Your DC's favourite, cheapest meals?

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We can't absorb the food price rises and unexpected bills like idiot DH buying a new bike so I need to cut the food budget for the next couple of months. What are the cheapest, balanced, nutritious meals your DC like?

Nothing mushy texture or with mushrooms or nuts. I haven't mastered lentils (tips?), they always go mushy or if I cook them less, give someone stomach ache. I have a teenage boy to feed and a pre-teen girl going through a growth spurt. Random, unorthodox combinations acceptable; we are not vegetarian but are trying to eat less meat.

Egg, chips and beans with bread and butter.
Sausage and mash
Jacket potatoes with cheese,beans, coleslaw, tuna
Mince dumplings and mash
Veg curry and rice
Pasta with a tub of Philadelphia garlic and herb stirred through. Serve with cheap value garlic bread. The Asda one is nice.

Where did she mention that he's buying a bike?!

In the first sentence of the opening post…

@YetMoreNewBeginnings oh gosh yes.

Smoked Mackerel pasta - make sauce from mascarpone and veg stock, flake mackerel into it, cook some peas with the pasta and mix together.

Make your own tomato and mascarpone sauce with tinned tomatoes and mascarpone. Blend using hand blender, add tuna, sweetcorn and anything else you fancy. Serve with pasta.

Three bean stew/chilli type thing

tin of borlotti beans
tin of kidney beans
tin of pinto beans
tin of chopped tomatoes
chopped stick of celery
chopped onion
chopped carrot
mixed herbs, seasoning and some chilli
a bit of stock if you want (or a lot to make it more of a soup)

serve on its own, with a bread roll, with rice, or with wraps as bean burritos

I use a small pack of mince (pork is sometimes cheaper than beef) and make a bolognese type sauce but I add an equal quantity of grated carrot to mince, a carton of passata, a couple of onions a stock cube and fill the passata carton with water and add that too. If I have any other veg eg broccoli stalks I'll blitz in the food processor and add. Plus some dried herbs. Half is served with spaghetti and half goes in the freezer in 2 boxes. Later in the week I'll take a box out and bulk it up with a tin of cheap baked beans and some peas to make a cottage pie. Mine are happy with that so long as they get plenty of grated cheese.

THis is a good chilli recipe - DH and I have with a sachet of rice and the DC with a wrap and grated cheese. If I've got some squidgy tomatoes I'll roughly chop them and stir in a tin of sweet corn to make a "salsa" on the side. It's good with a dollop of natural yoghurt. I skip the pepper or celery if I don't have any in. This makes up quite a lot so enough to freeze for another day. https://cookieandkate.com/vegetarian-chili-recipe/

Cheap root veg like carrots and swede make amazing curries.

Cabbage can be the basis of a stir fry with garlic and chilli.

Vegetarian mince chilli with lots of vegetables, in tortillas, jacket potatoes, with home made cajun wedges all with grated cheese on top. Sour cream on side one night, stirred through another, tin beans added for one meal. 3 nights but made to look different. Sour cream in the polish section is good value.

One Iceland shop a month. Pizza night a couple of times a month....Iceland have Goodfellas pizzas 3 for £4. Not great but fine. Iceland brand garlic pizza bread is really good. I also get frozen fish there. 4 tuna steaks for £5 and are part of 3 for £10 deal. I usually get tuna, salmon and smoked haddock.

If I'm making something less nutritious I just give them a big plate of raw carrot, cucumber, celery while waiting.

I agree about fried rice. One chicken breast, when shredded, is loads in fried rice. Any veg, fresh or frozen you have knocking about, that goes in too.

Big jacket potatoes with beans and a sprinkle of cheese/ left over bolognaise with chilli powder added. Pasta with butter melted into it with peas and cherry tomatoes, sprinkle of cheese on top (actually much nicer than sounds) chicken curry- frozen chicken, cheapish jar of sauce from Lidl/aldi (lots of sauce, limited chicken cut into small pieces and lots of rice, add frozen peas, cherry tomatoes, peppers etc. bolognaise/chilli with added red lentils, they cook down to nothing but bulk it up with cheapest veg can find ie grated carrot, onion, leeks and loads of rice/mashed potato. Crustless quiche- lots of beaten egg and whatever veg/ham/cheese you have put in a greased quiche sized oven dish and bake. My son likes the cheap pizzas from supermarket, we just add extra cheese etc and have with chips or jacket potato Also check out the food apps like olio and too good to go to see what’s being offered for free/cheaply in the area, a friend got a huge bag of bread products from greggs recently and has frozen them to eek them out and I got a load of freezer bits someone had decided they wouldn’t use.

Check out the MyFirstMeals recipe book or her Instagram account has hundreds of free recipes, she’s amazing at creating meals on a shoe string (not just for babies and toddlers, for the whole family!).