Sausages up 31%, burgers up 64% … add your favourite foods to our visual tool to see how inflation has pushed up the price in the past five years

One of the biggest drivers behind the cost of the British barbecue is meat. In the past five years, the price of four frozen beef burgers has jumped 64.4%, from £2.02 to £3.32, much of that in the past year alone, when the price has increased by 80p. Sausages have also soared, with the price of 1kg rising by more than £1.50 since 2018, up 30.8% compared with May 2018.

Data from the Office for National Statistics gives a real-world insight into just how much more we are all paying for 450 everyday items and services, by tracking the average prices over five years.

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The inn is doing a nifty dance, luring in the gastropub crowd without scaring off people who just want cod and chips

The Kirkstyle Inn , owned by industry veteran Nick Parkinson, is a gorgeously refurbished, 40-seater restaurant in Slaggyford , Northumberland. I’ll grant you, there are less alluring British placenames than Slaggyford, but you’ll be hard pushed to find them. You’ll also be hard pushed to find Slaggyford itself, because it’s set in the South Tyne valley, in what’s officially Northumberland, but sort of also on the edge of Cumbria, and along a remote lane that will make your satnav go “ wibble ”.

Slaggyford and the whole of the North Pennines are the British countryside at its most beautiful. It’s lush, green, unpopulated and largely unvisited, because its purpose to tourists is unclear. All the pretty lakes and the shops selling Jemima Puddleduck figurines have given way to brooding stone circles and “jam for sale – leave money in box” signs. As a child in Cumbria, one of our most exciting days out over this way involved an ascent by car over Hartside Pass , a long, steep climb – pure Game of Thrones stuff. The cafe at the top sold rock buns, which was the peak of excitement, until one day it burned down and that was that. If Slaggyford feels like an odd place for Parkinson, son of Michael Parkinson (yes, Parky ), to set up shop, bringing his 50 years of hospitality experience, well, yes, it is.

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Fifth of survey respondents had ‘no confidence’ in kitchen, with microwave identified as ‘gadget we cannot live without’

Boiling an egg is supposed to be cookery 101 but, while some Britons are rolling their own pasta and blowtorching the perfect creme brulee, research shows one in four would struggle to serve soft-boiled eggs and soldiers.

While more than a third of those interviewed about their skills in the kitchen rated themselves as “excellent” or “very good” cooks, about a fifth had “no confidence”, with a small group admitting they “look up how to cook every meal”.

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A fresh, green way for a quick and easy pasta supper

Cut 150g of thin green beans into short lengths. Have 150g of broad beans ready (either freshly podded or frozen) or if you prefer, edamame beans .

Bring 2 deep pans of water to the boil. Salt one of them generously, scatter in 175g of pasta and cook for about 8-9 minutes until al dente. Salt the second pan lightly and add the beans – you can add both types at the same time. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, then drain them.

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The Indonesian take on the grilled meat kebab is nicest when hot off the barbecue

Though most of south-east Asia has its own take on a grilled meat kebab, satay is, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, particularly associated with the island of Java, where it first arrived with traders from the west. Its origins are probably Levantine, but this version is very much Indonesian, and infinitely nicer hot from the barbecue than chilled on the deli counter.

Prep 10 min
Marinate 30 min+
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4

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The days of work lunches in cafes, restaurants and canteens are fading. And so, too, are our energy levels and trust in our colleagues

News that there has been a rise in the number of people bringing a packed lunch to work made me shudder. “It’s crunch time for lunchtime,” chirped the Grocer magazine, and it wasn’t talking about a surge in consumption of crisp sandwiches.

The cost of living crisis is apparently responsible for an extra 108m lunchboxes being brought to work in the past year, a rise of 7%. What is striking about the data is that higher earners are driving the trend. Or, as the Grocer dubbed it, “the rise of the white-collar packed lunch”, as if forgoing a Pret Posh Cheddar & Pickle baguette is some kind of social leveller.

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Brands offer different advice on the perennial question. Food experts err on the side of caution

Should the ketchup bottle go in the fridge or not? As Americans prepare for Fourth of July gatherings, many will stock up on barbecue essentials.

But after the picnic is over and the ketchup bottle has been open, where should it be stored? Does it go on the cupboard shelf alongside maple syrup, honey, or soy sauce? Or should it be kept cold at all costs, like processed eggs, mayonnaise, and salad dressing?

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A twist on two 18th-century recipes by ‘The Gallant Cook’ who changed Neapolitan cooking

“With joyful inventiveness,” is how food historian Gillian Riley describes the way Vincenzo Corrado wrote about food. She also notes his “fresh flow of ideas”, “subversive and endearingly individual way”, and his ability to “convey a complex recipe in three or four lines”. I admire these same qualities in Riley’s own lively and scholarly writing, and especially in her masterful The Oxford Companion to Italian Food , which is where I met The Gallant Cook.

Born in 1738, in Oria in Puglia (then part of the Kingdom of Naples), little is known about Corrado’s childhood except that it was humble, and that, after his parents’ death, he possibly went into the service of an aristocrat. At 17, he entered a Celestine monastery that allowed him an excellent education and, later, to travel all over the Italian peninsula with senior clergy, feeding his curiosity about food and collecting recipes as they went. Monastic life also took Corrado to Naples, which at the time was the densely-populated centre of the Spanish-ruled kingdom and, for the wealthy, the pleasure capital of Europe.

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Orangey, rock cake-style lumpy scones with a grown-up cherry fino jam for less than £1 a serving – clotted cream optional (not optional)

I don’t think there’s a bake more contentious than the scone, but in order to save my reputation, I shall refrain from wading into the murky territory of the jam-or-cream-first debate. I know my preference and shall sit quietly (and smugly) on it. The only truth I’m unwilling to neglect is that a good scone needs (no, deserves!) a good jam. This one is ace.

John Whaite is a cookery writer and TV presenter

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