When your broke what meals can you always make?

[45hopperbunny]

I have exactly £1.61 to last me until next Friday! I had to buy a bed outright at the end if last month so being £400 down for a month has had a massive impact.

It made me wonder though, when you’re super broke and have no money, what meals can you make at home? Or what food do you always have indoors?

I can always make,

• lasagna
• spag bol
• chicken & pasta
• tuna pasta

I always have in the house,

• pasta
• spaghetti
• bread
• some sort of food in the oven to last some days if need be
• beans
• eggs
• DD’s (15m old) porridge, yoghurts and fruit

Just wondered what other people have in their cupboards/fridge all the time!

Rice and veggies with soy or eggs
Bolognaise
Pasta and vegetable
Soup
Stew
Omelettes
Jacket tato n salad
Bulgar wheat or cous cous with veg

Cooked veg, whatever you have in, with pasta and mushroom sauce. Sprinkle with a few breadcrumbs and cheese if you have them.

Eggy bread - bread dipped in beaten egg and fried. Goes well with tomatoes.

Not popular, but liver and onions are cheap and nutritious.

I sometimes do a ragout of liver with onion gravy, raisins and tomato sauce. It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Anything pasta based - will usually stir fry up any small nearly manky veg or whatever from
The fridge and mix with pesto and cheese.

Beans on toast

Jacket potatos

Spag Bol

Something from the freezer

Egg fried rice with broccoli and bacon

Sausage and mash

Omlette and salad

Dahl
Pasta with butter
Pasta with garlic and olive oil (if you have any chili flakes, parsley, and lemon to add, even better)

Always have a head of cauliflower! I love making wok-fried cauliflower with garlic and a good spoonful of Baharat Karisimi (Turkish spice mix... I always have a bag of the stuff. You can use it on anything!)

Chopped/grated raw red cabbage with a dollop of mayo, squeeze of lemon (in my own case, I throw in celery seed- I always have a jar of this in the spice cupboard because we eat A LOT of raw red cabbage). And a head of red cabbage will do you the entire week.

For your steak, OP... take it out, beat it with the flat of a wooden spoon to tenderise it, let it sit there and soften up, put some salt/pepper and olive oil onto it, a drop of balsamic vinegar if you have it... or not. Slice it into fine slivers and sear it in a hot oily pan on a high heat. If you have some buttery rice or buttery cous cous to serve it with... yum!
I often cook up something like falafel mix/steak/chicken (I'm veggie but the kids eat meat) and serve it with buttery cous cous and a big helping of red cabbage and carrot 'salad'... the one with lemon/mayo/dash of celery seed (no salt- doesn't need it). It's cheap, quick, healthy, and we could and pretty much do live off of this!

HNRTT but am mildly puzzled by the expensive mince and chicken and tuna required for your recipes in addition to the pasta you have in the cupboard but then many of the posters who think the MP who made statements about 30p a day spend enabled nutritious meals to be made didn't seem to be able to back up their opinions with recipes. Vegetarian couscous can be cheap but would not probably not provide a nutritious meal without protein.

Get something called TVP or dried soya mince and use it as you would normal mince after hydrating it. Much nicer then lentils and has a meatier texture.

Steak is piss easy. Frying pan with sunflower oil, heat till its smoking, 3 minutes each side (for rare, more for medium and mores still for well done-an extra minute each side for this) let the steak rest for 2 minutes and you're done.

Pasta with sauce made from tinned tomatoes and onions that have been fried down till soft and caramelised

Oh yeah egg and chips shallow fried! Forgot that.

It's the mattresses that are expensive

I just had to buy a new bed too and the biggest cost was the mattress

I didn't want to waste money on a cheap nasty one with sticky out springs

Cost was also a bit above £400 and it will last for ages

Second hand bed! Grim!

I always have tinned tomatoes, beans, tons of herbs/spices, pasta, rice, flour. And eggs at least one tray of 30 a week.

Personally I only need bread and eggs to survive. The rest of the family wouldn't be happy though

2 words. Bed bugs.

