What meals do you cook when very low on money?
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Pasta, instant noodles, polenta, rice+tuna, bean guiso or stew whatever you call it. Also whatever vegetables in season and cheap, ie, potatoes, pumpkin.
Frozen Basa fillets are the cheapest unprocessed meat too
Search for guiso recipes if you need to learn what to do with legumes. Beauty of guiso is that the amount of ingredients doesn't matter much and you can always add more of what you like and remove what you don't like. You can add any bits of meat to it like sausages, chorizo, beef, chicken, you name it. You can also add any tubers, onion, or pumpkin if you have any, but if you don't have any of these things you can still cook it.
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Nothing against the other suggestions, but pretty much anything you can buy that is "ready to eat" (canned soup) or "easy to make" (Kraft dinner), even if it is already cheap, would still be cheaper to make yourself from scratch. Cooking, in bulk, is your friend.
Two cartons of soup broth $1.77 CDN/946ml each, half a bag of frozen veggies $2.57/500g, boom you have 5 soup meals for <$1 per meal. A cup of flour to make dumplings in that soup and make it more appealing. Compare that to a canned soup which seems to be up in price lately, between 1.50 - 3.00, and you're laughing, and eating a lot less salt.
I haven't figured out exactly the cost of making bread (I play with the recipe and how many loaves), but I am absolutely certain it costs less and tastes better than the cheapest bullshit bread you can get at a store. So less than $2 for a loaf, and it actually smells and tastes like bread and doesn't dissolve in your mouth like cotton candy. No bullshit preservatives.
Pasta with pasta sauce, ez and cheap af, filling. <$1 per meal.
Things that are more difficult imo are meat and cheese due to the cost. I like to buy frozen logs of ground beef which isn't that appealing on it's own, but is passable in chili and shepherd's pie.
Cheese can go a long way especially if you shred it for pizza (and you already have flour and pasta sauce from above.)Speaking of shepherd's pie, potatoes are cheap and versatile. One tube of ground beef with a layer of frozen veg and mashed taters on top, again <$1 per meal.
Not to mention rice which is maybe the ultimate value-for-money food when you just need something in your stomach. Foodies will crucify me, but I love to eat it with margerine (way cheaper than butter) and salt and pepper. There's so much more you can do with it, though. Good for bulking up soups too.
Tacking on..
It can depend where you shop or what resources you have. Canned clams can be dirt cheap and still good if you have the right grocery store. Using spaghetti instead of lenguine can save money as it tends to be about half the price (clams over lenguine / spaghetti). A ~$2 meal at home that tastes better than a $20 one at a restaurant.
Regarding bread, the $1 Italian loaves at Walmart's bakery are great for the price and freeze well (*yellow tagged even cheaper).
Chicken thighs are often $1-$2 a lb (cheaper than whole chickens), and are far more forgiving on over cooking. Learn to cook and pair them good (like thai peanut sauce or roasted veg or chipotle instead of Franks) and you won't want white chicken meat. Deboning them yourself can save money and make for great sandwiches (I don't know a store that sells deboned with skin on either).
Aldi has great prices on many kinds of sausages, and they're pretty good.
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Consider the food bank too probably.
Bulk dry beans, bulk sack rice, canned beans for chilli when feeling lazy or on sale, meat only on steep discount usually making stew or chilli with the worse less/undesirable cuts. Stir fry when you find better ones. Frozen vegetables and fruit bags. Store brand usually. Basic frozen pizzas, pasta bags with tomato based pasta sauce. Pasta sauce cans are frequently on sale and baseline is a low price.
Bananas, kiwis, and mandarin oranges are usually cheap in Canada anyways for fresh fruit.
I have a meat grinder attachment on my used mixer, very useful.
You can do a lot with apps like Paprika or Supercook. You add stuff you already have and it spits out only recipes with what you have on hand already. Helps me use up what I buy efficiently and stops you from getting bored of eating the same stuff. Less food waste and flavour bordeom is always good for mood and wallet.
If you have space, gardening. Fruit trees alone fill a deep freezer eventually.
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You don't actually need to soak them before you cook them.
I've made plenty of bean dishes, starting with completely dry beans. It takes a little longer to cook because they are rehydrating while they cook, but they still come out great.
