You will not get a Sunday roast on that kind of budget, but you could eat really well, it depends on careful shopping, careful cooking and occasionally buying in bulk.
Take for example a mushroom risotto, a punnet of chestnut mushrooms 65p, an onion 8p, a veg stock cube 8p and a little hot water and 2/3s of a bag of Arborio or similar rice 75p. Do stir a lot, this makes it creamy without needing cream. This easily feeds 4 at a cost of under 40p.
Leave out mushrooms use peas instead and price drops to 30p, Use a value pasta sauce and you will not need mushroom, onion or stock cube under 30p again.
Buy stuff that grows locally from farm shop, its normally half supermarket prices, buy potatoes by the sack ,split with friends/nieghbours you'll get a sack for roughly the price of a bag.
A 40p cauliflower from farm shop easily feeds 3/4 when served with a cheese sauce and crusty bread.
A jacket potato (just buy normal potato's (the term jacket doubles the price per kilo)) cook in microwave for 10 mins finish off in oven if you want a crunchy skin (not essential for most uses).
Learn to cook energy wise:-
Reducing Cooking Energy costs by50-80%
This paper is about learning a few new cooking techniques and applying very basic physics
Cooking speed and how much energy is used is about getting heat into the middle of the food to cook it. We can start to use simple techniques to halve the cooking time and halve the energy used.
1 Use a meat thermometer and internal temperature safety chart
A supermarket chicken will have a cooking guide for example state that an 1.8 kilo bird takes 100min at Fan 180 degrees C
This is a very cautious timing erring hugely on the side of safety. You must off course ensure the bird is cooked but a meat thermometer and Internal temperature safety chart for meat and poultry will ensure safety, you just have to check at around 60 minutes in the thickest piece of the bird.
You will find that the chicken if spread out to allow heat to circulate within the bird will cook in around 55 minutes or in nearly half the time stated on the supermarkets packaging.
2 Smaller joints cook quicker
If you cut the Chicken in half an 1.8 kilo bird cut into 2 halves takes 35 min at Fan 180 degrees C, Again check thickest part of meat with thermometer to ensure correct temperature reached.
If you cut chicken into quarters it will take 25 minutes to cook to a safe temperature.
If you cut into pieces 20 mins to reach a safe temperature.
A 2kg loin of pork would take 2hours and 25 minutes to cook but cut it into two and the same 2 kilos of meat takes one hour and 25 minutes to roast.
3 Use meat Skewers
The reason why cooking meat takes so long is you have to wait for the heat to get to the centre of the joint and raise that to a safe
temperature and meat is a good insulating material. If we skewer
using metal skewers into the thickest part of the joint we can halve or better the safe cooking times.
So our 2kg loin of pork that would take 2hours and 25 minutes to cook, cooks in just one hour when skewered with say 6 skewers (remember to use meat thermometer).
The same principle works on boiling a Joint of Gammon (2.5 kilos) would normally be boiled for 2hours and 15 minutes. If we skewer that same joint
(you will need a slightly larger pan and shorter skewers) then the cooking time reduces to just one hour (and if you leave the skewers in, the joint will cool to a carving temperature more quickly too).
4 Use a steamer
There are two types of steamer
an electric type or a simple
pan top model.
Both of these allow many vegetables to be cooked simultaneously without any bleeding of flavours using just one “pan” and one ring/power source.
The vegetables are added one at a time, those to be steamed the longest cooking time first, the others added in cooking order. I normally stop cooking by adding something cold to the steaming water when the other vegetables are perfect, a cup of tap water or some frozen peas (which do not need cooking
merely defrosting and serving).
So 5 vegetables steamed and their vitamins and nutrients kept intact using just one steamer instead of 5 pans and 5 stove top rings worth of energy.
- Reuse the steaming or potato water
Once you have boiled the kettle and used the water to par boil potatoes for roasting that water is still fine to use and the roast meat joint will be out of the oven in maybe just 30 minutes. So use that potato water to steam the other vegetables , its fine and will not alter the other vegetables taste. You can even use the water again perhaps to defrost frozen peas, peas don’t need cooking just warming and the now warm water will keep the steamer warm and avoid overcooking whilst waiting for the meat to “rest”.
- Water boils at 100 degrees C
Water boils at 100 degrees C, this means that water doesn’t get any hotter and food doesn’t cook any faster no matter how high you turn the ring up.
So turn the cooker rings down, if the water is boiling your food is cooking as fast as it can, furious boiling just fills the house with water vapour and encourages mould and other problems and wastes energy.
One of the few exceptions is cooking pasta where a rapidly boiling pan helps stop the pasta sticking by keeping it moving.
7.Use a kettle for your cooking water
It saves money, energy and time to use an electric kettle to boil your cooking water . So stop heating cold water in your saucepans.
- Set a timer when you need a preheated oven
If you don’t use a timer you will almost certainly waste energy, you will not see the light blinking out to show that the ovens ready for use. Its common to miss the oven ready time by 20 minutes or so in a busy household. Use a timer and its buzz will almost always surprise you and you’ll never waste another penny of energy again.
- Check your oven door seal
Broken or drooping door seals leak heat and money. A replacement door seal costs as little as £5.00 and will pay for itself in under a month in a busy kitchen.
10. The smaller the Vegetable the quicker it cooks
The smaller a vegetable is cut the quicker it will cook in general. Again it’s about heat penetrating to the middle of the food and heating it to an edible temperature. So Carrots whole 18 mins, coins 10 mins, batons 8 mins, diced 6 mins, slithers (Madeline or peeler 2mins. Broccoli and cauliflower should be cut into floret and each stem split length ways. Potatoes cut into smallest acceptable size according to intended use roasting mashing etc.
- If an oven is on use it
If you are cooking a roast then it is sensible to cook the vegetables in the oven at the same time, use tinfoil parcels with a dab of butter and a splash of water to steam, or use oven proof bowls for cooking vegetables.
- Two day meals
It costs very little more to cook a two day dinner than a single meal. Two lasagnes baking in the oven will cost little more than one and similarly a pan of stew will cost little more if it’s a bit fuller. Both will store for days in fridge or months in the freezer (and remember a full freezer /fridge costs less to run than an empty one).
- Pressure Cookers
These work great (whilst being a little scary) and can halve cooking times (and thus halve energy use/costs) for certain types of meals, stews are the main strength of this type of cooking (remember to use boiling water from the kettle to start the cooking process).
- Slow Cookers
The main advantage here is the ability to cook a meal whilst you are at work. The potential money saving is harder to quantify as the slow cooker is cheaper to run per hour but will be on for 8-12 hours. If this is compared with an oven or stove top cooked meal the costs can be similar provided that meal takes no longer than an hour to cook.