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Cheap as hell dinners?
Floofy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, long story short, me and my boyfriend just moved into a new place together and we're very tight on cash for the first month or so. Does anyone have good ideas of really very cheap but fairly nutritious meals? At the moment we just have a gas hob to cook on (the oven's being replaced) but oven ideas would be good to. We're in the UK so US brands are off the radar.
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I would also make a big pot of soup. Gonna cost a bit to make, but if you take a huge pot, get chicken, rice, veggies, etc and make a big pot of soup, you can divide it and freeze it, and that can last you a long time.
LFE.
Making meals in bulk is a great way to cut costs.
Plenty of pasta. Multi/Whole Grain if you can get it, as far as the nutrition aspect. Stick with red sauce or just butter rather than cream or cheese sauces.
Rice, with mixed veggies and some sambar curry powder & butter. I like to stir-fry some cut-up chicken breasts and then mix with peanut sauce to have on the side....Not sure how cheap chicken is for you, but if you can get the bags of individually frozen breasts (or boneless thighs), it may not be too bad.
Soup & Chili - both easy to make in huge quantities, and can also be frozen pretty well.
You can make a very filling soup with lentils, carrots, celery, onion, and a can of diced or crushed tomatoes.
bean tips: if you're starting from bulk dried beans when cooking (1) if you run low on water while they're simmering, do NOT add cold water. add hot (boiling) water a 1/4 or 1/2 cup at a time. (2) don't salt them til they're pretty much done. if you salt too early, or add cold water, you run the risk of tough beans, which are pretty much inedible. you can find many recipes online (epicurious, food network, etc.)
One of her main articles is meals that feed 2 to four people for $10 dollars, and these are good meals. I've used them for a year or so now and I have a different dinner every night, without resorting to ramen noodles.
Try her website too for good hints on cheap food.
Peanuts.
Or pasta.
I had a friend who only had 50p a day to spend on food, and he survived on these things.
In a big pot on low heat cook up 1-2 pounds of chunked up beef, 2-4 cups of vegetables, and 2-3 potatoes cut into chunks about the size of half an egg, add a cup of water, a tablespoons of corn starch, and preferred seasonings (or just buy a stew seasoning packet).
I make stew monthly in my huge crock pot, divide it up into 1 cup servings, and eat one while I pour the rest into freezer bags and store them. Usually end up with enough stew for 10-15 days, which I then alternate with pasta or some other cheap meal.
Spanish omelette (tortilla) - quite simple & very filling.
Pasta w/ sauce of your preference.
Beans & rice - add sausage, grilled/roasted vegetables, etc. at will.
Mujaddara - I couldn't really spot a recipe I liked online, but it's simple enough that I could type it up if need be.
Kushari is similar to the above, but adds pasta & a tomato sauce with plenty of garlic & chile.
Ramen - I just buy plain noodles (somen, soba, whatever I'm feeling like) & make a broth, usually ginger, garlic, chile & onion with maybe a little beef or chicken stock to make it richer. Add noodles & vegetables, meat or tofu to your liking. I usually tend towards something like peas, carrot, daikon, bok choi, tofu & scallion. Just get whatever looks fresh/cheap at the time, I think peas are the only thing that tend to be a little pricier here, the others should all be quite cheap.
Instant ramen and noodles are student favourites for survival.
You can buy the cheapo packets of noodles for like 8p a packet from sainsbury's. Just throw away the flavouring sachet (it's all salt and MSG anyway), and mix it up with your own stir fry vegetables, some stir fry chicken too if you want, add some soy sauce and you're golden.
Main problem is that noodles aren't really as filling as a good pasta meal, but it's cheap, and if you give yourself a good selection of vegetables you ought to be fine. It can serve as a base for lots of meals, so just get creative with it.
EDIT: Oh, and I know that you're tight on cash, but I found a small, 3-cup rice cooker to be an extremely good investment. That was just for me on my own, I don't know whether you guys would need a slightly larger one (I'm not sure you would though, I was getting by with just 1 cup max for a meal, usually less), but a decent small rice cooker isn't expensive. You can also toss your prepared vegetables in there with the rice to cook. It's very convenient and there's nothing quite like soft, fresh cooked rice from the rice cooker.
Man I'm making myself hungry here.
