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.

It is interesting though then when I was young (which wasn't thaaaaat long ago) it was cheaper to make things from scratch. We didn't have much money and pre prepared and processed foods were most definitely treats and seen as quite posh; my mum used to often feel guilty that we couldn't have x frozen processed food and had to have home cooking which sounds wild now!

Macaroni cheese with a crispy breadcrumb and parmesan topping is a cheap filling meal with vegetables.

Toad in the hole is another cheap favourite in my house served with baked beans.

Jesus what size was this chicken?

Vegetable broth and spuds.

I use Lebanese bread

.

Mine tastes good with a bit of balsamic and after 30 minutes in the pressure cooker

Chick pea curry with flatbreads.
Dal with rice.
Cauliflower curry with flatbreads
All ridiculously cheap and very delicious.

Well given that most people aren't facing food bank level money shortages, it's not unreasonable to expect people to have a basic store cupboard of rice, pasta, flour and basic spices. You could probably set yourself up with weeks' worth of all this for under a tenner, then you have the ability to make a good variation of tasty cheap meals.

Cheese freezes if you don't use it all in one go, or you can use it for a few different meals. M&S sell a massive block for a fiver, probably the cheapest cheese available.

Someone mentioned the price of eggs - mixed size free range are usually the cheapest ones, about 20 p per egg, so you can have eggs on toast or similar for about 50 p.

Those of you using coconut milk, block coconut is much cheaper, a block is about a pound and equivalent to 4 cans, you can also make it go further by putting a smaller amount in, because a whole can is often too much for many recipes anyway.

Some larger supermarkets do big packs of frozen garlic and ginger, that saves preparation and also much cheaper than buying fresh. But I suppose some think that having a freezer is too aspirational, despite something like 96% of households having one.

It's also not ridiculous to suggest that a chicken can do a couple of meals for a family. it's how it used to be before food got so cheap that people expected to be able to eat piles of meat daily.

Not cheap cheap, but a chicken, or other joint - pork is often on offer, plus cheaper vegetables so carrots, broccoli, swede and potatoes can do a substantial roast dinner for not very much, then a second meal with the leftovers - pasta bake, or add a can of chick peas to make a curry. I don't see why a suggestion like that always receives such ridicule.

@PreppingForSchool
Wholewheat fussili is 75p in Aldi for 500g

I used about 200g of cheddar, four tablespoons of cream, two onions, half a punnet of mushrooms, 2 tins of tomatoes,

Cheddar was about £7.00 a kilo

homemade pesto and pasta with home made bread. Probably about £1 a portion max

We have an allotment, and every day during the autumn, winter and spring, DH and I have veg soup for lunch! I have a soup maker, and use mainly squash, onions and potatoes stored in the garage, plus runner and french beans from the freezer, and bits and bobs of anything else (garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, greens), plus two stock cubes - salt would be much cheaper, but I prefer the cubes! Then toast from bread - mainly Tesco yellow stickered, stored in the freezer.

But if you costed our time at the allotment, it'd probably work out quite expensive 🙂

https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/lentils-and-basic-tarka-dhal-recipe/

This is a really simple recipe, I sometimes add in some coconut milk (small tin 39p from B and M) for some extra flavour.

My cheapest meal is red lentil bolognese, I costed it at £2 for 4 before the pandemic but it will probably be a bit more now.

Not so much one meal but a large joint of smoked gammon costing about £12.50 to £15.

Bake it in cider, or even lemon barley diluted fir about two hours. Remove from the liquor, remove the rind, cross cross with a knife and slather with some honey and mustard.

Shove a potato in the liquor and boil to take off some of the salt. With some veg stock, and a ladle of the juice make a gravy (you can add cider or .slices of bramley). Serve thick slices with roasties, baked chantenay Carrots and a green veg. Roast for 4.

Finely slice half a dozen slices to use for ham sandwiches for packed lunches for 4.

Chop a further couple of slices. Sprinkle over some suet with black pepper. Roll and steam for two hours. Serve with parsley sauce, Carrots and green veg. 4

The remainder can be bunged into a carbonara, or cheesy/ham pasta bake or popped into a pie with leeks, perhaps a bit of chicken and a mild cheese sauce. Mash and greens. 4

16 meals - probably for about £20.

