Meals that are cheap but healthy, when trying to cut down food spend!

[Lia756]

We are trying to cut down food spend, we live month to month so trying to save money! What cheap meals can also be healthy? Thanks

Tinned sardines are an amazingly cheap and healthy form of protein, and good in a pasta sauce or mashed on a baked potato. Cook them with broccoli and tomatoes to make a balanced pasta meal - buy them tinned in oil and use the oil to make the sauce.

Tinned anchovies are also full of good healthy oils, and cheap if you add them in small quantities to beef up the taste of a dish (although they are quite salty so you need to be careful with very young children).

Chicken thighs are very cost effective.

-You can save a lot by having a big freezer and batch cooking and freezing meals, but personally I've never had a big freezer and already cook for five people at a time, so I don't feel I want to cook in larger amounts than that. But I'm just saying that in case you do and want to batch cook.

• As others have said, cutting down on meat keeps the cost down.

• If you buy fish, a side of salmon is often cheaper per portion than small portions.

• Buy branded goods as little as possible, it's rarely worth the (vast) price difference.

• Getting as much as possible from Aldi or Lidl will knock at least 30% off the equivalent shop at Sainsbury's or Tesco.

• Aldi have Super Six and other offers - check out their offers each week. At the moment they've got things like 4 x baked potatoes for 29p.

• BBC Good Food website has loads of recipes - cheap family meals, healthy family meals, meals with fewer than five ingredients. It's a really good and free resource. www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/cheap-family-suppers-recipes

• Buy ingredients which lend themselves to several meals, not just things you'll use as a one off then languish in the fridge/cupboard.

If you get really stuck, kids will almost certainly eat pasta twists with baked beans, and cheese sprinkled on top. As will I

Food markets are almost always much better value than supermarkets, if you have the time and energy - but menu planning and supermarket delivery cuts out the random splurge element.

Its DH, me and 19 month old. I get in a cheap cut of brisket and slow cook it on a Sunday with poato and roast veg and then make a ragu with the rest for another dinner and serve with pasta or jacket potato. Pea and pesto risotto is a big hit and cheap. Chili and rice or we like stuffed peppers. I do 200g beef mince 2 packs of microwave rice cook it off in a pan with seasoning and stuff into 2 peppers pop in oven for 20mins.
Saturday is cheap frozen pizza and then depending on budget i do 2 small fillets of salmon topped with pesto in ready puff pastry bake and serve with steamed frozen veg as another dinner.

Agree with a lot of the comments here, especially re vegetarian food (a cauliflower, an onion, some rice and a few carrots with just a few herbs and spices already in the cupboard is as delicious as the roast chicken with all the trimmings we might have another day). But would add that at least one or two nights a week a very very simple meal - eggs on toast/omelette, baked beans on jacket potatoes, can cut the overall weekly cost quite a lot.

In our house, if I am trying to cut costs it's a lot of the extras that are really the expensive stuff - eg I'll switch back to frubes and tubs of supermarket yoghurt vs yoghurt pouches/organic yoghurt, serve lots of porridge at breakfast (although we tend to eat unbranded weeatbix a lot anyway), limit more expensive fruit (strawberries etc) in favour of apples/grapes/bananas, proactively look for cheap coffee deals etc.

Frijoles negros (more exotic than black beans!). Mixed with fried chopped onion, garlic and maybe chopped red peppers or a little chopped cheap cut of bacon or a little chopped chorizo (too strong for me). Tinned are quicker, but dried and soaked cheaper. Goes well with plain rice.

Frittata, quiche or Spanish omlette with some veg/salad.

Odd ends of fish from the fish counter or sometimes in the freezer, add mashed potato and a cheesy sauce: fish pie.

If you have a local butcher or fishmonger, or a supermarket with a butcher/fish counter, ask for cheap cuts or trimmings and ideas for meals for them. If you find an enthusiastic one you can get some great tips and, if you show interest, they may well keep things aside that you might like. My nearest Waitrose has a lovely fish guy, who's been there forever and is full of advice, but getting through the temptation of the rest of the shop is hazardous.

@AtLeastThreeDrinks I either put it on low when I leave in the morning or put it on high around lunchtime. I either use tinned lentils or if I use dried red ones I pour boiling water on them when I'm putting everything else in the slow cooker. Oh and I forgot to say a squeeze of tomato paste too.

Ratatouille (we are having this for our evening meal tonight)
Pasta with left over veg roasted and stirred through with olive oil
Homemade flat bread with left over salad
Homemade pizza
Mushroom cottage pie

I don't know where this recipe came from, but we've always called it Bean Mix Up. This would serve 2 or 3 people (possibly 4)

Chop an onion and gently fry it off
Chop up a red and green pepper and fry them off too
Add in a tin of chopped tomatoes and reduce down,
Add in a tin of baked beans
Heat through then spoon into individual oven proof shallow bowls (we used tapas bowls)
Sprinkle a bit of grated cheese over the top and grill until the cheese bubbles.

