Times are hard, the cost of living is rising, and so, like many people, I’m trying to cook cheaper meals for the family. I recently did the Piri-piri chicken wing, wedges and corn traybake from BBC Food.
Wings are cheap, potatoes are cheap, and corn isn’t crazy expensive. The limes were probably the most extravagent ingredient. Total price, probably £2-£3 per person.
It was great, and the family all enjoyed it. To the point where it would go on the regular rotation even if we had suitcases full of cash stashed around the place!
What are your best economical recipes that aren’t just beans, chickpeas, and rice? Meals you actively looks forward to, rather than just a budget way of getting calories inside you?
On my list for the coming week:
- Carbonara
- Sausage and mash with onion gravy
- Chicken Quesadillas
- Mac and Cheese with salad
- Spicy black bean tacos
- Stir-fried tofu
- Slow cooker leek and potato soup
I can supply recipes for any of these.
Tater tot casserole.
We don’t really have tater tots here.
Roasted sweet potatoes, salt pepper, rosemary. Cut them into 1" cubes, cook around 12-15 min,once warmed up, roast em at 400 for another 5-10min until a little crispy. Delicious.
This is super tasty, but not really a complete meal. I usually make this with courgettes baked in the oven with cumin and a vegan burger. Home made guacamole with this is also nice but takes more effort.
Didn’t know it only wanted full meals.
I’m no “it”, I’m a Hossenfeffer!
My kids are strangley averse to sweet potatoes. Why, I don’t know, but there it is.
Potatoes and lardons
I do a tartiflette which is pretty similar to this.
Curry.
- Any vegitables
- chickpeas or tofu
- rice
- curry paste or some spices
- coconut milk
Prep:
- cut and steam vegetables, rice
- bake tofu
- mix everything
- wait 20min
Lovely vegan curry. Could switch to meat if you want. Costs me roughly €2,50 per portion for a very tasty and healthy meal.
And be hungry in an hour
Why? It’s a well balanced meal
+1 for curry! My favorite paste is Cock Brand Curry paste for 3€ per 200g, which is 4 portions. Absolutely worth it though, as it’s really the only seasoning you need and it turns out perfect every time. I usually throw in frozen Cauliflower and smoked Tofu.
If I’m feeling fancy, I also start the curry by searing a roughly chopped onion in a big scoop of vegan butter and mixing in a bit of flour, then slowly stirring in the coconut milk similar to how you make bechamel sauce. The flour thickens the curry up, which really improves the texture and shortens the cooking time, as you don’t have to wait for water to evaporate and thicken it up naturally.
I bought these 1kg buckets for €6 each at the local Asian supermarket.
I like baking the tofu with soy sauce and ketjap to a crispy state (takes a while) but it’s that extra bite in all the softness of the marinated vegitables.
Some cashews are also nice to add but they are expensive AF.
What is ketjap if I may ask?
I had to look it up. I thought it was a common product, but apparently it’s Indonesian, so that’s why it’s common in the Netherlands (our dark colonial history) but not internationally.
It’s an Indonesian soy sauce. I found a wiki page with 14 languages, including Dutch, but not English xD
Here’s the Deepl translation:
Ketjap (Indonesian: kecap) is an Indonesian soy sauce. It is made from a fermented mixture of soybean flour, coarsely ground wheat, spices, sugar, and salt.
There are many types of ketjap, including:
Ketjap manis: very sweet soy sauce Ketjap sedang: less sweet soy sauce Ketjap asin: salty soy sauce Ketjap kendal: dark, syrupy soy sauce; similar in taste to ketjap manis Ketjap medja: dark, syrupy soy sauce; sweet and salty. Its flavor is between manis and asin Ketjap asin is used in the kitchen when preparing dishes, while ketjap manis is used at the table as an addition to flavor a meal. Ketjap manis is the most commonly used type.
Indonesian ketjap is characterized by its dark brown color and syrupy consistency. This differs from Chinese and Japanese soy sauces, which are thinner and usually not sweet.
