Jamie Oliver, Tesco, and FareShare have cooked up a new food waste initiative to help communities across the UK make better use of surplus food donations and reduce the amount of edible produce ending up in the kitchen bin.

Launched today, the Tesco Community Cookery School with Jamie Oliver has been developed in partnership with charity FareShare, which redistributes surplus food from supermarkets to those in need.

It will see over 1,000 community cooks given training and advice on how to prepare nutritionally balanced meals from surplus food donations.

The free training, which will be rolled out across the UK over the course of this year, will cover everything from using cooking knives to nutritional recipes for versatile base sauces that can be adapted to compliment a wide variety of donated food, Tesco said.

Attendees will also receive free cooking equipment and a folder featuring TV chef Oliver's surplus food recipes.

Oliver said he developed the recipes to help arm "amazing community cooks with the tools to create something delicious and balanced for people who need it the most".

"It is all about giving otherwise-wasted ingredients some love, and transforming them into tasty, nutritious meals," he said.

The initiative is aimed at driving down the mountain of food waste generated across UK homes and businesses by encouraging less wasteful cooking practices, Tesco CEO Dave Lewis explained, highlighting how the average UK household is currently estimated to waste around £470 of food each year.

"Surplus food donations can make a huge difference to people in need, but can also create challenges for community cooks faced with unexpected, unusual or large volumes of a particular product," he said. "With Jamie's help, we believe we can inspire, train and support charities to do even more with the donations they receive. Together, we can bring tasty and nutritious food to more people, in communities' right across the UK."

The move bolsters Tesco's wider food waste efforts, including its 2016 pledge to ensure no food safe for human consumption goes to waste throughout its operations.

The company said it was now "80 per cent of the way" to achieving the goal and now donates 300,000 meals of surplus food to over 7,000 different community and charity groups each week, totting up to 60 million meals to date.

FareShare CEO Lindsay Boswell explained that most of the charities and community groups and it worked with provided meals made by community cooks "who may already have lots of experience and just need some new ideas; or they could do with a really good grounding in nutrition and the scaling up of meals".

"In either case the Tesco Community Cookery School is ideal for them, and will have a direct benefit in providing nutritious hot meals to vulnerable people," he said.