What meals do you cook when very low on money?
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Ramen with frozen vegetables mixed in.
Bean tacos.
Some kind of dish using chicken thighs as you can buy the thighs for cheap.
If ground beef is cheap, cottage pie.
Various pasta dishes
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Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they're DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you'll find it's basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever
wrote last edited by [email protected]As a side note, it's a good investment to buy a pressure cooker at least for the beans since it cuts the cooking time to about 10 minutes (and this is assuming you've soaked the beans for at least 12H).
Pressure cookers will also cut down the cooking time of things that need longer cooking to not be too hard to chew, such as cheap pieces of beef.
Also consider chickpeas along with beans and lentils since you can cook them in the same way and they're the same kind of thing (pulses).
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Beans shouldn't be much more pricey, give you less worry about arsenic and contain a fair amount more protein than rice.
If affordable, I'd pick beans over rice any day.
Big bags of dried beans it is!wrote last edited by [email protected]Also, for variety, there are a lot of kind of beans, plus there's chickpeas and lentils which can be made in the same way.
For even more variety, one can eat beans with rice
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I hope you're better off now
ļø !The rice comment is 100% spot on BTW, you know you're in dire straits when you can't afford rice...
wrote last edited by [email protected]Things are way better now! I was getting pretty depressed, and struggled with suicidal ideation. Had a plan, and a redundant backup plan in case the first one didn't turn out to be fatal, but then randomly decided to try an extreme change in lifestyle so I enlisted into the Air Force on kind of a whim. Was always opposed to military cuz of the whole killing innocent people thing... figured if they put me that kind of position I'd just refuse (gave absolutely zero fucks back then) or worse case I'd just go back to plan A and kill myself instead.
Didn't have to find out though: got lucky and they made me a medic (surgical tech specifically). And hugely: access to actual healthcare, to include mental!
Got the fuck out as soon as my enlistment was up, and I've been working as a civilian surgical tech ever since, which has me up to $24/hr. Actually not broke anymore, which still feels kinda weird. Using my GI Bill to go to nursing school right now, so soonish I'll looking at another income bump, but I'm already making enough to at least eat healthy... you don't realize how shitty you just always feel at baseline when your diet consists of carbs and whatever you can find on the clearance rack.
I see a lot of my classmates with that with that same kind of "aw fuck" expression on their face when they see the price tag on the hospital cafeteria food at our clinical rotations, so I've been pretty quick to buy their meal and tell em to pay it forward when they're a 'rich' nurse lol.
But yeah, it sucks absolute balls to be poor. I will never let myself forget what that's like.
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Adding to this. A pressure cooker brings the cook time down dramatically and I think it produces a superior result.
I second this.
Also works for things like cheap pieces of beef which normally require long cooking times before you can comfortably eat them.
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I can cook rice OK, but it's never really enjoyable to eat. Always too bland. Never tried cooking with dried beans and lentils so I'll have to explore that. Cheers.
Look up recipes for seasoned rice, obviously it ups the cost a bit.
Fry the dry rice in some type of oil until golden brown (stir regularly to prevent burning) then add some chicken stock or a bouillon cub to the water along with herbs and spices you like while the rice boils. I usually go with onion/garlic powder and some dried rosemary but fresh works good too.
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Also, for variety, there are a lot of kind of beans, plus there's chickpeas and lentils which can be made in the same way.
For even more variety, one can eat beans with rice
Agreed! Pulses in general allow for a healthy and affordable diet.
I'm not a proponent of rice mainly for the way it gets produced (lots of water needed and methane emitted in the process) and the fact it's a hyperaccumulator of arsenic. About all these things I don't need to worry when picking pulses.
But each to their own and some variety rarely is a bad idea. -
Things are way better now! I was getting pretty depressed, and struggled with suicidal ideation. Had a plan, and a redundant backup plan in case the first one didn't turn out to be fatal, but then randomly decided to try an extreme change in lifestyle so I enlisted into the Air Force on kind of a whim. Was always opposed to military cuz of the whole killing innocent people thing... figured if they put me that kind of position I'd just refuse (gave absolutely zero fucks back then) or worse case I'd just go back to plan A and kill myself instead.