Yeah, I’ve cooked Chana Aloo recently, but I’m looking for things that aren’t just pulses and rice or beans and rice!
You can go wild with pasta sauce, ingredients and herbs wise. White sauce or red sauce for example. There’s loads of different kinds of pasta too. Or just go for the simple pasta pesto garlic spinach.
Also one of my favorite things to make during winter is pea soup, from split peas. It’s a traditional Dutch recipe, called erwtensoep or snert. Here’s a recipe. But I make it vegan. Also really cheap and fills you up like crazy.
One thing I like making is Pesto Pasta. It’s just:
- 2 lbs rotini
- 1 cup half & half or heavy cream
- 1 jar pesto
- 3-4 small tomatoes, diced
- (opt.) 1 chicken breast, grilled and chopped
Just boil/drain the pasta, add everything else, stir it together, and you’re done. It’s easy, cheap, and surprisingly good.
I make it with Classico traditional pesto which can be a bit pricier (I think it’s worth it if you have the extra few dollars) but any kind works. I also tend to add salt to the water before boiling the pasta but it can be added later to taste as well. Usually feeds 6-8 people at like $1-2/person.
What are your best economical recipes that aren’t just beans, chickpeas, and rice?
I mean I eat beans and rice almost daily and always look forward to it, so…
Try this Eggplant with Garlic Sauce. I just use standard dark soy sauce and an American eggplant, it’s still great. Anyone in college in particular should try it, just because of how cheap and easy it is.
Also cabbage soup is one of my favorite lunches.
Where I am, potato, carrot, and beets are very cheap staple vegetables. So of course, there’s a salad made from them, called vinaigrette salad. You just boil the vegetables, dice them into cubes, add chopped onions, and optionally pickles and green peas. Serve with sunflower or olive oil, and maybe mayonnaise or sour cream. A dash of soy sauce adds considerable flavor.
Greek salad is typically more expensive, but is very quick to prepare. Dice a tomato and a cucumber, chop some onion, slice olives. Dice feta cheese or any softish cheese you have on hand. Likewise, add vegetable oil, sour cream or mayonnaise, maybe soy sauce for flavor. I also recommend adding oregano or basil. Some chopped green salad or cabbage work alright too.
I googled pretty much the same thing a few years ago. And that’s where I found my now favorite pasta sauce:
- Cube half an onion
- put some oil in a small pot
- fry the onion until it’s translucent
- add 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
- add half a cup of cream
- mix well
- heat to boiling, then let it simmer until you are ready
- in the meantime (or now) heat a huge pot of salt water. It should be about as salty as the Mediterranean sea.
- cook 150 g of white- or 80g of whole grain pasta according to the instructions on the packaging
- add the cooked pasta to your pasta sauce
- add salt and pepper to taste
In general, most dishes that are focused around carbs are pretty cheap.
You can basically never go wrong with a curry/stew. Japanese curry/rioux cubes are amazing and people sleep on the jarred thai curry pastes. Excellent with frozen veggies although I try to still grab fresh carrots or some other root vegetable.
Aside from that? My go to (that I made probably a bit too much during the pandemic…) is a boxed rice mix (think zatarans or goya), some low sodium spam, and some varying quality chicken stock. Minimal effort, basically all stuff you can buy in bulk and keep in the pantry. and it usually makes 2-3 servings depending on your tolerance for sodium. Bonus points if you use half and half homemade stock (which is a lot less effort than people would think) and carton, but Better than Boullion is an expensive way to get close.
All possible variations of one-pots.
You can use what’s available and make dozens of variations with cheap ingredients. Plus easy cooking and low energy costs because you only use one pot.
