What do you class as a cheap meal in terms of cost?

[AlwaysCountYourPennies]

Lots of threads recently on cheap meals but what is a cheap meal???

I'm a frugal cook-from-scratch type (love a Mumsnet chicken, etc) I eat meat and don't buy organic. I buy a lot of own-brand items and shop mostly in Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons. Meals always have a lot of veg and we don't eat large amounts of meat.
(I spend on average £75 a week on food for 2 adults and two hungry teens))

Standard meals include roast dinner, spag bol, chilli, stir fry, curry, hearty soups, cottage pie, ham and parsley sauce, homemade faggots and peas, pulled pork, lasagne, casseroles, pasta bakes, risottos and homemade pizza.
Per serving these work out between £1 and £2 per person

An expensive meal for me would be roast lamb, steak, or fresh fish (or a takeaway)

A dinner like meatballs and pasta (but I buy good steak mince version) or pasta and pesto with is super cheap but don’t have that too often

an expensive meal is duck or salmon or steak / roast beef but it all balances out

Upto £2 a portion I’d consider reasonably cheap. But a lot of OP’s meals would come in at over that for us (eg roast, lasagne, pulled pork).
On the other hand carbonara is one of our cheapest meals and would be under £1 a portion and I am surprised at how much a PP spends on it.
So much is down to how you cook and what ingredients you use (eg dried pasta vs fresh, fancy Parmesan vs supermarket budget dupe etc).
@Fairyjuice I make pizza with plain flour. I’m sure it’s not authentic or perfect but it gets gobbled up by all.

HI OP,
A cheap meal in our house is £1.20-£2 a head. We eat some fish but no other animal.

Tuna pasta bake
Veg lasagne
Omelettes inc tortilla and oven omelettes --great cold cut up like a cake for lunches.
Home made soups
Baked potatoes
Home made pizza
Home made curries
Roast dinners with home made vegetarian meat loaf type thing
Greggs pastie dupes (except ten times nicer) Thank you Mr Paul's youtube channel (bought pastry from Lidl is the best I have found - buy puff or shortcrust sheet ready rolled)
Iceland frozen fish fillets - mackerel, Basa, Haddock, cod - fried in a hot pan in butter with salad, home made oven chips or American home made skillet potatoes - this is our favourite meal.
Home made flans with easy olive oil pastry - you can put anything in them - if you have money, salmon in them is wonderful.
Slow cooker Moroccan Detox Lentil Soup - (recipe online-just google it) - I started making this a it is fantastic if you have any inflammation in your body - but we all love it. Red lentils are best but you can also use chick peas. It is addictive!
Home made hummus, salsa, potato salad - all quick, cheap and easy for a ploughman's type lunch.
Stew and dumplings
Fried cheese and leeks with crusty bread.

Sometimes make enchilladas with Quorn.

I don't use any jars of sauces or ready meals or kits - we don't have the money for that. If I had any money, I would have a stand mixer. I have wanted one all my life.

I do the same - I make loads of soup! Here's a fantastic one we can't get enough of - if I am allowed to link. You can change it up with different things. It's knockout:
www.halfplanetpreserve.com/recipes/anti-inflammatory-detox-moroccan-high-protein-soup/

@UsingChangeofName sorry, I realise now that other people had posted what their evening meal tonight was costing and I just posted mine. I have no idea what our evening meals cost day to day so added what ours tonight is. As did others! It’s not a cheap meal but I would struggle to work out what other evening meals cost as I don’t do the cooking but I do the basics of the online supermarket shop. Dh then goes and gets the meat at the butchers - I only know what the meat for tonight costs as the package was on the side. Otherwise it goes in the fridge for him to cook during the week.
was just curious to see what others would class as a cheap meal as I’ve long suspected our food shop bill is high.

@Francisca459 - that soup looks delicious! How long do you put it in the slow cooker for? Do you sauté onions etc first?

@Francisca459 good to meet a fellow soup fan. Thanks for the recipe recommendation looks tasty 😋.

Have you thought about flour by the sack @Fairyjuice?

I buy 16kg of Haygates off Amazon for £20 including delivery and it's great. We make a lot of pizza and bread.

Hi Brutus - I put it in the slow cooker for about 4 hours on high - long enough to do the lentils and carrots. Once the lentils are done, the rest is done. But - you can switch it on medium (or low if your slow cooker has tow settings) in the morning and safely leave it all day if you are out until teatime. I do saute the onions and garlic first just to take the bitterness off. Everything else gets slung in including frozen spinach and frozen veg if I have no fresh. As you know with slow cookers, you only need to add enough (hot) water/stock to cover everything, but honestly this recipe is so forgiving. I hope you try it - We all love it and honestly we are healthier for eating it x

2 packs tortellini from fresh pasta section - 3 mins to boil with grating of cheese - cheap and quick with a bit garlic bread
at times.

spaghetti with pack of mussels in wine mixed together

sausage / mash

beans on toast / scrambled eggs

supernoodles

are our cheaper meals

would be more but gas/ electric cost spoilt it

@Cheeseandhoney

We eat loads of veg........fresh and frozen!