Adding to this. A pressure cooker brings the cook time down dramatically and I think it produces a superior result.
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If you then add fried onions to that you get a lebonese comfort food
Thanks. I’ll try that. It’s definitely my comfort food.
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I often fry whatever vegetables I can find and add a fried egg.
Rice and buckwheat are very cheap (and vegan if you're of that persuasion). If you cook buckwheat, you can add a few tiny bits of sausage in there and you've got a very filling meal.
Oatmeal is great because you buy it in huge bags that last long and you can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If the budget is not that bad you cook it with milk. If it is you cook it with water (this is called gruel, medieval peasant food). If you're making gruel add a bit of salt to make it more palatable.
An old classic is of course ramen, but the ramen bricks can be made much more filling if you boil them in a pot with a sausage or two (this requires you to have sausage).
If you live in certain tropical areas you can harvest some edible fruits from unfenced land and use this to enrich your diet.
Eating a couple extra hours of sleep for breakfast instead of food is a dubiously healthy but certainly effective way to save some money on weekends.
A pro tip is if your drawer is not very clean your onions will start to sprout and take root. I didn't have to buy onions for about half a year at one point because I just kept cutting off a bit and it kept growing back. I didn't water them or anything, they just did that in my dark dingy cupboard.
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Beans and cornbread. Or beans and rice. Cornmeal is especially cheap in the US with how subsidized it is, so cornbread is a good way to fill out a meal.
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Basically pasta.
I don't know where you are, but a 500g pack can be had for significantly under 1€ and is sufficient for multiple meals. Add a similar priced can of tomatoes, onions (optional) and some spices (I assume you have those).
Obviously there are other options for the sauce, many are cheap enough to consider when money is tight.
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I'm really enjoying you second guessing all the decisions I made when I was poor! Not only was I struggling, but apparently did it completely wrong!
Third party here!
That other guy needs to fuck right off. You’re contributing reasonable stuff, they are not. Fuck em.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Rice and beans. Together they make a complete protein so can make up a larger bulk of your diet.
Pork loin, those gigantic big ones, are cheap per pound. Cut it into three for three roasts, freeze the other 2.
Try to get Multivitamins and magnesium. Long term you want those vitamins and minerals. Fish oil too. It seems expensive but it's cheaper than fish itself.
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Get the rice!
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When very low on money, it's what's in the cupboard,.which is oil, butter and pasta. Cheese is a bonus but the fridge will be empty before the cupboard.
You should always have rice and pasta available. Cheep and quick. So good for when tired or lazy, as well as when broke. Lots of people recommend beans but I don't like them so much.
Look at the specials in your supermarket. Many please discount heavily for stuff that is close to expiry date. If you shop daily you've less waste and get food deals.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
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
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Back when I was in the US like 5 years ago, I've been able to stretch my meals out to about $40 per month.
You can make a flavourful cheesy-pasta (not actual mac-and-cheese) with some pasta, some chicken bouillon, a tablespoon of butter or margarine, and a slice of processed cheese. For protein you can buy cheap chicken franks and chop it up, and for veggies I like frozen peas and frozen broccoli. Get store-brand for the cheapest possible options.
I was so stingy that I was able to stretch one box of pasta out to 11 meals, and I still looked forward to each meal.
To keep myself from going insane, every grocery run (every three weeks) I rewarded myself with a gallon bucket of store-brand ice-cream and two packs of store-brand chocolate sandwich cookies, all of which I completely devoured within one week.
I lost hella weight and felt really good about it. Unfortunately, I've gained it all back now.
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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.
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Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!
Fry onions in coconut oil, add lentils and water, season with garam masala and/or other herbs and spices, optionally add dried fruit and nuts, eat with rice. The best thing about this is that all ingredients keep well in the cupboard so you can stock up a little when you can afford to.
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10 minute farro from Trader Joe's. $2 a bag.
https://traderjoesrants.com/2022/04/20/trader-joes-10-minute-farro-whole-grain/
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Burritos. Beans, rice and whatever else you can get that's on sale it cheap. Make a batch Sunday night. The poorer was the more I would cook.
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Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!
wrote last edited by [email protected]1 cup dry beans, 1.5 cups water in instant pot. Press the "beans" button and go back to Lemmy til pot beeps at you (about 45 minutes). Can't get much simpler.
