Is it possible to feed your family on. £20 a week? Slow cooker recipes please :)

[Jackthementalkitten]

When I had Facebook, quite a few years ago now. I did used too vaguely follow the - feed your family on £20 a week. I know there is a book out now by them. Apologies if this has been done before. With all the ever food prices increasing etc. I was thinking tonight with it been school holidays, a hungry teenage daughter- what meals could I do cheaper or even on £20 a week? If anybody has any slow cooker suggestions or even easy/ cheapish meal ideas, I’d be really grateful.

Oooo this will be a helpful thread 🤞
I'm rubbish with the slow cooker but I'd love some inspiration

I have around £25 a week now for 3 adults. I do a lot of batch cooking. Here are the favourites:

Jacket potatoes with cheese and beans or tuna
Homemade pizza with veg
Jamie Oliver’s veg chilli in wraps or with rice
Very large batches of curry sauce from The Curry Secret book
Pasta and broccoli cheese
Pasta with seafood, leek and cream sauce
If no money left, spaghetti with olive oil, chilli and garlic
Shepherds pie
Toad in the hole, peas and gravy

I’ll buy something expensive like chorizo and use it in several dishes e.g a massive batch of Spanish chicken to freeze then on top of a pizza and chopped up into a broccoli cheese.

We always have cheap tins of things to have on toast like sardines, spaghetti hoops etc then cheap tins of peaches to have as a crumble or with yoghurt. And 15p tins of rice pudding.

I don't have a slow cooker, but these are some of my cheap meals -
Bubble and squeak with fried egg
Pan haggerty
Jackets potatoes with beans and egg/sausages
Lentil curry and rice
Root vegetable and lentil stew
Carrot and chickpea stew
Egg fried rice
Lentil bolognaise with spaghetti

I do a massive slow cooker spaghetti bolognaise, use 2kg of mince, chopped onions, 4 tins of chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, herbs & seasoning, I even throw some wine in if I have any, when cooked I take out 1/4 & freeze, then have it for tea, the day after I add chilli, cumin & kidney beans, take out half to freeze & have the rest for tea, might even have an extra box left to freeze. Use basics 45p spaghetti & basic easy cook long grain rice 75p, the mince cost £8, tinned tomatoes £1.50, tomato puree 40p spices £1, minimum of 12 portions at £1 a portion or less. Slow cooker chicken Provencal, cut either chicken thighs or breast in slow cooker with onions, carrots & celery, add 3 packets of Colemans chicken Provencal mix, 2 jars of passata & 1 jar of water, put on in the morning on low, will be cooked for when you get home, just need to add rice & there will be some to freeze

I don't think this is possible anymore without reliance on cheap convinience foods, especially with teenagers, my best tips;
Soup for dinner once a week (heavy on the carrots)
Mumsnet chicken if meat eaters in the house
Vegetable curry or dhal
Macoroni cheese
Shepardess pie

I recently looked at one of the £20 meal plans and it was unrealistic. An example was that a 500g pack of pasta gave 12 servings sp 31g per serving which is absolutely tiny.

It is possible to feed your family on a small budget but I think £20 is impossible.

I don't think I could feed my family for £20 a week.
Well, I could probably do it for one week but then it would get repetitive- only so many times you can have beans on toast and call it a meal.

If its just the two of you then a chicken might last 2 meals. Otherwise I would have to stick to veggie as plant based protein is much cheaper than meat.

Try raiding your supermarket reduced section near closing time. I've had some real bargains (whole chicken for 50p, fish fillets for 20p, bag of potatoes for 17p etc)

Stock cubes crumbled into most carbs makes them taste more like a full meal.
Bacon trimmings are cheap and you only need a couple of pieces chopped finely into a meal to make it taste meaty.
Grating cheese on top of a meal as you plate up rather than cooking it in makes it go further (eg macaroni cheese that is baked with only white sauce but cheese grated on top at the end).
Tinned or dried pulses are a cheap protein source.
If you can get to a Polish or Indian supermarket they are often cheaper for larger packs of spices, carbs or pulses than the main supermarkets.

