To ask for your tasty recipes

[LMW1990]

I'm trying to cut down our weekly food shopping and make the most of our budget, so buying bulk items for multiple meals etc. Obviously (decent) meat costs money and we don't do many (if any) meat free dishes because I'm never sure how to make them filling.

Please can I pick your brains for tasty, inexpensive, filling meals for in the week? I have a slow cooker and I'm looking into getting a 2nd hand bread maker.

TIA!!

A cheap favourite here is my chilli cheese bake
500gm minced beef.
Sliced onion.
Half a bag of frozen peppers.
Tin of kidney beans.
2 cups of rice.
500ml of beef stock.
Tin of chopped tomatoes and 1 spoon of Tom puree.
1 tspoon of chilli powder.

Fry the mince and onions until browned, add the peppers and kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, Tom puree, chilli powder and a little garlic depending if you want.
Add the rice to the mix in the pan, then slowly pour the stock in. Stir so it's mixed and leave to simmer for 20 minutes.by thus time the rice should have absorbed most of the juices. Pour into a shallow oven dish(lasagne dish usually) and chuck grated cheese on top. Stick in oven for about 15 minutes or until cheese is browned. Serve with garlic bread/salad. Usually feeds 2 adults and 4 children 2 meals. And it's easy to freeze.

I am no good with measurements as I just wing it. But.... oven bake aubergine until soft. Slit first or pierce with a fork.

In a frying pan. Fry onions and garlic. Add mince and brown. And salt pepper chilli flakes cumin and tin tomatoes a little bit of tomato or pepper puree. And a bit of hot water. Simmer like a Bolognese. When ready add fresh chopped parslay. When aubergine soft. Cut open like a baked potato. Add your filling by spreading aubergine wide as possible. Slice tomato and pepper add on top and put back in the oven. If you like make a tomato sauce to dribble over with cheese or you don't need to do this.
Serve with salad and rice.

Meat Free Cheap Filling Quick!!

Mushroom and Broccoli Sir-fry:

500g Noodles, 1Broccoli, 500g Mushrooms, 1 Onion, Garlic, Oil, coconut milk (optional) and curry paste and soy sauce to taste.
Just chill veg in bite size pieces, boil models.
Fry onion in oil with curry paste add soy sauce and coconut milk if using.
Add veg and fry for a few minutes... finish off by mixing in pasta.
Enjoy!

Cassoulet.

Or in English it's sausage and bean stew. You can do any beans and veg like celery leeks carrots and bung in a couple of strips of pork belly to make it more meaty. Add in some puy lentils as well

Loving these!!! Thanks all!!

Asda do a really nice ham joint for something like £2.65. Cook it on low all day. This is nice chopped and added into lentil soup (red lentils, onions and carrots cooked in vegetable stock) and you have enough left for sandwiches.

Ooh watching too!

What's really nice too is mushroom risotto. Soak dried mushrooms and keep the juice aside, soften onion and garlic and add the chopped soaked mushrooms and rice, then mix stock with a bit of the mushroom juice and add slowly to the rice until it's cooked then add creme fraiche, a knob butter, bit of parsley and Parmesan.

I bought dh the Persiana cookbook last Christmas & he made lemon & saffron chicken with Persian steamed rice.

Gorgeous & we now have it often. The rice is amazing-boil basmati rice for 4-5mins then drain & run cold water over. Meanwhile put the same pan back on hob on low heat. Get a bit of greaseproof paper, scrumple into a ball & then flatten out to line the pan. Drizzle oil & couple of knobs of butter & add some seasalt flakes then sprinkle rice in to get air through. Cover with tea towel & lid & leave for 40-60 mins. There's a crusty bit of rice & it's gorgeous. I could eat it every day. With slow cooked ham, brisket, anything!

Cajun chicken

Chicken breast fillets (however much you need for your family)
Yellow, green and red peppers

Onion (if you feel like it sometimes I don't bother)
Garlic
Double cream (1 or 2 tubs depending on how much chicken you use)
Cajun spice

Cook chicken, add peppers, onion and garlic, fry for a few mins, add some Cajun spice. Fry until cooked well.
Add cream and more Cajun spice (As much as you like really)
Cook for around 15 mins.

We have it with chips/rice/pasta/wraps

So tasty and last time I added passata, which was quite nice.

You could go veggie and leave out the chicken and use other vegetables.

These are amazing and just what I was looking for!

chop up some sausages. fry in a wok until cooked.
chuck in diced onion, pepper and 2 crushed garlic cloves until cooked
1 or 2 teaspoons of chilli powder (depends on how spicy you like your food) and stir in.
add 1 tin of chopped tomato.
stir in cooked pasta.

don't know what it's really called. i just call I spicy sausage pasta. always goes down well and dh takes leftovers to work the next day (which is a compliment seeing as he's a fussy git)

Anything with mince, you can do half-lentils, half-mince. Easy.