The #1 thing: Eating out is way expensive compared to cooking for yourself.
Penutbutter & bread & x makes tasty affordable breakfast (x could be bananas or jelly or whatever), so does porridge and it will also keep you going all morning and is cheap as dirt.
sandwich meat is typically a huge rip off. Buy a (beef/ham) roast or chicken (cook&slice) or canned tuna/salmon can save you a ton. I buy rotissary whole chickens and pick all the meat off the bones.
Fish in general is cheaper then other meat, but be careful not to eat too much tuna, it bio-accumulates some bad stuff. Try not to eat too much of any one thing or you will get sick of it.
Those giant bags of frozen mixed veg can be a godsend, put them in any and everything when fresh veg becomes expensive (off season prices suck).
The frozen canned fruit juice things you add water to in a jug do save money and are tasty and healthy. Cheap 'juice' is mostly sugar and water...so is soda-pop, avoid them. Real fruit (like apples/oranges) is often cheaper then orange juice.
There is lots you can do with eggs, like making keish (eggs/ham/onion/milk/crust...)
If you do get an over, bake some muffins for yourself. Those make very handy snack food.
The best ways to save money are to make sure you're not spending money when you don't need to (e.g. buying lunch or even snacks at work). So make sure you always have packed lunches with you, and don't skip on breakfast.
This. I know a lot of friends who made it through college on just this.
Yeah, this is where I've seen most food budgets go in the crapper. If you spend so little on your actual meals, and end up hungry, most people will spend an equivalent of a dinner on a small bag of chips.
Noodles and beans and rice are good, but make sure you're not just hungry again 1 hour after eating. If you have a menu of £1 meals, yet have to eat 6 of them to go through the day, you may want to bump up to £2 meals. Especially if you can't guarantee that you'll be home for all those meals.
In other words, practice on the weekend, or a free day, and see if you can stay full. If you have to spend £3 on a snack because your £1 meal was too small, or too insubstantial, it's a major chunk of your food budget.
I do similar to that. I make a big batch of red rice with some cheap frozen vegetables, and then I'll just get some on a bowl with tuna. I even splurge on the tuna and get the fancy kind that has lemmon pepper and such. Delish.
Do you have to cook the tuna?
I love tuna, though, so it may not be for everyone.
one large ham hock
one pound white navy beans, dried
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrot
1 diced large onion
1 large potato, peeled and finely diced
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
wash the beans, then cover them with water in a large soup pot
bring them to a boil, then cover and remove from heat. Let them sit for an hour, then drain the pot and add two quarts of water and the ham bone. Bring to a boil, cover and turn to medium low to simmer for 4 hours. Remove ham bone, allow to cool and cut meat from bone. Add vegetables, ham (without the bone) salt and pepper to the beans, bring to a boil and then simmer for about half an hour to an hour.
Voila. You have an incredibly hearty, healthy soup you can eat off of for a week. Eat with buttered bread and some fresh greens and you've got a delicious meal that will cost you maybe $10 total for an entire week. And god damn it's delicious.
Also, consider growing some of your own vegetables, especially greens. If you're in an apartment, simply get a couple pots - you can even use the bottoms of milk jugs, provided you cut a few holes in the bottom for it to drain. Get a bag of decent potting soil (not the crap with lots of wood splinters and shit, get decent soil) and a bunch of seeds. You can grow lettuce, spinach, green onions and a ton of wonderful aromatic herbs. Rosemary, thyme, sage, cilantro and oregano, in particular, are very easy to keep up with, harvest and maintain, and add a lot of flavor to what otherwise may be rather bland dishes. Cilantro grows very quickly and only has a short prime harvest time (a couple weeks max) but it is easy to just have three pots that you rotate through. All you need to do is keep them watered, maybe get a handful of time-release fertilizer to feed them, and you're all set.
There are a ton of cheap foods to make that aren't horrible, if you don't mind cooking - tuna noodle cassarole (a can of tuna, some egg noodles and a can of cream of mushroom soup and you're all set) is a personal on-the-cheap favorite. Just be smart, buy in bulk when you can. Freeze loaves of bread, learn how to cook decent noodle and rice dishes and avoid the easy out of just getting frozen dinners and stuff - they're notoriously loaded with sodium and are rather bland and man, cooking is FUN!