A Beginner’s Guide to Pinch of Nom
Whether you’re new to Pinch of Nom or you’ve been with us from the beginning, we’re so grateful that you found our recipes. Taking big flavours and transforming them into lower-calorie dishes has always been our idea of fun – and we wouldn’t be here if you weren’t collecting our cookbooks, making our recipes and swapping tips in our Facebook group.
In case you haven’t had the chance to get to know all the ins and outs of Pinch of Nom just yet, we’ve put together a quick, one-stop guide to get you started. Even if you’ve been with us for a while, you might just discover a handy feature or two to help you out on your slimming journey!
What is Pinch of Nom?
Way back in 2016, Kay and Kate, developed the idea for Pinch of Nom as a way to swap recipes and handy tips with friends and family. They were both in the beginning stages of their own slimming journeys, and they wanted to be able to enjoy lower-calorie meals every day without compromising on their favourite flavours.
After sharing slimming-friendly versions of their favourite breakfasts, dinners and desserts online, others on their own slimming journey began to take notice (the Pinch of Nom Instagram gained 8000 followers in less than 2 months!).
Our Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries were one of the first recipes on the site; their cheesecake-inspired filling will curb your sweet cravings in under 10 minutes, for only 107 calories per serving.
Seven cookbooks (eight if you count the upcoming Air Fryer book!), four food planners and a number of record-breaking years later, Pinch of Nom hasn’t stopped putting a slimming-friendly twist on the food you know and love.
We publish brand-new recipes to our website every single week. You can sign up to receive recipe updates straight to your inbox by updating your website account preferences (creating a website account is easy and free – you can login here!).
Pinch of Nom Cookbooks
- Pinch of Nom: 100 Slimming Home-style Recipes
- Pinch of Nom: Everyday Light
- Pinch of Nom: Quick and Easy
- Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food
- Pinch of Nom: Enjoy
- Pinch of Nom: Budget
- Pinch of Nom: Express
- Pinch of Nom: Air Fryer
What can I expect from Pinch of Nom recipes?
Pinch of Nom recipes never taste like you’re eating fewer calories, and that’s what makes us extra special. Take our Crispy Chilli Beef as a prime example. This one’s always been hugely popular with our community, and it’s easy to understand why.
While it looks, tastes and feels like you’re enjoying a takeaway at home, our version is only 349 calories per serving.
Whether you’ve got your nose in one of our cookbooks or you’re scrolling through the site, you’ll find that our ‘Fakeaways’ section is chock-full of takeaway-inspired meals that won’t take you off track.
It’s always been our mission to make eating well and following your slimming goals as faff-free as possible, so we’ve divided all of our recipes into calorie-based categories:
- Everyday Light (400 calories or less, for your midweek menu)
- Weekly Indulgence (401-500 calories, for once or twice a week)
- Special Occasion (500 calories or more, for when you’re celebrating)
If you’re preparing food for particular dietary requirements, we’ve got plenty of vegan (VG), vegetarian (V), dairy-free (DF) and gluten-free (GF) dishes to choose from (our website is searchable by dietary requirement, so you can find the dish you’re looking for with ease!).
If you’re not sure how suitable a recipe is, keep an eye out for colour-coded badges in our cookbooks and on website recipes to help you judge at a glance. Many of our recipes, like these Chilli Cheesy Nachos, are adaptable; to make this indulgent-tasting sharer gluten-free, simply swap out the beef stock cube for a gluten-free alternative.
When you’re cooking for people with allergies, please be extra careful when checking ingredients and preparing food.
Join the Facebook group
If you’re not already a member of our Facebook group, we’d definitely recommend joining. It’s always easier to set and stick to goals with a support network, and we have almost 1 million members ready and waiting to help you on your slimming journey.
If you don’t feel like posting about yourself, you can be an active contributor by commenting on others’ posts with some words of encouragement, or even just by leaving a ‘like’ or ‘love’. It might seem small, but it can make all the difference to someone else’s day!