Beans and rice takes many forms, and is generally cheap, and fairly nutritious
I’m a fan of pork butt (or shoulder) in a slow cooker all day (or oven on low) it manages to be pretty cheap per serving, and you can spice it to match any cuisine
Beef is just for special occasions unfortunately
Some fish, like tilapia, can be cheap proteins… I cook mine with lemon and dill
Canned proteins should not be overlooked
Bread is one of those things that is cheaper to buy than make IMO
If only cheese wasn’t so fucking expensive lol
The noble potato, savior of many a meal
Bread is one of those things that is cheaper to buy than make IMO
I checked my Walmart. Premium bread flour is $5.25 for 5lb (enough for 6-7 loaves). The cheapest bread is $2.50. Bread is a pain to make, I won’t deny that, but your time would have to be pretty valuable to erase the savings.
How is your bread so expensive? Cheapest loaf here is £0.45 for 800g in Aldi, most other shops same size is about £0.70-£0.90
Yes, I can make more money than I save by making my own bread with the time used
For me it was more the responsibility to keep the sourdough well and alive, without really baking a loaf every few days/once a week
At least it didn’t work for us last time
Maybe, I should give it another try and read up more before - because bread is a delicious rabbit holeI’m a huge fan of soda bread, which does not require sourdough (or yeast). You can go from “I have no bread” to “I am eating bread” in about 40 minutes.
The rising is done via buttermilk and baking soda.
Beans and rice is a very good suggestion. Grains alone are missing many amino-acids. Legumes add them. And legumes are almost as cheap as grains are.
Golgoppa, minced veg salad you can eat with potato chips.
Cabbage base, carrots, onions, other crunchy vegetables, dice/minced everything, mix in some cream sauces so it sticks together, you don’t need much, cute down on tastiness.
Super cheap, super easy to make, super tasty and healthy.
From a post with more detail and recipes back in the old travel com. New travel com here.
some bread you like(soft bread is good for this), cheese slices, tomato. optionally tuna or salmon if you can find some with decent price, maybe some spices(i like dill and oregano). You can also just skip the tuna/salmon, its pretty good with just cheese and tomato too.
Butter the bread, put tomato slice on it and cheese on top of it. Put it on oven and set it to 200c. Let them be there until cheese has properly melted and bread has toasted a bit. Take it out and put tuna on top of it or small slice of salmon. or put something else you like on it.
You can put the spices on top of the cheese before the oven or after it.
And naturally you dont have to make just one singular bread, make as much as you want.
Another food i have been occasionally making is mashed everything. I boil some potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots until they are soft, then just mash them with the wooden… smasherthingy…? (perunanuija). Add some cream if you want, also some salt and other spices you feel might work (again, i like dill and oregano, they go with everything. Some other spices might work for you better so experiment). If it tastes good, its done, if not you could try putting it on stove for some time so new ingredients mix up better.
Meat is expensive, so veggie meals first. Something simple, nourishing and tasty is Risotto
Indeed, I did a mushroom risotto last week!
Indian food my friend! Loads of pulse based dishes that are not difficult, and very inexpensive. Dal, Channa, Pani Puri, Paneer etc… If it works for 1 billion modest Indians, it will work for you.
Even if you add meat, you can use the cheapest cuts and include the bones for savoury broth making built into the dish.
I did Gobi Aloo last week!
Pulse? Is that a typo for potato?
Pulse crops are things like lentils, peas, chickpeas, etc. Similar to how cereal crops refer to things like wheat, barley, oats, etc.
Apparently ‘pulses’ are a subset of legumes that are used for human consumption, as opposed to livestock feed.
Thank you, never heard of that before
(And thanks to the guy asking for all the uncultured swines, like me)In the states that’s not a commonly known word, probably because we eat almost none of those foods. Thanks for the info!
Pulse is pulse. No potato. Is only dream.
*Cries in Latvian.
One of the small things that make your cold and dark day a little darker is finding an odd Latvia joke in the wild
Oh, man, I’d almost forgotten about the Latvian potato jokes from reddit :D
Usually when people say “pulse” in this context they’re talking about lentils.
In my search for a reference for you, I discovered that it’s a bit more complicated than that, and many beans are considered pulses too.
See “terminology” section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legume
