If you love cooking but you're on quite a tight budget

[foxessocks]

Have you got any tips? I love to cook but a lot of fresh ingredients are expensive, I've switched to a lot of frozen veg recently as I find it cheaper some times (depends what it is but it also equals less waste). I already cook a lot of vegetarian meals so only cook with meat a few times a week really. But we do love fish and all seafood which is expensive but it is so good for you. I love salmon but it costs us £7 for all of us for one meal. Also fresh herbs are more expensive than dried but taste better.

It got me thinking because I wanted to try a Jamie Oliver recipe next week but it needs so many fresh herbs, vine ripened tomatoes , posh potatoes etc!

I usually shop at Asda and I budget £50 a week including toiletries, cleaning products etc basically everything. And then I do a couple of top up shops usually about £20 in total over the week I suppose (more when school holidays and my dd comes along!!). Top up is just bread milk fruit usually. We are a family of four but my children are young so don't eat huge amounts yet.

You mention that you like fish but find it expensive. I think the trick is to use fish as a component in a dish, so rather than serve each person a fillet of salmon, buy less salmon and use it diced or flaked in a pea & salmon risotto, or with a creamy sauce served with linguini.

That way you limit the cost quite a bit. Fish soup is another way of making a little seem a lot, Cullen Skink or sweetcorn and fish chowder are tasty and filling, and you can use the cheaper types of fish.

You've discovered frozen vegetables, so remember that frozen fish can be good value also.

Another vote for growing your own herbs, mint and chives are very easy and sage is useful too.

brocolli stalks I could use maybe

We stir-fry these or use them for broccoli soup. Similarly, trimmed mushroom stalks are diced, cooked, and eaten on toast or stirred into a rice dish or made into mushroom stock/soup.

We always eat cauliflower leaves as a green vegetable. The stalks and core of cauliflower are a separate vegetable and can be grated and cooked or fermented as part of a vegetable mix.

One of my favourite fermented salads that I always put up when I find cauliflower at a decent price: Giardiniera

We ferment quite a lot of vegetables but you either take to the taste of these or you don't.

Apologies if mentioned but Lidl are rolling out £1.50 "wonky veg" boxes across 78 stores. Scroll down for the full list in link:

list

Just to say that altho' my store is one of the ones listed as part of the scheme, my local Lidl denies all knowledge of it. (We've asked several times.)

If you have a plethora of fresh herbs - homegrown or bought- this is what I do.
Some I will chop finely , put in an ice cube tray, pour olive oil over and freeze. Others might get mixed together (say thyme and oregano for Greek dishes) before getting the olive oil treatment.
If I have a lot of garlic and parsley I will buy some cheap unsalted butter, soften the butter , chop the parsley and garlic really finely , mix with salt crystals and black pepper ( you can add lemon juice too if you have some ) and squash it all together. Then I make little sausage shapes, wrap in cling film and freeze. This is perfect for garlic butter on bread, or melt somein a pan to fry off thin slices of pork loin ( quite a cheap and healthy cut) or bashed out chicken breast/thigh. It also zings up veg - pop some to melt in a large pan, toss in cooked green beans, spinach, kale, cabbage -anything green, also carrots , peas etc and coat the veg.

arranfan
The bread I make takes 25 mins in the oven, I normally make some oat fingers or something at the same time, so I wouldn't think it uses that much electric.
This is the one I make cheaptastyandeasy.wordpress.com/bread/
I just prove in the bowl/bread tins on the worktop, so room temp.

Thanks more great ideas here! Wonky veg boxes sound great haven't seen any in my local supermarkets yet but I'll look out for them. I do buy Morrisons wonky grapes which are much cheaper than the normal ones and not actually wonky at all !

I'm going to look into bread. We do make home made pizzas which we love.
Love the idea for herbs or garlic type mixes in ice cube trays , just need to get organised and do that at some point!

Rosemary, thyme and other woody herbs freeze really well. Just buy a bunch, freeze it as is in the bag, and you can use it as and when straight from the bag.

Soft herbs such as basil, parsley, coriander, tarragon etc can be chopped up and either mixed into soft butter and frozen wrapped in clingfilm or foil, or chopped into a ice cube tray and topped up with olive oil, so that you can just pop one cube out as and when you need it.

Oh x post, just saw your post and someone’s already given you that tip!