Also a large supermarket chicken for £5.50/6. Roast chicken, stuffing, all the trimmings 4

Sandwiches for 4

Reserve the remainder of the meat (scraps). Boil the carcass with an onion, bayleaf, carrot and some peppercorns. Strain and cool. Use the stock to boil enough pasta for 4 and some brocoli. Chop 1/2 an onion, add butter and flour, any remaining chicken stock, milk and grated cheddar, add in the last of the leftover chicken. Bung in the oven for 25 minutes with some grated cheese on top. A pasta bake using all the goodness of the chicken. Side salad with little gem, tomato and cucumber.

12 meals for about £10-£12.

If you ever happen to whizz through a supermarket at about 4pm on Xmas Eve you will find huge turkeys reduced to a fiver. The giblets make a fab base for soups throughout January or cat treats. The bird can go in the freezer, for Easter or quartered for dinners during Feb/March.

I love many versions of shakshuka, on toast my fave is the simplest
Fry off some chopped garlic until its going brown (dont burn it) add a tin of chopped tomatoes, cook until most of the liquid is gone. Make wells in the remainder, add eggs, leave cooking gently for 5 mins or longer depending how you like your eggs, serve over thick toast, serves two very generously.

Others are a curry in slow cooker with the bendy veg, as easy as possible, chop, add veg and a jar of sauce, cook a couple hours, add meat if that's your thing.

Fry off sliced or chopped chorizo until the oil runs, add tin of chopped tomatoes and tin of drained chickpeas (bean of your choice) cook for a few minutes or longer, if you like it chop some parsley on it and serve over thick toast, it's cheap, its quick, uses one pan.

Some days I just love the simplest food and some days I'll take hours to cook. Depending on the day

Baked spud, beans and cheese with a side salad

Our cheap meals are

egg fried rice with vegetables

pancakes 😁

Smoky lentil veg stew

quesadillas (tortillas stuffed with cheese/onion/tomato/Avo/whatever you have and fried in frying pan until crispy and melts)

noodle soup with vegetables and dumplings and hard boiled egg

Definitely something meat free like the courgette and lentil ragu I make - just serve with spaghetti and parmesan. Or anything that's mostly pasta / rice like risotto and paella. I find I can make a basic paella from what we have in the store cupboard, fridge and freezer (chorizo, frozen prawns etc) but not sure it's that cheap; it just feels it because I can usually make it without buying anything in specially.

I make pizza most weeks and that's pretty cheap apart from the mozzarella. The balls are very wet so we buy grated from Lidl then toppings whatever's in the fridge.

I make pizza dough in the breadmaker and also use the dough to make dough balls to dip in garlic butter.

We do eat meat most days though so not cheap compared to most of these examples. We wouldn't have soup as a main meal - that's something we'd have at lunchtime.

@BarbaraofSeville

Well said!!

My cheapest meal is my leftovers curry, usually eaten on a Monday. Save veg peelings from Sunday dinner. Carrot and parsnip etc peels go in the blender with a little oil, ground cumin and ground coriander to make paste. Potato peelings and broccoli stems are chopped quite small and fried off with the paste and half an onion and a clove of garlic. Few fennel seeds thrown in and some garamasala. Add a tin of value chopped tomatoes or tin of coconut milk (or both if you're feeding more people). Leftover meat gets chopped small sprinkled on top of individual portions. Fresh coriander from the garden as a garnish. Serve with rice or chips or whatever carb you have to hand.

This is my favourite daal recipe but you could substitute curry powder for most of the spices and use frozen ginger and garlic.

4 tbsp veg oil
6 cardomoms
1.5 tsp mustard seeds
1.5 tsp cumin seeds
4cm cinnamon sticks
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
4cm ginger root
Small chilli (optional)
4 level tsp coriander
2 level tsp cumin powder
1 level tsp turmeric
1 level tsp chilli powder
250g lentils. I use mixed red and yellow mung lentils
1tbsp lemon juice
750ml of stock made with one stock cube and some
coconut milk if you have some.
1 tsp garam masala
Handful fresh coriander
Salt to taste

Have you seen right guys reviews on tic toc, they spend £5 on meals some of them look fab.

Please don't let this thread be derailed by ppl huffing " Well I don't have any spices". Buy them. They will cost less than a tenner and last months.
Another cheap meal is vegetable stir-fry with noodles and an egg on top.

Im vegan so all the meals I make come in at under £5 for 4. Its an unpopular lifestyle on here, but you can't fault it for economy!