From confident chefs to brave beginners, we encourage everyone to ask questions and share their recipe photos if they’re happy to. Not only does sharing recipe photos contribute to the whole group’s motivation, it also allows us to see your feedback on our recipes directly – there’s really no need to be shy!
In fact, without questions in the group about adjusting our Dirty Rice recipe for beef mince, our Cajun Dirty Rice might never have happened.
If our wonderful community doesn’t get to your question first, the Pinch of Nom team will try to respond as quickly as they can. If you would prefer to ask a question to our recipe team directly, you can email them at [email protected].
To help you with joining our Facebook group, you’ll find our guide on how to get the most out of being a member here.
Sign up to the website and set your email preferences
Creating a Pinch of Nom website account is really quick and simple – you can register here. As part of the process we’ll ask which of our cookbooks you already have, as well as a couple of questions about your goals and dietary preferences. We like to make sure your experience with our website is the best it can be, and we don’t want to show you anything you’re not interested in.
Updating your preferences so that you’re on our email list is never a bad idea. As well as being the first to hear all about our latest cookbook news, you’ll also be one of the first to find out about our newest recipe creations. Imagine midweek wonders like our Meatball Stroganoff landing in your inbox…
Having a free (yes, free!) Pinch of Nom website account means that you can set and track your slimming goals with our weight loss tracker. Celebrating wins, big or small, is important for staying on track; we love seeing Facebook group members download and share their certificates with the community, to keep everyone updated on their progress (and receive well-deserved congratulations!).
When you’re logged in, you’ll be able to save and organise your favourite website recipes in custom folders. You can read our step-by-step guide on how to create your folders here.
Start meal planning
With a week-by-week plan of what to make for all of your meals (snacks included!), it’s far easier to stay on track. With space to write your slimming goals, cut-out shopping lists and a cost-efficient freezer tracker, our Family Meal Planner is the perfect companion to help you stay organised.
While there are many different ways to make meal planning more affordable, building up a stock of store cupboard staples and go-to herbs and spices is a great way to start. Our Family Meal Planner comes with space for you to note down the meals that go down a storm at the dinner table (and the ones that don’t!), so you’ll know which ingredients are most valuable to your midweek menu time and again.
You can find more information about our planner here.
Share your photos in our PON Gallery
When you’re signed up for a free website account, you can start sharing your photos with us in our PON Gallery (and we might even send you some PON SWAG to say thank you!). It’s the perfect place to go when you’re short of inspiration, or if you’re curious to know what everyone else is cooking up.
With its gooey, cheesy toppings, it’s not hard to see why you love rustling up our Pizza Pasta.
A pasta bake with a pizza-inspired twist, this family-friendly staple is one of many crowd-pleasers in our third cookbook, Quick and Easy (page 110-111). Leigh’s divine-looking pasta portion definitely has us feeling peckish!
The best part about our gallery is that we get to see all of your photos. From Marmite Mushrooms on Toast to Biscoff Cheesecake, it’s impossible to get bored of your creations.
We’d love to try a slice of Bunmi’s version of our cheesecake with a cuppa!
Follow Pinch of Nom on Instagram and TikTok!
If you’re hungry for even more Nom, you can follow us on our Instagram and TikTok pages too – they’re all updated daily with slimming-friendly recipe inspiration, including videos and reels to give you a closer look. We don’t always post the same things on every social channel, so if you want to dive right into the deep end of all things Nom, it’s best to follow us everywhere!
You can find out more about Pinch of Nom on TikTok here, plus everything you need to know about our Instagram page is right here for you!
Come and say hello!
With our cookbooks and website tools at your fingertips, cooking food you love that suits your schedule doesn’t have to be a chore. We can’t wait to see you over in our Facebook group. Don’t forget that we have almost 1 million members waiting to meet you and support you on your slimming journey.
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