If you are going to make bread, then serve it at every meal to mop up sauce, dressings, soups, gravy. It's certainly a way to fill up hungry people without spending too much.

Agree, use less fish and cut into small pieces. Same with all protein. Add more veg to the meals to fill them out. Things like grated carrot in a pasta sauce, veg laden stir-fry etc.

Sounds very obvious but look for seasonal fresh fruit/veg bargains. I made a peach cobbler using 49p punnets of peaches from Tesco. Very simple american recipe with flour, milk, butter not even eggs needed. We had with cream, was very good! Cheap puds make up for perhaps having a less exciting or smaller portion main?

[Waves to Foxes]

Some great advice on here! Yes, on same theme as using less fish; we often buy one medium size steak for three of us, and after resting, cut it in to thinnish slices on the slant, serve on bed of cous-cous salad prepped with garlic, roquette, perhaps roasted red peppers/cherry toms, with dressing/steak juices. Steak is not exactly budget food but it goes much further prepped that way for an occasional treat.

The other thing we are doing with our windfall apples is cooking them in the breadmaker; wasn't aware of this until a friend pointed it out, but it has a setting to make compote! It sort of steams it and is very nice and doesn't require added sugar.

Oh and kedgeree and salad nicoise are both good dishes for making fish go further!

That Thrifty Lesley site linked by Jozxyqk down thread has some really good ideas too!

Sorry, I haven't read the full thread but for herbs that grow ok here I'd get some planted outside. I am hopeless at keeping plants alive but mint, chives, parsley, rosemary and oregano are all growing easily in my garden.

Also Waitrose do little sachets of frozen herbs and ginger and other things like that. Great on a budget

Thanks again everyone!

Would people recommend bread makers?!

I haven't got one, I just use my hand mixer because it has dough hooks and make bog standard plain bread. My Dad had a bread maker though and said it's good for wholemeal bread as generally that's much harder to get right by hand.

You won't save money making your own bread but you'll eat nicer bread!

I don't know, we definitely save money making our own. We buy flour and yeast blocks in bulk. The flour is cheap and the yeast blocks are 25 cents and each make 8 loaves. We're in Spain though and a supermarket loaf is €1.30 minimum. Also YY to it tasting nicer

I know people that swear by bread-makers. I happen to live in a country where the bread is superb so it's a difficult call. The bread we make in the machine can be a bit "steamy/doughy" if you don't get the recipe quite right. Personally I think the bread I make the ordinary way is better but of course it takes much longer to do! A bread machine takes all the hassle out of the process and is incredibly convenient (esp if you have young DC)) so it's swings and roundabouts! The best thing about making your own bread by whatever method though is that you have control over what goes in it.

Very true. In ours it's just yeast, olive oil, salt, water and flour.

I have a big mixer with dough hook so I haven't thought about a bread machine.
Every now and then flour in our nearest supermarket is on a multibuy offer and I put the spares in the freezer to keep it fresh.
I also buy bakery stuff marked down and put it in the freezer as I have hungry teens.

I bite the bullet on fish and meat prices a lot of the time but stretch it as others have said.

The other thing I cook a lot of now all the children eat so much is potatoes. I do a massive casserole of layered slices with herbs onions and a little stock.

Fuel costs is a point.

I bake my own a lot more in colder weather so it is heating the house as well.

Great thread! Could I just chip in about extra virgin olive oil - I believe for health reasons it's not actually advised to cook with it, as it has a low smoking point. (If somebody with actual scientific knowledge can add to this, that would be a good idea in case I've got the wrong end of the stick!)

I keep a bottle of EVOO for salad purposes but for everyday cooking I use a big bottle (2l) of blended olive oil from Sainsbury's. The unit price is far lower than small bottles and it keeps for ages. You can probably get these big bottles from other supermarkets too, but Sainsbury's is the most convenient one for me to get too (no car).

For Jamie Oliver and similar recipes, I tend to ignore his strictures about using only organic, handreared by fairies type ingredients and use what I can get/afford, and I would often add/omit something if I thought the recipe will still work. For instance, last night, I made a salad using cauliflower couscous which specified adding fresh tomatoes and olives. The other thing I was serving already had tomatoes and olives in it, so I tweaked the cauli recipe by using a handful of sundried tomatoes and a lot of extra parsley instead. (It was excellent, btw.)