If its just the two of you then a chicken might last 2 meals.

That's just an ordinary chicken though. What OP needs is the mumsnet chicken. You can get a weeks worth of meals out of it and still have some left for the dog.

I spend about £40 per week for £5. Don't have any specific recipes, but my main tip is shop for yellow label food at end-of-day reductions (for me, Tesco on a Friday at 7pm reduce by 75%). I get most of my fresh food this way then top up with other bits as required.

Aldi gammon for less than a fiver,at least 3 meals from that. Much better than the mythical MN chicken IME.

You can buy a pack of chicken thighs, beef mince and turkey mince for about £10
Packet of rice, pasta and lentils comes in at around £3
3 tomato tins for less than £1
That leaves you with £6 to buy some onions, garlic, stock cubes and some veg like a courgette, potatoes, carrots, cabbage and peas.
You could probably make a weeks meals out of that by using the meat sparingly and padded out with veg and lentils.
Things like
Beef, onion,garlic. lentils, tomatoes, grated carrot, grated courgette to make a bolognese type of sauce with
Pasta for 2 meals and use the leftovers for a shepherds pie or spice it up to have with rice for another.
Roasted Chicken thighs, potatoes and veg for one meal
Chicken thighs, lentils, spices to make a curry with rice for another meal.
If you buy some burger buns, you can make burgers with the turkey mince, onions and seasoning. Have with potatoes wedges.
Use any meat and veg leftovers to make a soup or stew.

Pretty much all food has gone up in price so no, I don't think it's possible now really.

I sort of eat cheap by doing the following:

• cheap sources of protein: pulses, value eggs, value frozen chicken thighs and fish (absolutely fine for curries and traybakes)
• buy rice in bulk, use lots of root vegetables
• know how to flavour - this helps cheap ingredients taste better. Herbs and spices, weirdly, are cheaper than they used to be
• a little bit of yellow sticker shopping but you have to be disciplined and not buy extra or buy just for the sake of it being cheap
• frozen veg and berries

Hathall I can see that stretching go 7 dinners, but are you only going to eat once a day? Surely youd need some breakfast and lunch in there too?

Lunch and breakfast is more difficult for me actually. Porridge or overnight oats for breakfast with a handful of defrosted berries works though. For lunch there's value bread but fillings are expensive. Better to heat up a tin of value soup and toast the bread.

@PeonyTime

Hathall I can see that stretching go 7 dinners, but are you only going to eat once a day? Surely youd need some breakfast and lunch in there too?

Sorry, I assumed dinners. Yeah you’re gonna have to add some more money for lunches and dinner. Could be cheap like porridge with half milk, half water. Lunches could be omelettes or sandwiches. Would need to add another £5 probably.

£20 a week for all food is tough. It can be done if you have to but it would be really dull.
A week of lentil, tinned tomato, small bit of meat, vegetables with rice, pasta or flatbreads for dinners will help you to afford oats, milk, bread, eggs, soft cheese, processed meat, lettuce for breakfast and lunches.

How many are you feeding, OP?
Yes to tinned fruit, rice pudding etc in for backup
I'd definitely have a look at the reduced section as often as possible.
My top tip would be instead of looking at it as £20 a week, work out the monthly amount and make a meal plan for the month. It helps to get 'ahead' of the reduced section stuff ie have a little stock in the freezer to use, and then buy more as you go, making the next meal plan off that stuff, if that makes sense - so you aren't going out looking for a specific item for your meal plan, you've made a meal plan off what you already have.

Top cheap dinners tips I have are
Home made pizza - super cheap and can use up whatever veg / scraps of meat are lurking. Grated mozzarella best but I have definitely used just cheddar or a mix before and nobody noticed. I use Delia's four season pizza base recipe. Could also use a wrap, a pitta bread etc as a pizza base.

Scotch pancakes - feel like an indulgence and handy in a pinch - I have been making these for years and after much tweaking this is the recipe I use.
360g self raising flour (or plain plus baking powder)
120g sugar (granulated fine)
3 eggs
1/2 pint of milk (any milk - I used some powdered milk from baking this morning, made up with water!)

