What are your cheap meals?

[DragonsAndDaffs]

I love reading food and grocery threads, one family's cheap meal is another family's weekly treat! Even the cost of the same meal can vary massively - take spaghetti bolognese for example: one could cost 4 times as much as the other, depending on the ingredients used - organic grass-fed mince, Mutti tomatoes, and fancy Italian pasta, or cheap mince, basic tomatoes, and value pasta.

I'm a frugal cook!
I feed 4 adults for less than £100 a week. We eat well, have 30 different plants a week, mostly cook from scratch and try to limit UPF. A cheap main meal for me would probably be a hearty minestrone soup served with homemade cheesy bread (costing around £1 a head). Our average main meals are around £2 a head. Last night I made sweet-and-sour pork with basmati rice, and tonight we are having chicken curry with flatbreads.
An expensive meal to me would be anything costing over £5 per person - we rarely have a takeaway due to cost.

What are your cheap/average/expensive meals?
How much do you spend on groceries?

Cottage pie, Lancashire hotpot, shepherd's pie, corned beef hash, jacket potatoes... can you tell what I grew up on? 😁In all seriousness, I probably had a fairly plain diet full of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables.

I find that it works out cheaper to buy, say, whole salmons and fillet and freeze them myself. That way, they're reasonably-sized portions, they taste better than shop-bought fillets, and as I freeze the spare ones, they last a while for me.

I get the distinct impression that you are about the same age as me. 😂

TBH, I've never tallied up each meal in terms of costing. Its just DH and myself.

-Baked potatoes I would think it the cheapest.
-We grow a great deal in our garden which I realise isn't cheaper than buying. I pickled, make chutney, blanch and freeze what we can't eat in the summer.
-I try to use leftovers even if not traditional ingredients for things. A frittata using left over roast veg, fried rice or stir fry with leftover veg
-I recently learnt that cooked rice can be frozen! It not only saves me time to cook a 1kg bag at a time, but it would also save on cooking costs
-I use this site because its generally cheaper to eat what is in season and more nutrients as fresher https://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/
-I often pick up things for free on the olio app https://olioapp.com/en/
-I know its joked about on MN, but a large chicken does last us 3 days. Generally:
-Day 1 Eat the legs with a roast and dog gets the meat from the cooked wings
-Day 2 chicken Caesar salad and/or sandwiches/or curry
-Day 3 chicken noodle soup or Chicken sweetcorn soup
-Depending on the soup, I add pearly barley or beans for added fibre and texture.

-When they had the 5p veg at Christmas, I made alot of curried parsnip soup 😋

Last night I dished up the 4th meal made from 1 gammon joint
a, as a roast with veg and apple sauce
b, as a pasta dish with grated courgettes, broccoli in cheese sauce.
c, with potato wedges a fried egg and baked beans
d, as a quiche with added blue cheese, onion and spinach

All the more of a bargain as the joint was a freebie from Morrisons as they had to do a substitute on an online shop!

ETA that beats the 3 day MN chicken!

I love egg , chips and homemade coleslaw ( massive salad basically )

sometimes o replace the mayo with pickles and a splash of oil

Soups - i usually use whatever meat and veg needs eating.
Tonight was a chicken breast, potatoes, carrots and a turnip. together with a stock cube it made a tasty soup for two.
After christmas we had a lot of parsnip/potaoe/ham soup.

We are vegetarian so most of what we cook works out quite cheap!

a large butternut squash goes along way and a few meals in the week might be something like

• jacket potato with baked beans or homemade coleslaw
• lentil and butternut squash bolognaise
• the rest of the butternut squash and the rest of the carrots and cabbage used in the coleslaw can then be used in either a curry, stew or soup along with a few other veg bits thrown in and a can of chickpeas/borlotti beans depending on what it’s cooking with
• omelettes

My go-to cheap meal is pasta with tomato sauce, because it's DD's favourite comfort food. Just tinned tomatoes cooked down with thyme and a dob of soft cheese/creme fraiche in at the end, over pasta. Maybe a handful of olives. If I am hungry I start it off with chorizo and onion fried up, and add peppers or aubergine; if I'm hungry but really watching the pennies I finish it with an egg cracked in as it thickens (so it poaches and goes creamy).

We also like things like lentil soup, veg soup thickened with white beans, chickpea/chickpea and cauliflower curry, which are cheap but also easy because they're basically tins and spices. In summer I like things like courgette gratin or courgette fritters with herbs, which are really just the cost of the eggs if you grow your own veg and herbs, and pretty cheap if you don't.

I don't buy much cheap meat just because I don't often buy meat so it might as well be good, but today I'll make toulouse sausages in black lentils - you cook celery, carrot and onion and simmer the lentils with nutmeg, black pepper and bay leaf, then you put them in an oven dish with a bit of the liquid and some creme fraiche and the veg, and tuck the sausages in so they cook along with it all.

But I alternate with expensive things for ease. I will very happily let DD get a pack of sushi in M&S for dinner, or have their soups for lunch. I would probably eat more ready meals if they were nicer - the problem for me is that they don't taste as good as home made, not that they're expensive. I will very happily buy expensive steak or fish, too - just not very often.

I spend about £60-80 per week on me and DD; I know I could pare it back, and sometimes I do, but for me, what is expensive is my time and energy. I love cooking and I miss the days when I had the mental space to enjoy thinking about cheap, satisfying home-cooked meals, but I know right now, I don't. So I go to tried-and-tested basics and I accept that some of the splurging is the trade-off I need.

