to cook from a family member, while 57% said a family member was the main way they learned. Self-teaching was the main route for 24% of respondents.
Food-safety learning was more distributed. Family and friends were reported by 35% of respondents, self-teaching by 28%, school by 14%, and a course by 12%. These categories concern reported ways of learning, not a test of whether a respondent had mastered a particular food-safety practice.
There were notable differences by sex. Eighty-two percent of women reported learning to cook from a family member, compared with 64% of men. Forty-two percent of women reported learning to cook at school, compared with 21% of men. A family member was the main cooking teacher for 65% of women and 48% of men, while 29% of men described themselves as mainly self-taught cooks, compared with 19% of women.
Age also mattered. Eighty percent of respondents aged 16–24 reported learning to cook from a family member, compared with 72% of those aged 25 and over. School was reported as a source by 47% of the younger group and 29% of the older group. In one- or two-person households, 70% said they learned some or all cooking skills from a family member, compared with 76% in households of three or more.
Scratch cooking and batch preparation
More recent UK Food and You 2 results show that scratch cooking remained common during the waves covering November 2020 through January 2022. Across Waves 2–4, 59%–62% of respondents who cooked said they cooked food from scratch every day or most days.
Financial pressure also influenced scratch cooking. In Wave 6, covering October 2022–January 2023, 25% of respondents said they cooked from scratch more for financial reasons. That share was 27% in Wave 9, covering April–July 2024. A separate Consumer Insights Tracker measure found that 34%–41% of respondents reported scratch cooking instead of buying ready-made food to save money between August 2023 and March 2025.
Batch preparation and leftovers were also used as budget strategies. Twenty-nine percent of respondents in Wave 6 said they prepared more leftovers or cooked in batches for financial reasons. The figure rose to 33% in Wave 7, covering April–July 2023, and was 26% in Wave 9. These percentages are survey reports for specific waves; they do not establish that batch cooking was more or less effective at reducing an individual household’s costs.
The pattern links creative home cooking with practical adaptation. Cooking from basic ingredients and preparing several portions can be ways to respond to prices, but the survey figures do not identify which recipes, ingredients, equipment, or household budgets were involved.
Food-safety habits in the kitchen
The Food Standards Agency study “Consumers’ Food Safety Practices in the Home: Trends and Insights From 2020 to 2025” recorded changes in reported handwashing. In Food and You 2 Wave 1, covering July–October 2020, 77% of UK respondents said they always washed their hands before cooking or preparing food. The corresponding figures were 68% in Wave 8, 74% in Wave 9, and 72% in Wave 10, which covered October 2024–February 2025.
Reported handwashing before eating was lower in every listed wave: 53% in Wave 1, 42% in Wave 8, 49% in Wave 9, and 46% in Wave 10. In the Consumer Handwashing Tracker, 27% of UK respondents said they always washed with soap and warm water at home in April 2020, compared with 16% in January 2022. The measures have different names and periods, so they should be compared only within their stated context.
Handwashing after handling raw animal products was reported more consistently. The share saying they always washed their hands immediately after handling raw meat, poultry, or fish was 88% in Wave 1 and 89% in Wave 10. However, observed behavior in FSA Kitchen Life 2 was less uniform: hands were not washed for at least 45 minutes during 26% of meals involving meat, fish, or poultry, and 39% of those meal occasions included handwashing with soap.
The contrast between survey answers and observations is important. A reported habit describes what people say they usually do, while an observation records behavior during particular meal occasions. Neither measure alone represents every kitchen or every cooking session.
Leftovers, storage, and defrosting
Food storage practices changed modestly across Food and You 2 waves. Between 2020 and 2025, 57%–64% of UK respondents reported storing raw meat and poultry in the original packaging. The share reporting storage in a sealed container increased from 28% in Wave 1 to 36% in Wave 10, covering July 2020–February 2025. Storage on a plate decreased from 14% to 11% over the same comparison.
Leftover timing was relatively stable in the available measures. Forty-one percent of UK respondents in Wave 1 said they put leftovers in the fridge or freezer within one to two hours of cooking. In Wave 9, covering April–July 2024, the figure was 42%. Across the waves that asked about the issue, 62%–70% said the latest they would consume refrigerated leftovers was within two days.
Defrosting responses highlighted a different habit. In Wave 5, covering April–July 2022, 45% of UK respondents reported typically defrosting frozen meat or fish at room temperature. The supplied result does not break that figure down by household, food type, or alternative defrosting method.
These statistics cover reported storage and timing choices, while the Kitchen Life 2 figures above come from observations. Keeping those evidence types separate matters when interpreting everyday food-safety behavior.
Budgets and cooking choices
Household finances affected several reported food practices. In Wave 6, 12% of UK Food and You 2 respondents said they ate more food past its use-by date for financial reasons. The share was 21% in Wave 7 and 11% in Wave 9. These results measure a reported financial response during each survey period, not the prevalence of unsafe food consumption across all households.
The Consumer Insights Tracker also measured changes to cooking methods. The share reporting reduced cooking time to save money ranged from 12% to 16% between July 2023 and October 2025. In July 2023, 11% said they lowered cooking temperature to save money.
Using a cheaper cooking method instead of an oven was more common in the supplied figures. Fifty-four percent of Consumer Insights Tracker respondents reported this behavior in July 2023, and the same 54% was reported in March 2025. The result does not specify which appliances or methods respondents selected, so it should not be interpreted as a measure of any particular cooking technology.
Time spent preparing food
The American Time Use Survey 2025 Results provides a U.S. comparison based on an annual average. In 2025, people aged 15 and over spent an average of 0.71 hours per day on food preparation and cleanup, and 65.2% engaged in those activities on an average day.
The U.S. results also show a difference by sex in the combined activity of food preparation and cleanup. Men aged 15 and over spent an average of 0.51 hours per day, and 57.9% engaged in the activity on an average day. Women spent an average of 0.91 hours per day, and 72.2% engaged in it.
These are U.S. time-use estimates for 2025, not UK cooking-frequency results. They include food preparation and cleanup together, so they cannot be treated as a direct measure of time spent cooking recipes. Read alongside the UK findings, they show why cooking skills are best understood as a combination of practice, learning, safety routines, storage decisions, budget choices, and the time available for food work.