Served with bread it is a brilliant lunch.

Buy a whole chicken and eat it all - roast on Sunday, pasta bake/risotto on Monday and any left in a noodle salad or veggie stir fry on Tuesday.

A chunky veg like broccoli or cauliflower can be the basis of a meal - eg oven baked cauliflower florets either coated in cumin and curry powder with rice/dhaal or coated in breadcrumbs and parmesan with baked beans and home made potato wedges (ie as it they were chicken nuggets). Broccoli in a tomato sauce is good with pasta. Save the stalks, chop up with onion and potato to make soup.
Eggs are cheap and nutritious - scrambled with baked beans on toast, omelette etc. My DC liked it when I made a frittata mix but baked it in indivdual muffin sizes - these also freeze so you can make a batch, defrost what you need and they can have with salad or veg for tea.

Wrap pizzas

[quote SnowWhitesSM]@AtLeastThreeDrinks I either put it on low when I leave in the morning or put it on high around lunchtime. I either use tinned lentils or if I use dried red ones I pour boiling water on them when I'm putting everything else in the slow cooker. Oh and I forgot to say a squeeze of tomato paste too.[/quote]
Thanks! Added it to this week’s meal plan.

You can use pretty much anything as a pasta sauce, baked potato filling, pizza topping or pie filling. We had slow cooked belly pork with apple juice and onions served with veg for Sunday dinner, and there's plenty left to cook up with mushrooms, peas and a splash of cream to use as a pasta sauce for tonight.

Asian grocers are great for bulk buying lentils, chick peas, rice etc, and sell spices and gram flour for a really good price.

We generally try and do a pasta meal, rice meal, soup meal, pastry meal every week.

Things like shakshuka with crusty bread are quick and cheap, veggie quiches, pasta sauce with an inch of chorizo chopped small and fried with garlic and onion, then add some roasted red peppers, mushrooms and tinned tomatoes, chilli or herbs.

least one or two nights a week a very very simple meal - eggs on toast/omelette, baked beans on jacket potatoes, can cut the overall weekly cost quite a lot.

Second this. Add in a meal based on rice, lots of veg and a little meat, like roast chicken remnants or bacon bits, and you have four cheap meals a week which gives you breathing space with the others.

Chickpea or lentil curry. Anything that goes with rice or pasta can be cheap and filling. Buy your veg from lidl/aldi.

Improvise by making sure you always buy anything you can use from reduced sections Buy any veg that's on offer and make soup. Buy bread from the reduced section and freeze. Cut down on meat. Try supermarkets own brands. Shop at different supermarkets for where things are cheaper. Aldi/lidl if you don't use already.

For a cheap meat I always pick smoked gammon. I cook it in the pressure cooker and then it falls apart. It usually lasts for 3 meals for 2 adults and 3 kids.
First day is usually with a roast dinner with all the trimmings,
Second with eggs, beans and toast instead of bacon,
Third day is usually in a pasta and sauce dish, or sometimes a curry or stir-fry, depending on how much is left.

I think a lot of it is changing your ingredients too. A 1kg bag of carrots is 40p but a small amount of tenderstem can be easily £2-£3. When I need to cut back then I buy the cheaper veg and fruit - a huge watermelon can be £3 and a pack of raspberries can be £3. I know which one will last us longer.

Cooking bacon is also a good one. It can flavour so many meals if you want to eat meat with them.

Mushroom soup is surprisingly easy to make
Basic ingredients are butter/oil, onions/leeks,
Mushrooms and stock.

Fry the onions until soft, add mushrooms chopped, ahh about a tablespoon of flour and allow to cook for a few minutes.You can add parsley if you have.
Add stock and season.
Blend.

Jacket potatoes with tinned toppings - taco beans are a nice spicy version of baked beans. Asda have Princes tins of things like stewed steak and chicken in white sauce on offer at the moment. With plenty of veg on the size - frozen or tinned veg is cheap.

Swap out mince for lentils or beans, or use half and half e.g. lentil bolognese or bean chilli

Eggs are cheap and healthy and filling. Things like shakshuka or Spanish omelet with plenty of veg in.

MusingOnStarlight, yes to cooking bacon - Lidl used to do a kilo pack for about £1.20 - we've had packs with several whole gammon steaks and some packs have pretty big whole pieces of gammon - bargain!

Everything tastes better roasted - I often do a fridge scrape of veg in a roasting tin and once nice and sticky mix in pasta, beans or couscous, eat on toast, turn into soup, or use as a side for fish/sausages. It works really well with the discounted slightly shrivelled out of date veg in the supermarket.

tesco do a good size dried red lentils