Potato soup or pea soup are quite cheap to make, but my cheapest is pasta with butter and garlic and a little cheese on top.

Buying chicken fillets but freezing them separately, sometimes I’ll chop up one fillet for a curry or a stir fry and bulk it with veg!
I bulk out spaghetti bolognaise with lentils and veg too.
homemade coleslaw is cheaper than shop bought.
also make mini crustless quiches in muffin tin, easy to make and just as easy to freeze and reheat too

My cheap meals are carbonara, spaghetti puttanesca, smoked salmon and dill pasta, west African root veg stew, dahl, cauliflower and sweet potato curry, chicken and leek pie, paella, jerk chicken or prawns with baked coconut rice and beans/ peppers, chicken and coleslaw pittas, egg and chips, braised chicken with lentils and peas,
Frozen prawns and chicken from farm foods are much cheaper.
2-4 adults plus 2 teens, £100 a week plus top ups of milk, bread and fruit.

Most of my meals are cheap one pot jobs TBH.

1 jar of sauce
some roasted veggies
couple of tins of beans
Done!

The cheap version is value sauce and yellow sticker veg, the expensive is finest range sauce and organic veg!😂

Pasta with courgette- fry courgette with garlic, add herbs, add pasta, add some cheese. delicious

OP are you doing breakfasts lunches and dinners for that one hundred pounds? Does it also include cleaning and laundry items?

@Terriblytwee
All meals included and laundry/ cleaning.

Omg. We are meal-planning twins!

I have a weekly menu that the structure doesn’t change from.

Sunday - roast dinner. Today we had beef which I cooked in the slow cooker with onions, carrots, celery and red wine (tombola, we don’t really drink or buy much alcohol). Today was served with roast potatoes (leftover and frozen, we never eat of them, so I make and freeze every three weeks), sautéed cabbage, sweetcorn and Brussels sprouts.
Monday - leftovers. So we have half the joint leftover and I’ll probably chop it up and turn it into pulled beef wraps.
Tuesday - usually stir fry or curry, I’ll use leftover chicken if we had that on Sunday, this week I’ve got some thigh to use.
Wednesday - jacket potatoes and chilli (made in the instant pot once every four weeks, mince, loads of soffrito, three types of beans, lentils and chick peas, it goes miles)
Thursday - pasta - really quick and sometimes this is a jar, sometimes not
Friday - omelet/ beans on toast or freezer food
Saturday - a longer cook, homemade curry, steak baguettes, lasagne, homemade pie, homemade burgers

We are currently averaging about £160 a week for five of us and two cats. It had got a bit higher, but I’ve cut out soft fruits for a few months. This week we are mainly eating Mumsnet chicken. I roasted two yesterday with veg, potatoes and Yorkies. I then stripped the meat from the carcass and boiled up the bones for stock. Today we had chicken and veg soup. (I’ll be having leftover soup for lunch tomorrow) Tomorrow night is chicken, leek and mushroom pie. Wednesday will be spicy chicken and rice. Thursday will be chicken and veg curry. I also made broccoli leek and Stilton soup with the broccoli trimmings from the roast and some leftover Xmas cheese. Tomorrow night I will be emptying the contents of the veg drawer and making some leftover meals for freezing.
And I still have some 5p veg from Xmas left - it has stored beautifully in the garage.

Pan Haggerty is one of my fave cheap things I got from hairy bikers

basically potato’s, carrots, onion, bacon, parsley and chicken stock with a bit of grated cheese - totally delicious and healthy cold weather grub

Jacket spud obviously
Homemade soup
Quorn lasagna /tikka masala from Morrisons
Vegetable lasagne from Iceland very cheap and quite nice
Egg mayonnaise
Cheese Omelette
Risotto
Shakshuka - eggs poached in spiced tomato sauce - easy & cheap

Slow cooker sausage casserole inc all the veg thats starting to look a little sad

Delia Smiths recipe for minestrone soup is my go to. Add pesto if you don’t have basil, it’s great in soup.
In fact all her soup recipes are brilliant, I particularly like her tomato soup especially in the summer
when I have a glut of home grown tomatoes.

Butternut squash goulash with beans (black eyed, mixed beans or similar) with home made braised red cabbage. I use the whole cabbage to make braised red cabbage with apple (Delia) and freeze portions.
Sausage cassoulet with red cabbage
Sweet potato chilli (use your fave chilli con carne recipe)
Vegetable curry with chickpeas
Home made coleslaw - combine chopped spring onion/red onion with shredded red or white cabbage and grated carrots and store in clip
lock box. Serve with home
made Asian dressing or your fave I like to add slice radishes too.
Keeps for ages but also can use in a stir fry.
Home made fish cakes I love smoked mackerel and two fillets makes a reasonable amount.
Spanish omelette (potato and onion)
Homity Pie (pastry flan with cooked cubes of potato, chopped onions, plenty of garlic, parsley and strong grated cheese served with baked beans and left overs served cold
with salad or slaw. I use a large quiche dish but you can make individual ones.
https://cranks.co.uk/recipes/homity-pie/
Batch cook everything you can and
freeze to save time and money, a
perfect “ready meal” or use for lunches.

Tuna fish pie (add mushrooms if needed)
ratatouille
ratatouille pasta bake add shell pasta and cheese sauce and top with bacon and bake.

Even larger quiches are easy to make, I do a Gruyère cheese one and a cheese and tomato one. Potato salad also nice.