BBC Good Food UK – January 2025

Summary

Make veg the star — BBC Good Food's January 2025 issue builds its cover around a roasted cauliflower cheese filo pie by Barney Desmazery, with 23 winter vegetable recipes and a 15-page healthy diet plan by Dr Chintal Patel. Ching-He Huang contributes Lunar New Year recipes for the Year of the Snake, and Si King shares recipes from the final Hairy Bikers cookbook. The issue tracks how climate change is shifting the UK food calendar in a feature by Lulu Grimes.

The Easy section opens with Budget Brilliance — meals that are a little easier on the purse strings — and Slow Cooker Magic with Poppy O'Toole's classic dishes. Cook Smart covers air-fryer winners, a wonky-veg challenge that gets the most from leeks and kale, and a Dinner Today, Lunch Tomorrow transformation feature. The Health section runs Dr Patel's 15-page diet plan with meal-prep timings and weekend batch-cooking instructions.

The Seasonal section covers carrots, cauliflower and kale in winter dishes, a plant-now-eat-later guide, and discovering gamey pheasant for Sunday roast. Weekend features include Detroit-style pizza, Andi and Miquita Oliver's favourite dish, and the Hairy Bikers' comfort classics. Travel covers climate change and the food calendar plus sustainable holiday destinations.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover / On the Cover

p.9 · Make Veg the Star
23 meat-free dinners that go beyond the usual cauliflower curry. The roasted cauliflower cheese filo pie — the cover recipe — uses a whole head of cauliflower and a 500ml cheese sauce that sets in 30 minutes at 180 degrees C. Prep the filo in layers of 3 sheets brushed with melted butter for a crisp base that holds the filling.

p.10 · Cook the Cover: Roasted cauliflower cheese filo pie
Barney Desmazery's step-by-step cover recipe. Roasting the cauliflower at 220 degrees C for 20 minutes before assembly concentrates the sweetness. The pie serves 6 and costs approximately £1.20 per portion at January supermarket prices.

▸ Easy

p.22 · Budget Brilliance
Recipes designed to reduce the weekly shop without sacrificing flavour. A lentil-and-sweet-potato curry uses 8 ingredients and costs £0.85 per serving. Swapping tinned tomatoes for passata in the base adds 20 minutes of simmering but deepens the flavour without additional cost.

p.29 · Slow Cooker Magic: Poppy O'Toole
The TikTok chef's 3 slow-cooker recipes include a pulled-mushroom ragu that uses chestnut mushrooms and soy sauce for umami. Cook on low for 8 hours — the mushrooms hold their texture better than on high for 4 hours.

p.34 · Lunar New Year: Ching-He Huang
Recipes to celebrate the Year of the Snake, including a whole steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion. Huang's tip: score the fish diagonally every 3cm to ensure the ginger juice penetrates the thickest part of the fillet. Steam for exactly 8 minutes per 500g weight.

▸ Health

p.59 · Healthy Diet Plan: Dr Chintal Patel
A 15-page plan with 7 days of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack options. Each day hits 1,600 calories with 30g of fibre. Sunday's meal-prep session takes 90 minutes and covers lunches for Monday through Wednesday. The plan is designed around UK supermarket ingredients available at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

▸ Seasonal

p.77 · At Its Best: Carrots, cauliflower and kale
Winter vegetable recipes arranged by shelf-life — kale lasts 5 days in the fridge, carrots up to 3 weeks. The roasted carrot and cumin soup uses the carrot tops as garnish. One recipe combines all three vegetables in a single tray: 200 degrees C for 25 minutes.

p.86 · Discover New Ingredients: Gamey pheasant for your next Sunday roast
A guide to cooking pheasant for the first time. The bird requires 40 minutes at 190 degrees C with bacon strips across the breast to prevent drying. Most UK butchers sell oven-ready pheasant at between £4 and £6 per bird from November to January.

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Editor's Take

BBC Good Food's January issue is the most practically useful food magazine of the month, thanks to Dr Patel's diet plan and the budget recipes that respond directly to the cost-of-living squeeze. The wont-you-eat-the-veg theme is well executed — the cauliflower cheese filo pie is a genuine cover recipe that a home cook will attempt. The Hairy Bikers final-cookbook preview is the emotional centre of the issue, and Si King's writing carries warmth without sentimentality. The weakness is the travel section: the Lulu Grimes climate-and-food feature is important but reads like a Guardian op-ed rather than a magazine feature, and the sustainable-holiday destinations page is a listicle with no price anchoring. The air-fryer section is useful but recycles recipes that appeared in the October issue. This issue is for the home cook who wants a mix of budget weeknight meals, health-plan structure and weekend-project cooking, not for the professional chef.

Strengths
• Dr Patel's 15-day diet plan with Tesco/Sainsbury's ingredient sourcing
• Budget Brilliance section with per-portion pricing
• Hairy Bikers final-cookbook preview with personal narrative

Weaknesses
• Climate-change food feature reads like a newspaper op-ed
• Air-fryer section partially recycled from October issue

Verdict: Recommended — The diet plan and budget recipes justify the cover price, but the travel section feels like filler.