Cheap but healthy meal ideas? £80 to last family of 4 until the 31st!

[Mealsonabudget]

Has anyone got any cheap but nutritious meals to last a family of 4? I have £80 to last me until the 31st. I’m thinking of just going and doing one shop to stop myself wasting it on silly things along the way. Please help!

If you have the spices in this is fantastic and very cheap. If you don't have a slow cooker it can be made on the hob instead although obvs more energy costs.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/slow_cooker_split_pea_93320

What do you like? When we need to keep costs down I tend to buy more freezer food and alternate this with pasta.

Will they eat things like lentils and beans? You can feed a family nutritiously for significantly less than £80

Beans and lentils are the way to go. Lots of stews and curries etc and you can bulk them out very easily with these two ingredients and buy veg. I am of course assuming you have spices!

I also tend to eat these kind of things cold the following day for lunch again saving money that way

How many meals a day does it need to cover? Are there any likes and dislikes and what do you have in your cupboards already?

Jacket potatoes. Egg and chips. Mince and mash. Beans on toast. Pasta dishes. If you have an Asda near the value products are worth buying.

Look for yellow stickered bread and freeze until you need it.

Could you do batch meals things like chilli con carne or spag bol (frozen mince and veg, chopped toms, jar of herbs, pasta and rice are very cheap.) My kids love a Mediterranean veg pasta bake. The veg comes in a big bag frozen and last 3 or 4 meals, bag of pasta and either store bought bake sauce or passata and cheese.

Also we usually do a roast chicken on a sunday and use leftover chicken to do a curry or casserole on monday

Veg dishes are obv cheaper than meat so try and do at least a few a week?

Also stir fries are quite cheap and filling. My daugher also loves risotto with passata, tomato puree and basil - very simple but lots of flavour.

Another one is tuna pasta or fajitas (not the packs, just buy wraps separate and the little flavour sachets are about 50p, it's much cheaper).

Big pot of ham hock and split pea or red lentils soup
pasta with own brand pesto , cheese and a garlic bread

Tinned sardine pasta with added greens (broccoli stalks/peas/leeks/whatever) is a great cheap and nutritious option if your kids will eat oily fish. Use the oil from the tin to fry an onion to start with. Or you can add chilli and tinned tomatoes to make a fishy puttanesca.

Can batch cook and also have a slow cooker! One DC is only coming up to 7 months so I shouldn’t really include them but they are marginally less fussy than my 4 year old. Forgot to mention it will be for all three meals as 4yo dd will be on half term next week 😭 bloody nightmare to have the half term the last week of the month!! Who planned that?!

I hear what you are saying about getting one shop so you don't buy extra stuff as you shop. But I do the opposite when I have a limited budget.
I divide what I have for each day and take it out or move it from my bill account to my ordinary account. Or have it all in cash and put it away in an envelope and only take out your day's amount each day. It makes me feel safer that I don't blow the whole lot now and have no food or money left for the last 2 or 3 days.

So £80 divided by 14 days is £5.70.
You can do fiver a day with some extra one day at the weekend.
Look at what is in your cupboard. Can you make a meal today? Even if it is a mish mash of things. One person having beans on toast, one having a small omelette with the last two eggs, that sort of thing. Or a packet of rice and any leftover veg can make a risotto. Last bit of pasta left in a bag and one of the kids happy with it on its own (my kids have always liked that).

Then that means you have double tomorrow. Go to the shop and buy some pasta and some tins of tomatoes. That's one meal. A bag of cheap onions always helps for flavour. Buy a bag of potatoes (not 4 bakers - a full bag, usually about the same price these days if you get the basic bag). Feel the bag to make sure there are a few bigger ones that you can bake. The rest can be used another day in another way. Value beans. That's another meal.

Porridge or non branded weetabix or cornflakes. Milk.
Red lentils, carrots and cheap stock cubes to make soup, that will do lunches for a few days. Cheap loaf of bread to have with soup or for breakfast or as free for alls when someone is hungry.

That should last you a couple of days. Then you not only have some things leftover (lentils, carrots, stock cubes, potatoes, breakfast stuff) but you have a new day of cash to buy the next day or two.

A bag of white rice and some green lentils, kidney beans, tin tomato and you have a chilli one night (if you have any spices). Green lentils can make a nice shepherd's pie with the potatoes. Add in some of the red ones too to both dishes.

And if you have money left some days either roll them over to the next day or buy a value pack of biscuits as a treat. Don't worry about the over all health for two weeks. Just fill up with as much as you can. Go round the shop with your fiver or tenner if it's two days and look whats cheap and on offer. Tesco have a frozen cheesecake for instance for less than a pound (used to be 65p i think over 80p now). That is my son's go to treat when we are on a "how much can we get for our budget" shop. That can be a treat at the weekend.

I know this isn't everyone's way of doing it but it makes me feel safer for some reason.
It isn't a huge amount OP and I'm sorry that you are in this position. Good luck.