I always have lots of beans (kidney, cannelini, butter beans, baked beans), chickpeas and lentils - bags of red lentils and tins of green and black lentils. Plus rice and pasta, tins of tomatoes, passata, tomato puree and lots of herbs and spices.

I could probably live for a fortnight on whats in our cupboards, just on vegan spag bols, casseroles, soups, chillis and curries just from those ingredients. Loads of different varieties, easy, healthy and super cheap. Either on their own or with random veg and salad added.

I also always have porridge oats and powdered milk. There's always breakfast here even in 'omg I haven't had chance to shop' times. Powdered milk isn't great on its own, it has that long-life tang to it. But it's great for tea and coffee and you can't tell the difference in porridge. Plus it has the same nutritional content as milk, surprisingly.

We live rurally so I’ve got a larder full of tins as in the past have been snowed in. Always have

tinned soups
beans
Tomatoes
tuna
sardines
salmon
various tinned fruit and tinned potatoes

also- pasta, rice, couscous

freezer always have several of -
sausages
chicken breasts
white fish
chips
various veg
Pitta bread

also always have stock cubes, herbs/spices, sauces etc.

I start to feel panicky if I’m not stocked up!

Dahl/lentil cottage pie/soup and crumble has got us through some very lean times.

Rice and daal. Costs £1 to feed 4 people (total not per head)

Jacket potato and beans !!

I buy oats and flour in big sacks and make my own porridge, bread, wraps, flapjacks, biscuits, pastries and cakes, have an allotment and share some chickens. I can always put something together. Especially when I had a milk delivery (paid on account at the end of the month) and buy my coffee in bulk. I persuade relatives to bring me back 5l cans of olive oil and bottles of balsamic back from Italy in for Christmas. I could live for months on coffee, bread and soup/salad, and baked, fried or roasted veg and herbs with eggs in various ways so long as I could scare up money for milk , butter, salt and the energy to cook it. If I can stretch to a bag of sugar, a pot of cream, some cheese or occasional mince or stewing beef, I can live really well on it. I have been utterly broke since Christmas and this is how we are surviving. Most of my £20 a week shopping bill goes on ‘snack foods’ for my insanely fussy DD, and a strictly speaking, she doesn’t need them.

Of course, it takes hours, days really, of my time and now I have to consider the energy as well. I’d be far better off buying it all and working more hours. I like the fact that we can survive an apocalypse and no one can ever take it away from me, though.

Lentil Dahl is a staple and costs pennies to make - eat with rice or to accompany a curry

Pasta, peas, sweetcorn and stir in soft cheese.

Pasta, tin tomatoes, onion and lentils (add any favours you have like yeast extract/soy sauce/Worcestershire sauce. Grated cheese on top if you can.

I always try to have (although sometimes use it all)

pasta and tomato sauce,

tuna, sweet corn and peas, mushroom soup (to make tuna pasta bake)

frozen chicken, curry sauce and rice - also some frozen green veg to add

Coconut milk and spices, frozen chopped onions, garlic and ginger to make a curry if I have time and no jar or sauce.

mince and veggie mince in freezer, to make chilli or bolognese - plus also some ready made of both of those for quick meals

maybe pies or kievs etc that can go with mash, chips, rice, veg or salad, whatever I have

there’s usually some sort of bread in the freezer and some beans/grated cheese in stock and often eggs too

What do you do exactly?
I have a ton of lentils in my house screaming to be used.

Anything that will keep for longer than it takes to get through a packet - we're fortunate enough to have the storage space so work on the principle of one in hand for everything.

Are you not able to have a credit card?

I can usually throw together a curry or daal with rice and pasta or pasta bake.

I keep a staple stock of rice, pasta, chopped toms, beans, chickpeas, lentils, frozen spinach, frozen butternut squash or sweet pot, frozen peas etc, tinned fish (anchovies over tuna - cheaper and tastier in pasta dishes) and have a well stocked spice/herb cupboard.

highly recommend Jack Monroe’s cookbooks for ideas, I always make the lentil and spinach daal - it’s so cheap but so tasty and filling.