Your best money saving meals to last through the week

[Gigis]

DH and I are trying to make drastic changes to our lifestyle to save money. Were used to quick ready meals, takeaway type stuff in the week as we both work long hours. Often we eat separately.

Please throw me your cheapest, tastiest meals that dont take an age to make and either have ingredients that can be used in another dish in the week or can be added to bulk out food midweek too. I am getting stuck beyond pasta and tinned tomatoes...

Carbonara, fry some chopped up bacon and garlic in oil. Cook spaghetti. Whisk up 2 eggs with plenty of Parmesan and pepper. Stir bacon into spaghetti then mix in eggs stirring to make the sauce. You have to stir quickly and quickly otherwise it scrambles. Bloody delicious and minimum ingredients needed!

Get some Schwartz garlic and herb seasoning
Sprinkle it all over chicken breasts.
Put them in the oven for 40-50 minutes
Have with rice or potatoes and veg or salad, easy peasy.

I usually make my own gravy but understand if you don't want to go that far!

@ifigoup could I please have your kedgeree recipe? My late mum used to make a delicious one and it’s the one recipe she never wrote down!

Bean pot:

1 can kidney beans
1 can butter beans
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon chilli
2 chopped cloves garlic
2 tablespoons tomato puree
Handful frozen pepper
Stock cube

Put all ingredients in a pan, add a can water and simmer down. When it's fairly thick, take out a ladle full of beans and mash them. Return to the pan to thicken the sauce and enjoy

Big hunk of ham in the slow cooker and cook all day.
Soak peas and boil up and add together, tasty pea and ham soup

Kedgeree:

4 frozen haddock fillets
1 onion, minced
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp curry powder
4 cardamom pods
Pinch saffron
600ml vegetable stock
300g basmati rice, rinsed

Poach the fish in water
While fish is poaching, fry onion in a large, tightly lidded pan. Add spices and cook for 1 min. Add rice and stock and bring to the boil. Put tight lid on pan and turn heat right down. Leave it for 10-15 mins or until all water is absorbed.
Flake the haddock, add to cooked rice, stir and leave for 10 mins.

Some people add chopped hard boiled eggs when they're serving this, but I don't as I dont like them.

Mushroom Stroganoff
Diced onion
Chopped garlic
Chopped mushrooms
Fry all of the above in olive oil.
Add stock and parprika (smoked if possible otherwise ordinary will do)
Simmer until stock has reduced
Add dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche at the end and stir through.
Serve with either rice or linguini/tagliatelle.
Takes about 20 mins to cook.

500g pork mince
Tin toms
Salt
Pepper
Small packet sage and onion stuffing mix
Two grated apples
Spices you like plus a little garlic

Combine together in a loaf tin and bake at 180 to 190, use a knife when it comes out clean it’s cooked. It’s a meat loaf type thing serves four nice with mash, peas, carrots and gravy. Also nice in sandwiches cold.

Mushroom and bacon macaroni cheese.

Fry bacon till crisp, add sliced mushrooms.

Boil macaroni for five minutes.

Make or buy a white sauce and add cheese

Combine white sauce, macaroni and bacon/mushroom mixture...put in dish, top with grated cheese. Bake till golden.

Drizzle with chilli sauce when you serve it.

It's incredible.

Cutting down on meat and not using meat substitutes saves a fortune

Chickpea and potato curry
Dahl
Egg and vegetable fried rice
Jacket with beans
Egg and chips
There is a Lebanese rice, onion and lentil dish called mejadra which is divine

Bacon roll-poly.

Chopped onion, softened, chopped bacon (coking bacon is very cheap - you get loads for a quid!), softened with the onion, chopped mushrooms (optional but nice). Cook these three ingredients together in a bit of marge until onion assort and bacon is cooked through. Make suet pastry with 4/6oz SR flour and 2/3oz suet (quantises depend on appetite). Roll out, spread bacon mix over and roll it up. Into oven on 200 for 30 mins or until brown. Serve with mashed potatoes and maybe a bit of cabbage, and gravy made from dried granules (Bisto is pretty good). 'Tis lush!

Also

sausage and mash (self-explanatory)

Bacon and onion hot-pot - very thin slices of onion and potatoes, layered with bacon (use some of your giant£1 pack ), Season each layer. Add stock to cover, into oven for a couple of hours on 150 (or better still - into slow cooker for the day). Serve with something green.

Scone pizza - make a plain scone mix, roll out, spread with tomato puree or chopped tomatoes, sprinkle with cheese and add other toppings as available (What about some of that bacon? Yes - there's still some left!). Or peppers/ mushrooms/ onion etc whatever. Into the oven 200 for 15 minutes.

Stir fry - very thinly sliced veg - mushrooms, onions, peppers, carrot (small "matchsticks") with - well, you can use bacon, but you might be sick of it by now - use a thinly sliced chicken breast or a pork chop - one will feed two people done like this. Fry quickly. Add 1/4 pint chicken stock and (if you like sweet stuff) some cheap pineapple pieces from a tine plus some of the juice. Salt, pepper, bit of sugar, soy sauce (all to taste). Bring to boil, add cornflour to thicken, serve with rice.

Chickpea curry - Tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed. Fry onion (thinly sliced), when golden add 2tbs curry sauce/ powder (or to taste) - cook 2- 3 minutes, add chickpeas, 4-5tbs ketchup, small amount of veg stock (or any other stock you prefer), heat through and simmer 5-10 minutes. Serve with riceor naan.

Oh just this weekend I did sweet potato and spinach curry

Sweet potatoes diced quite large
Spinach, half a large bag
Can coconut milk
Two big tomatoes quartered
Red thai paste>sold in every big store, is a nice one in aldi about £1.50
Onions optional I used red quartered.
Garlic optional
Fry onions in red thai paste, add tin coconut milk and some water. Add in the sweet potato (and carrot, any root veg in fact) 10 minutes simmer,
Add tomatoes and spinach (I wilted the spinach before but you dont have to)
Simmer till all veg cooked through, serve with rice or packet rice or noodles or ????

@Splodgerz - my mum used to make it with leftover cooked rice but I often make it with fresh. Anyway: chop an onion and sweat in a mix of oil and butter with some mild or medium curry powder until soft. Stir in cooked rice, chopped hard-boiled eggs (if I’m doing the rice from scratch I boil the eggs in the water at the same time), and bits of cooked fish - ideally smoked, traditionally haddock but you could use lightly smoked salmon. Sometimes I add peas for a bit of colour and some extra veg, but my mum never did. When finished it should be good and yellow, what with the egg yolks, turmeric in the curry powder, and butter. Also, my mum used that really radioactive yellow dyed smoked haddock, but I don’t think it’s sold any more!

Any stir fry rice or noodle dish can make a small amount of chicken or meat go a long way.
"Spicy rice is a favourite in our house, fry an onion, some garlic if you have it, spring onions or chopped peppers, chopped left over cooked chicken, add curry powder, chilli flakes, salt, and a pile of left over rice.
Plenty soy sauce. One cup of cooked left over chicken can be stretched to feed four people.