Lay chicken thighs in the slow cooker. Mix together half a cup of soy sauce, half a cup of honey, a small splodge of tomato puree, some salt pepper chilli flakes mixed herbs and either pour it all over or if you need to make 2 layers of thighs, divide it and pour half on top. (I have a large slow cooker so can get 8 thighs on the bottom but my friends is small so she does two layers of 4)
Sooooo tasty. Chicken thighs are so cheap.

I put a pork loin in the slow cooker, pour one whole jar of Paul Newman's barbecue marinade and cook on low for 8 hrs. Pulled pork yum. I know you said you wanted cheaper so maybe try this with a cheaper joint of meat? I'm not sure what. Someone might help.

Oven dish full of as many cherry tomatoes as you have. Jar of black olives (50p in Aldi). Big glug of olive oil, big glug of balsamic vinegar. Crushed clove of garlic, bit of diced or mulled chilli optional. Oven bake for 30 mins until tomatoes are soft. Mix with cooked spaghetti. Is yum.

Milled chilli . Bleeding autocorrect.

Nigel Slater’s Chorizo and bean stew.

Chop onions, celery, carrot and garlic, and soften in some olive oil. Add a whole chorizo, sliced (about £2.50 from Tesco), fennel seeds, smoked paprika and oregano, chopped tomatoes (I use a punnet of fresh ones, but I think tinned would work too), a tin of cannellini beans (or other beans - whatever you want, really), a couple of strips of orange peel (optional - I have forgotten it, and it is just as nice), and chicken stock, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add extra beans and vegetables to pad it out.

A small amount of home made meat Bolognese seems to go further when mixed in with cooked pasta shapes (penne or twists or whatever) pile into an oven dish, top with grated cheese and bake till bubbly and golden. I add garlic bread. Paella is good too because it's mostly rice with anything you like bunged in...i always use a sliced chorizo and usually the leftovers from a roast chicken with prawns if I have some, but often not. Frozen peas are a must so it's super cheap, filling and delicious. It's a one pot meal too so less washing up! Home made soup is always a winner here and if you get a bread maker it will be perfect. We like spicy butternut squash and pepper soup at the moment and I add lentils to thicken it so it's really filling. Leek and potatoe soup is good too.

Sausage pasta bake:

• Sausages cut into 2ish cm chunks and cooked (fry or bake)
• veg sauce (out a jar or homemade with onions, peppers, grated carrot, tinned tomatoes and optionally courgette or celery, as well as herbs de Provence or mixed herbs and black pepper)
• pasta (your choice)
• mozzarella (the 43p value stuff is fine)

Mix all the above in a dish. Top with cheese. Bake til hot throughout and cheese bubbling and tasty.

You can batch cook it using the eco-crime foil dishes and freezing prior to the baking stage or you could double line a Pyrex in cling film, freeze in the pyrex dish and then remove the dish after freezing.

You can do something similar with chicken instead of sausages with daubs of pesto.

I also do chicken drumsticks and thighs shoved in the oven on a tray with as many as I want of: red onion (8ths), whole garlic cloves (skin on), courgette, peppers (big chunks), potatoes, and cherry tomatoes. Then I either season with lots of fresh thyme, olive oil etc or with cumin, turmeric and paprika.

One of my favourite slow cooker meals is meatballs. I cheat and buy the meatballs ready made but I expect you could make them more cheaply if you wanted. I have a “sear and stew” slow cooker so I take the dish out and shove it on the hob with a slug of olive oil, brown the meatballs while I chop an onion. I then shove in some frozen pepper bits, possibly carrot, garlic purée, a few lumps of frozen sweet potato or butternut squash (to thicken the stew up), a splash of red wine if any is open, a chicken or beef stock cube (no water), a load of herbs de Provence, and then either a tin of tomatoes or a tinned sauce (I like the Aldi and Lidl ones that are like 60p each at 95% vegetables). Bring to the boil, shove in slow cooker. Ignore for 6-12 hours. Tah dah!

just I do my pulled pork with shoulder which I think is cheaper than loin, and it goes on half price in the supermarket on a semi regular basis.

This is my go-to, cheap, meat-free slow cooker dish. So flavoursome and you don't even notice the meat is missing (although you can add some chicken if you want):

Chickpea, sweet potato and spinach curry

Yum yum Yum!! Rewriting my shopping list!!!

Moroccan honey chicken:

Slice 8 chicken thighs (skinless and boneless) and put in large saucepan with 60g honey and cook for 5 mins. Add 2 tbsp ras el hanout (the Waitrose essentials is the best), 4 tbsp tomato puree and 700ml chicken stock and cook on medium heat for about 15 mins until the sauce thickens a bit. You can add some chopped walnuts and natural yogurt at the end if you like but I don't bother. Serve with cous cous (I make this with chicken stock instead of just boiling water) and veg. It's really good.

nacreous that's good to know. We reared our own pigs so had loin joints from them but was wondering what I'd have to replace it with now we're running low.