What do you consider a "cheap everyday meal"?

[FloopyZebra]

Just made a pasta bake for 4 and decided to cost it out as I like to keep a keen eye on my shopping costs, we spend on average £100 per week for 3 adults and 1 teen (that's for everything including beer and wine)
It was a veggie meal tonight wholemeal pasta with a creamy tomato sauce, onions, courgette and mushrooms topped with grated cheese. The total cost was £4.50.
Tomorrow we are having pulled pork with spicy rice and salad, which will be a bit more at £10.00 but there will be meat leftover.
An ulta cheap meal for us is a thick homemade veg soup served with warm bread.

a bean chilli and rice is probably the cheapest.

Similar to you. we make a lot of pasta type dishes - Tuna, pasta bake, macaroni cheese with leeks and bacon, spinach pasta bake. Sometimes wraps/ fajitas in the week with guacamole and salad.

Homemade pizza. I've never costed it but it's probably a few quid max.

Anything veggi, one of our go to is aubergine ragu which works out about £5 for enough to do two meals for 3 people. Chickpea curry is another favourite

Spaghetti bolognaise is one of my fave cheap meals because it doesn't feel cheap, still has all the good bits! Plus easy to size up and spread out.

Homemade pizzas, jacket potatoes, toad in the hole and soup and rolls. I tend to do it so we have "nice meals" Fri-Sun (around £10 as you say) and the cheaper meals Mon-thurs.

I really need to explore more veggie options, that pasta bake sounds lovely.

Ours is probably homemade pizza as well. Or beans on toast. I’m trying to get us out of the mentality that dinner needs to be a gourmet meal every single night!

Some sort of veggie soup with bendy veg from the fridge and a loaf of home made bread. Or a proper broth with a boiled potato dropped in it.

Things like lentil shepherds pie with tinned lentils or bean stew with tinned beans and rice.

Yes, chili and rice, you can make about 5 days worth for about 17p per portion.

Other cheap eats include spaghetti bolognese (basically chili without the beans and with pasta instead of rice, slightly different seasonings).

Roast chicken and seasonal veg is usually very cheap and lasts for days. We do splash out on Bisto but there are much cheaper gravies out there. There is a thread out there somewhere about the "famous MN chicken" and how to make it last about 5 days... mostly tongue in cheek but some great suggestions mixed in as well. Even cheaper than a chicken is a roasted butternut squash and it's quite hearty, especially if you add sunflower seeds for added protein/calcium.

Making a lentil curry with tinned tomatoes and curry powder takes some practice to get it right but when it works it's extremely cheap. It's basically chili with curry powder and lentils instead of kidney beans.

When we've been really broke we've eaten marmite* sandwiches for dinner. That was a very cheap meal but I couldn't put up with it as part of a regular meal plan.

*Actually, it was Tesco Yeast Extract.

Out of interest, how do people make their pizza?

DD makes it but it seems very labour intensive with proper bread dough

@ShiteRider www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/bread/quick-pizza-dough we do this, really easy, my 12 year old can make it unsupervised and doesn't take too long.

I make my dough in my Kenwood chef!!!
Pizza is a real favourite here too. I usually make double and freeze half the dough for next time.

We use wraps as the base.

a year ago I would have said egg and chips, but with the price of eggs now !. I would say a pasta bake is probably the cheapest meal I do know

@FloopyZebra can you please list amounts and prices for the pasta bake? I find especially whole wheat pasta and even cheese so expensive at the moment.

We experiment loads with soups. Different vegetables, beans and so on.

Egg and bacon rice or pasta.
Sausage pasta bake.
Pizzadillas.
Veg or Pea soup with bread.
Jacket potatoes with tuna mayo.

Baked potato with various toppings- cheese, spring onions, bacon and pinepple or homemade coleslaw

I've never costed it out, but this always feels like the cheapest meal we do

Daal and rice. Luckily it's also my favourite meal.

I usually have a few ingredients in but the other day I had to buy everything for a spag bol. I was horrified at the cost. Almost a tenner!

For us, cheap teas are freezer things, which I hate, or sausage mash and beans/onion gravy and peas. Jacket potatoes.

Nothing’s cheap these days though.

The very cheapest meal I make is probably Nadiya's beetroot pasta. Spaghetti (easily under a quid for a big packet) and either a cheap jar of beetroot or one of those vacuum packs of beetroot (around 50p).

Then a tiny bit of olive oil, a bit of garlic and chilli if that's what you like, and some of the cooking water. One pot, just have to heat water to boil the pasta.

I’ve been doing minestrone in the slow cooker recently, using up the sad carrots, onions and celery from the bottom of the fridge and some courgette from my friend’s allotment. I always have macaroni, Parmesan, tinned tomatoes, stock cubes and herbs in, so it’s a super cheap meal :)

Toad in the hole is a popular cheap meal here, also bangers and mash, and keeping the sausage theme going, an economy version of cassoulet (without the duck) is a good winter standby.

Faux dhal: put tin of coconut milk, tin of lentils, bag of spinach and scoop of garlic paste into saucepan with some curry powder or whatever spices you have. Bring to boil, the simmer until it looks right.

@AdaColeman I'll have to experiment with "veggies in the hole" as we don't eat processed meat like sausages.

Bendy veg soup is known as "fridge soup" here.

I'm making cheese Onion and potato pie tomorrow night.
I bought a chicken at full price recently. Mum made Roast Chicken which fed us two and a friend. Mum and I had cold chicken and baked potato the next day. The rest of the chicken was frozen and we boiled up the carcass. I froze the stock and used it for soup when ds2 was home. I got the chicken out of the freezer two weeks ago and we had curry. I boiled up the rest of the meat and made soup again out of the stock which fed Mum our friend and I... ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