Budget meals?

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What are your favourite low-cost meals?

In the winter I love to make lentil soup. 1 can of lentils, an onion, a couple of potatoes and a stock cube and we add a bit of chili powder to give it a kick. All the ingredients together probably cost around £2 and we get about 6 servings.

Jacket potato with baked beans (and cheese, if you have it).

www.google.com/amp/s/tasty.co/recipe/paprika-chicken-rice

This is one of my favourite cheap meals. It costs less than €4 total to make it easily feeds 5 of us with large portions. The oil from the thighs travels down through the rice. Add some frozen veg too if you like.

Pasta with mushrooms, peas, broccoli and garlic and herb cream cheese. Add chicken if you have more of a budget

Look up "A girl called Jack". She is food writer who specialises on cooking on a shoe string.

Tonight we're having fried rice to use up the odds and ends of veg in the fridge and freezer. I'm using black beans for protein this time as I discovered a can at the back of the cupboard. I can't decide if it'll be Indian, Chinese or Mexican flavour- that'll probably depend on how much we have in terms of spices or sauces.

I often add a fried egg on top and it makes it look a little fancier.

My best ever tip for budget cooking is to start by listing everything you already have in and then come up with meals by grouping the ingredients.

Following.... im struggling with easy, cheap and nutritious. It seems uou often have 2 of the 3!

Any kind of chickpea & spinach / chuck whatever veg in curry.
Pasta bake
This has also gone down well with my family recently www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pumpkinrisottowithcr_13723

Fry off a red onion, mushrooms, garlic and a couple of peppers. Add a tin of kidney beans, a can of chopped tomatoes a good glug of balsamic vinegar and some mixed dried herbs, allow to bubble a bit. Mix with cooked pasta and pour in an oven proof dish. Sprinkle with grated cheese and breadcrumbs and bake for 20 mins.

Dhal is a favourite in this house, made with dried red lentils and a tin of green lentils. At it’s most basic, add a chopped onion, garlic, curry powder and a stock cube and cook till the lentils are soft.

And soup, lots and lots of soup. Just made a big batch of leek and potato - 2 leeks, 3 potatoes, couple of cloves of garlic and stock and it’s delicious. Make some cheese on toast to go with it if you like.

A big pot of chilli con carne then portion out and put in the freezer. On top of jacket potatoes, with rice, on top of a hot dog or burger, stirred into macaroni cheese, or my favourite "Mexican lasagne" which is layers of chilli and cheese between corn tortillas and topped with more cheese and jalapeños. I eat it on pasta too, or baked in the oven covered with crushed tortilla chips or Doritos and a little cheese. It's great in burritos, quesadillas or tacos too of course. Also nice mixed with rice and stuffed into peppers then baked in the oven.