Also i technically only have £23 until my Vinted balance pats out which is the other 50 odd. Hoping that only takes a few days but it says due to arrive by the 24th on my account. Hoping that’s not the case and it arrives sooner!! Have lots of spices on my cupboard too.

Nightmare about the Vinted account. Hopefully it will come through quickly.
Any supermarket points? Boots points?
If you say what's in your cupboard and I mean everything, flour, last 10 oven chips in the freezer then maybe people will have ideas about what to make.

My kids used to always laugh that we ate like Kings when I did that. Because I got creative. Flapjack with a handful of porridge oats and some sultanas type thing. Then sone biscuits with the last of the flour and marg.

Look up Irishbudgeting on Instagram. She does a thing where she shares recipes that she uses to feed 5 people for €5. Mostly using Aldi groceries, and spending €5 in Ireland would prob equate to £4 in England as groceries are slightly cheaper there.

Do a complete fridge, freezer and cupboard inventory on here.

Focus on meals that you know your children will eat. There’s no point posting recipes for things that you know they won’t have, it’s just wasting money.

Lots of soup if you will eat it and the kids will too - leek and potato only needs two leeks and a couple of potatoes from your bag and an onion. Daal is a great suggestion as a PP said, there are loads of cheap recipes online and you can eat it with bread or rice.

I would get a couple of big bags of rice and pasta - e.g. sainsburys does a 3kg bag of pasta for about £3.50, 10kg of rice for about £12 if you can stretch to that. If you have an Asian supermarket near you their bags of rice are huge and great value. These things are soooo much cheaper in bulk. A bag of potatoes (or ideally a sack) too.

Scary at first but then you could then top those up with value tins of tomatoes/whatever else you have in and different herbs/spices for several meals a week.

And cooking lots of each thing. Everyone will just have to get over having the same meal 2/3 times in a row til its gone.

Really hope things improve for you soon.

Bean chilli
Sausage casserole
Jacket spuds
Soup
Pasta bake
Egg chips beans
Fish fingers chips peas
Vegetable curry
Spaghetti bolognese
Sausage mash & peas
Frittata & salad

Ok so just popped to sainsburys and spent £18 on bits to hopefully last until next Monday!!

so I found 250g of beef mince and 500g of pork mince in the freezer. I’ll use the beef mince and 250g of the pork mince to do spaghetti and meatballs! Any ideas for what I could do with the remaining 250g of pork mince?!

also found 2 chicken breasts in the freezer (organic free range corn fed ahhh simpler times!!) which I think I’m going to do a butter chicken with as I bought a spice pack from an African shop a little while back (pro tip they do the best spices and they’re normally very very cheap!!)

also picked up some sage and will do butter and sage pasta, simple but delicious!

hoping to make those meals stretch out for 5 days (2 days for meatballs, 2 days for curry). Also picked up some chicken burgers from sainsburys but not sure what to have with these, probably some chips!

lastly I found 3 tins of jackfruit in the cupboard, anyone got any good recipes for jackfruit?! tonight I’m making a concoction of lentils, chickpeas, bulgur and halloumi in a tomato sauce (will let you know how that goes down with the four year old! 🤣).

also I found some change in my car but it’s covered in loads of gunk, what’s the best way to clean coins?

thanks all for your help! Feels a lot less depressing than it did yesterday, now it feels like a food adventure!

The 1 Kg packs of chicken thighs at Tesco are good value. The ones with skin on and bone in.

You usually get 7, sometimes 8 pieces.

As a change from beans, lentils, pasta, one meal where you get a chicken thigh each, and if there are only 3 left over shred them into a rice dish with an onion, frozen corn, spices.

Iceland do excellent bags of frozen veg, I think they are still £1 for a big bag.

With jackfruit, remember to rinse it before cooking to take the tinny taste away. I then soak it in a bit of soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce for a bit before cooking.

www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/pulled-bbq-jackfruit

This is for burgers but you can put it on homemade pizza or have in tacos. (Tortillas are easy enough to make if you have flour).
Obviously ordinary sugar is fine instead of demerara

Look up Cardiff mum or Taming Twins on Instagram.
They do meal plans for a family for £30 or cheaper.
They include shopping list and recipes

Do you know if you have a social supermarket (aka Larder) near you? They can offer food at greatly discounted prices.

I volunteer in one called a Larder and their way is to provide food for £3.50, and a weekly collection only. The food comes from Fareshare who also supply all the Food Banks.

We don’t know what we will get each week but it’s always a mix of fruit & vege, chilled items like dairy products, meats, ready meals, pastry, etc and then store cupboard items like cereals, UHT milk, Pot Noodles, condiments, crisps, canned foods, pasta etc.

It might be worth a Google to see if you have something near you. All the best x

Beans and lentils go great in stew, curries, pasta and rice dishes, so those with cheap canned tomatoes, rice and pasta. Large bag potatoes for jackets - shops own baked beans are cheap and go well with. Look at fruit offers on ends in supermarkets. If you really can't go without meat, recipes with mince but halve it and add lentils.