Slow cooker wise you can't beat a whole chicken or a whole gammon joint (although I have never successfully made a chicken last more than a meal and a few sandwiches for our family of four good appetites, the stock that it produces in the slow cooker is good for risotto etc).

If anyone is in NI, and happens to live near a Lidl - the new Lidl app is a great way to stretch a small budget - you get a 'scratch and win' card in the app every time you shop and win a small item every time - so I tend to divide my shop up eg one day I will go for the milk and bread, another day for the eggs and meat etc - get something free each time so this week so far I have had a shower gel and some biscuits - every little helps when the budget is tight! I don't think it is the same on the mainland but maybe someone could let us know.

Buy the catering cans of tomatoes & baked beans, £1 for 800g, use the tomatoes in ragu sauces, make tomato soup, top pizzas, use the baked beans on toast, in stews, with sausage, chips & egg.

When I only had little money I shopped at Farmfoods, they have really good offers on tins & packets, I also used to buy 3 x 18 rasher packs of bacon for £6, breakfast cereal is cheapest there , they also have offers on their leaflet like spend £25, get £5 off. They always have big packs of laundry powder & fabric conditioner on offer.

I honestly don’t know how £20 a week is possible. I spent £20 just on toast with Philadelphia for breakfast, and ham salad sandwich with fruit and yogurt for lunch. That’s assuming we eat the absolute cheapest with no variety. I haven’t even added any evening meals to the basket yet!

It’s tricky. I would find £20 for 2 very hard. Possible for 1-2 weeks, but not week In week out

Porridge for breakfast
Bean/ lentil/ veggie casseroles with Mash - paprika butter bean with root veg is lovely

Forage - you won’t get much. But apples and blackberry are plentiful now and would add variety or allow desert . Apple and berry crumble, stewed apples for porridge. Also see if anyone is growing things and has spare, we have so many courgettes right now I’m happily giving them to whoever wants them.

If you have a garden, grow your own in future worth looking at. Especially things like berries, once planted they grow back every year so after a few years a good return. Berries are expensive to buy. Herbs in large pots also good as again expensive fresh, and most like mint/ oregano/ thyme/ chives just die back in winter and regrow the next year. Fresh herbs make cheap other ingredients taste nicer

Yes it’s doable. If you want slow cooker food it would be porridge in the morning, some kind of pasta or curry & rice with dinner. There are inserts you can buy where you can cook something else in it at the same time - I usually use it to make steamed bread / semolina cakes.

Depending on what other meals you plan, a lasagne with a cheat topping can be good. I find the inside filling doesn't need as much as you expect, so can be made from little ends of other foods, the one I like best is chicken, cooked or uncooked, spinach, chopped garlic and thinly diced red pepper, although you could replace the chicken with small meatballs (either ready bought or just rolled from a bigger pack of mince intended for something else). Those go in whatever tomato based sauce for layering up, pop in cut cherry tomatoes if you have some that are going soft in the fridge. Base the directions on a general lasagne recipe but ignore the ragu directions if basing filling on the above.
Cheat topping is natural yoghurt well beaten with an egg and salt and black pepper added (and splash of Worcs sauce if you have it), again can come from a big tub. It can take at least a third but usually just 1 egg. Grated cheese on the top of that, then cook reasonably gently in the oven.
There is a Two Chubby Cubs slow cooker lasagne recipe, which looks nice although I have never tried that over the oven.

Get the Too Good To Go app if you have a Morrison's near you, picked up a whole crate of fruit and veg in Sunday for £3.09.

Check out YouTube for budget Aldi buys. there's a good cannel called The Batch Lady. She does an Aldi challenge with Mince where she makes lots of freezer meals.
I think it's possible to eat cheaply if you get into batch cooking. Personally I'm not a fan of yellow sucker products. a good meal plan would be better.
Aldi had broccoli for 45P this week (big heads) so I bough 8 and will be making broccoli and stilton soup for the freezer. (I'll cost it out for you when I've finished.)

lidl do boxes of still fresh stuff for £1.50, does anyone buy them? they look good.

its not a lot though, I don't think it sustainable long term.