I make a thick veg and lentil soup that only costs about 30p a serving, great for lunch with a warm cheesy roll. Minestrone is another family favourite and costs about the same to make.
We don't eat large amounts of meat, I'm making pork and Canelli bean casserole tomorrow, I have a 700g (£4.00) pack of diced pork and that will make 8 servings.

DH and I work from home and use up leftovers for lunch. I hate wasting food and ensure everything is used up! 17-year-old DD takes food to college, pasta salads, couscous, rice salads, and in her food flask soups, stews .........all sorts !!

I like to batch-cook and freeze portions of bolognese / soup/casseroles.

Pulled pork is cheap if you buy large pork shoulder joints when they are on offer!!

Tomato risotto (made with homegrown tomatoes) is just the cost of a couple of handfuls of arborio rice. £1.50? Feeds 4.

Other varieties of risotto we love are; mushroom or butternut squash with sage and parmesan.

Celery soup.
Carrot and coriander soup.
Mushroom soup.
Leek and potato soup.

Sliced potato and onion layered, in the slow cooker with bacon and a cup of water is gorgeous.

Corned beef hash.

Sausages and mash.

Under £1/person = cheap
Under £2/person = regular meals
Under £3/person = getting luxurious now
Over £3/person = pushing the boat out, pretty rare

We are vegetarian and cook from scratch all the time, including bread etc., so that keeps food costs down (but not fuel costs, we ignore that side of it )

Why all rhe exclamation marks? You are clearly very frugal as you say and don’t eat a lot of meat as it’s expensive and you bulk it out with carbs so you all feel full . Good for you, I’m not sure many can do it cheaper continually as you do. They are all cheap meals. It’s not possible to do it much cheaper realistically

@Cheeseandhoney You incorrectly assumed we didn't eat much veg.
We eat balanced meals and include all food groups, my meals are not "bulked out with carbs". Do you not eat carbs?

A cheap dinner would be anything that comes in around £5 for 4 people. We have one, maybe two a week. Pasta with pesto and salad. Or chicken pieces with roast root veg . Or egg and oven chips with peas and carrots (not had that in years - I want it now.) Most of the time we have either lots of salad which pushes the price up, or fish, and one DS is veggie so tofu or halloumi for his main so it's usally £10-12 for the four of us.

Tonight we fed four adults (2 X elderly, 2x next gen) on a plant based, bourbon and maple 'gammon' roast with fresh spring onion and potato mash, plus baked beans wirh soy sauce. Thanks to Olio, it cost us less than 2 quid in total.

We are very much a foraging household....

Our "end of the month" meals are:

Poached eggs and avocado on toast
Cream of Carrot Soup with a grilled cheese sandwich
Green vegetable risotto
Cheesy mash and beans
Vegetarian egg fried rice

We also tend to batch cook and eat leftovers for lunches, so it all factors into the cost. We generally spend £85/week on food for 2 adults, a toddler who eats like it's an Olympic sport and a formula-fed baby (not including things like toilet paper and dishwasher tablets, etc). I think the vast majority is spent on meat and snacks like a PP said, something that I'm hoping to remedy this year.

I could feed us all on £75 but I really don’t want to have to do that.

like others say some meals are cheap and others more expensive and we have a mixture of both

You can actually make pizza dough with ordinary plain flour, I experimented when I couldn't get strong flour during covid. If you check the protein level the higher the better, plain is usually about 10gr per 100grams whereas strong 12gr upwards. Flatbread pizza also became a regular, I'd recommend Hugh fernley whitingstall's recipe👍

We eat like you op.

I made a huge pan of mince and onions (with finely chopped cabbage in it too, my new bulking out trick) half of which turned into a shepherd's pie, half into a mince and onion pie.

We eat a lot of veg and always have a big pot of soup in the fridge for lunches.

An expensive meal would be steak, lamb chops, salmon.

We eat balanced meals and include all food groups, my meals are not "bulked out with carbs"

^

This. The only way to eat cheaply and well is to eat a lot of veg. Which is obviously healthier too

Thank you so much, @Francisca459 ! I’ll let you know how it goes!

Under £1/person = cheap
Under £2/person = regular meals
Under £3/person = getting luxurious now
Over £3/person = pushing the boat out, pretty rare

I'd say this is roughly what I consider to be cheap/expensive too.

We have 5 adults (me, DH, 21yo, 20yo, 18yo) and I budget approx £20 per day for grocery shopping (includes basic toiletries, washing powder etc). Generally, I'd say that I try not to spend over £10 on any one meal, and I shop mostly at Aldi. We eat a lot of veg, and also lots of soup to use up leftover veg, plus I do bulk out meals with beans and pulses. But we don't eat that many white carbs - rice, potatoes bread etc, as three of us are trying to avoid these.

My inexpensive meals were £1 per portion for family of 5.

This is now £1.50 a portion as I can't get cheaper ingredients.

I have swapped some meals to whole-vegan as opposed to fast-vegan as I find made-from-scratch these are far cheaper overall.

I did a red lentil and pinto bean stew with lots of smoky paprika last night. This with crusty bread worked out less than £1 a portion.