Didn't have to find out though: got lucky and they made me a medic (surgical tech specifically). And hugely: access to actual healthcare, to include mental!
Got the fuck out as soon as my enlistment was up, and I've been working as a civilian surgical tech ever since, which has me up to $24/hr. Actually not broke anymore, which still feels kinda weird. Using my GI Bill to go to nursing school right now, so soonish I'll looking at another income bump, but I'm already making enough to at least eat healthy... you don't realize how shitty you just always feel at baseline when your diet consists of carbs and whatever you can find on the clearance rack.
I see a lot of my classmates with that with that same kind of "aw fuck" expression on their face when they see the price tag on the hospital cafeteria food at our clinical rotations, so I've been pretty quick to buy their meal and tell em to pay it forward when they're a 'rich' nurse lol.
But yeah, it sucks absolute balls to be poor. I will never let myself forget what that's like.
Thanks for sharing your story. Iām glad is going better now, and wish you luck for the next pay bump too! (God, what a horrible system, having to bet on joining the militaryā¦ sorry you had to go through that)
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Oats are underrated. Dirt cheap, with calories and nutrients. Super easy and fast to cook.
Can be cooked in water or milk. Can be made sweet (e.g. with apple and cinnamon, drop the sugar) or savory (e.g. curry powder, or tomato etc).And it definitely fills your stomach.
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To add to this, buying from specific ethnicity markets tends to be cheaper. If you have nearby Chinese/Eastern, any middle eastern, Mexican/Latin American stores, you can find a lot of really cheap staples to make.
I moved recently and the overall lack of ethnic stores is driving me up the walls! They are usually both cheaper and better quality than anything you find at the supermarketā¦ I guess I moved to white-as-butter-land
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If you're doing anything with pasta that involves butter you're doing it wrong, but you do you.
An Italian home cooking staple is pasta with butter and sage. Just melt the butter with the sage and gently fry while boiling the pasta
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There's a few things I usually have at home because they're cheap, can be used for various dishes with or without additional ingredients and I will actually eat them before they spoil:
Beans, lentils, tomato paste, eggs, peanuts, cottage cheese, smoked tofu (not neccessarily a cheap item but I only use half a block or less per dish), bread, rice, spring onions, bell pepper, frozen spinach, hummus, cucumber.
Frozen spinaches havenāt gotten a lot of attention in this thread yet!
Depends on how poor is poor and the cooking budget, but they stay good for a long time and you can add a bit to basically any dish: omelette, rice and beans, tomato pasta. Tasty, simple and flexible
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Breakfast: oatmeal
Snacks: popcorn (air popped, buy kernels.
NeedI recommend an air popper, but they're like 20 bucks. Then you can eat cheap popcorn forever). Bonus tip: if you can get your hands on a cheap electric coffee/spice grinder or want to grind seasonings by hand into an extremely fine powder, you can make popcorn salt that coats the popcorn really nicely. E.g. curry popcorn (salt + curry powder), lemon pepper, ranch (get ranch dressing powder). Spritzing with a fine mist of water can help the salt stick.Lunch/Dinner:
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Fried rice (egg, whatever meat/veg, I like doing soy sauce glazed canned sardines with it for a cheap meal)
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Red beans and rice
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Chicken & sausage gumbo over rice
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Enchiladas, rice, beans
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Rotisserie chicken tacos
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Collard greens and cornbread, you can add bacon or other cheap cuts of pork to add protein.
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Pasta bake (chicken, spinach, pesto, white sauce, little cheese, optionally dried tomatoes - dry them in your oven to save money or buy canned for a little more)
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Korean rice bowls. Chicken, gochujang (like $5-8 but lasts a long time in the fridge), red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil. Marinate overnight. Cook on stove or in oven. Serve on rice with side dishes: carrot and cucumber banchan - just get some matchstick carrots, combine with vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, chili flakes. Cucumbers: slice thin, salt, drain. Combine with sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes. Assemble.
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Filipino style Chicken Adobo (potatoes, carrots, chicken, onion, garlic, ginger cooked in a vinegar soy sauce based sauce)
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Make like 200 pierogis for like 20 bucks (and several hours) and freeze them for later. Boil or pan fry and eat with a sausage and some saurkraut. For fillings, I like a little ground meat with onion and mushroom and saurkraut - 1 part meat, 1 part mushroom, 1 part onion. Even cheaper is potato and cheese - typically this means mashed potato mixed with sour cream and cheese.
