What meals do you cook when very low on money?
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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 don’t 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 supermarket… 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. I’d get two or three meals out of it.
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Popcorns don’t 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.
That's a very good point. I still prefer air poppers because it prevents burning the kernels, but a pot would totally work.
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I eat cheap all the time, but rice and beans is the classic. If you can afford a can of tomatoes and some spices, then you can upgrade this to rajma masala. That's one of my fav post workout meals. Throw in some alliums, and other vegetables as you can (frozen is often p cheap).
Actually just look up vegan Indian recipes and source ingredients as cheaply as you can. Like dried beans, lentils, chickpeas, and spices — ideally purchased from bulk store — and you'll be healthy and satisfied for less money than you would believe.
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Who eats popcorn for dinner? They asked about food, not snacks. Popcorn contains basically zero nutrition.
We do all the time, popcorn and nachos with a movie or show. Sometime peanuts too.
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A can of lentils. Straight from the can with a spoon.
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Thanks for sharing your story. I’m 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 military… sorry you had to go through that)
First off, holy hell that last comment was absolutely obliterated by auto-correct and brain-farts. I am so sorry you had to suffer that before I noticed and made some desperately needed edits, lol.
...and yeah military was definitely a risk, that I honestly didn't expect to end well, but at that point, "what's the worst that could happen?" didn't really phase me, cuz I was actively planning for the worst to happen.
I got super lucky.
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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!Beans are also fantastic. More expensive and more work than rice though, so my cheap and lazy ass usually went for the white stuff. Didn't even know arsenic was a concern... nor would I probably have cared when I was that broke - all I really cared about was price.
But 100% beans will keep you full without breaking the bank!
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Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!
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Rice bowls, rice with chickpeas, rice with beans, throw some furikake and kimchi in there and some sriracha mayonaise.
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You do not need to be broke for: noodles made in herb water
Once you try it you may never go back to only salted waterHerb water? As in tea? Never heard of this
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Roasted whole chicken from grocery; where I’m at they’re $5 and you can make sandwiches for days and or make chicken based soup with the leftovers. Also beans and potatoes. So many things you can make with them. Accent them with cheap bulk spices and some herbs grown with a little cheap desktop hydroponic grower, or outside depending on climate.
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Really depends on the situation.
If I'm just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don't hunt, but I'm not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.
And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I'd take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I'd go there and take what they had to offer.
At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.
A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don't go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper -- in moderation -- so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.
When I've just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I'd just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.
Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.
Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.
Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.
So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don't have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that's still a meal even if that's not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that's still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you've got.
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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.
Is tofu considered expensive? I don't have much money per month for groceries, but I usually have 4-5 blocks of tofu in my fridge at all times because of its versatility and range of use in various dishes, so I've never thought about the price. It's around 2€ for 2 blocks of tofu. Not bad imo.