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Cabbage rolls. Head of cabbage, rice, ground pork, onion, garlic, a couple cans of tomato soup. Cook rice, mix with ground pork, diced onion, and garlic. Dunk cabbage head in boiling water for a minute or two, peel a leaf off, stuff with pork mixture and roll. Put all rolls in a baking pan on a layer of the tomato soup, top with tomato soup. Bake covered mins or until cooked (165f internal temperature)
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West African Peanut Stew. Lots of recipes online. Contains a mix of peanuts, peanut butter, sweet potatoes, collard greens, chicken/veggie stock, and optionally chicken. Very filling, calorie dense, and cheap. I make like 2kg of soup for <$20.
In general, if you want cheap food then look for cultures with rich food traditions born from poverty. Also look for more plant-based recipes or find ways to stretch your meat using fillers like cabbage and onion.
Examples: Louisiana Cajun, American South, India (at least the more modest dishes without lots of meat and cream/butter), Eastern Europe, Central and South America, even provincial French food & British "food" (I jest, but bubble & squeak or bangers & mash have fed many a hungry family)
Staple foods should include:
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Staple Starches: potatoes (sweet potatoes and normal potatoes), rice, corn, beans, lentils
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Chicken (whole raw or rotisserie) - benefit of a whole raw chicken is you can use the whole carcass to make stock and get enough meat for 2 people for a whole week. Rotisserie is the same deal, but precooked and not best suited for all applications.
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Filler vegetables: basically all of your cruciferous vegetables, onions, root vegetables
Popcorns donāt need an air popper: a pot with a lid and some oil+salt.
Warning: you need to keep the pot at a high temperature for quite a while, so avoid using non-stick pans because they are going to die quickly.
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Rice and beans.
Oatmeal
Pasta
Marked down produce
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Pasta and sauce. As long as you have a few basic herbs and spices on hand (garlic powder, Italian seasonings, salt pepper), you can buy a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of pasta, and you can have several delicious, filling meals for less than 5 bucks total. Spend a little more and toss in ground beef, ground pork, or mushrooms, or a combination of all three.
Aldi has the ingredients for really cheap. You can even buy a pound of ground pork for only about $3. The spices are only about a buck each.
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I moved recently and the overall lack of ethnic stores is driving me up the walls! They are usually both cheaper and better quality than anything you find at the supermarketā¦ I guess I moved to white-as-butter-land
Same here, Mexican food is my favorite, but new location has no decent Mexican restaurants or stores.
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Tuna and cheese are cheap????
A can of tuna is about a dollar, that's probably good for 2 sandwiches.
I think that qualifies as cheap. I mean 1 tuna sandwich probably costs about the same amount as a pack of ramen, and it contains actual food.
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Pasta and sauce. As long as you have a few basic herbs and spices on hand (garlic powder, Italian seasonings, salt pepper), you can buy a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of pasta, and you can have several delicious, filling meals for less than 5 bucks total. Spend a little more and toss in ground beef, ground pork, or mushrooms, or a combination of all three.
Aldi has the ingredients for really cheap. You can even buy a pound of ground pork for only about $3. The spices are only about a buck each.
A bag of onions and a jar of minced garlic punch above their price tag for pasta enhancement as well.
I like to saute the onion (diced) until golden and translucent, then add a scoop of the minced garlic, then just as it starts to brown, dump in the sauce, Italian seasoning, and stir at a very low simmer while the noodles cook.
Add some pasta water to the sauce before you strain so it sticks to the noodles better.
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A bag of onions and a jar of minced garlic punch above their price tag for pasta enhancement as well.
I like to saute the onion (diced) until golden and translucent, then add a scoop of the minced garlic, then just as it starts to brown, dump in the sauce, Italian seasoning, and stir at a very low simmer while the noodles cook.
Add some pasta water to the sauce before you strain so it sticks to the noodles better.
I didn't know that about the pasta water, thank you!
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My favorite food when I was poor was something I called bachelor chow.
Cubed and fried spam, a can of baked beans, and some rice. Iād get two or three meals out of it.
