To ask for your really cheap ideas to feed 5 on a budget

[turquoisegem]

Family of 5.
3 teens not yet of working age.
Food is costing us a fortune at the moment with growing kids and food prices on the hike.

The older boys have huge appetites so I'm hoping for some ideas for meals we can cook on a budget please?
I feel like I'm spending a fortune and still struggling to make it go round.

If they'll eat pulses then vegi chillis are always good and filling. Dhal with rice/flatbread is cheap. Bulk out your mince with lentils and do cottage pies/spag bols and lasagnes

Potato hash

bubble and squeak

smart price pasta with simple home made sauce

huge blocks of Asda smart pride cheese are good

dried lentils and pulses as bases for bolognese etc

dahl and rice

Lentil/bean based stew with homemade dumplings

bread and peanut butter is a filling cheap snack

ditto porridge

Yes I'm thinking we might have to give up meat. I'll still cook it for the boys as much as I can but it is the most expensive part of the shopping.

Pasta bakes, risottos, jacket potato/beans/cheese/veggie sausages, chickpea burgers, chickpea/Harrisa/corn stuffed pittas with cheddar, shepherds or cottage pie but with Tesco own veggie mince and peas/sweetcorn.

We've found we've cut out food bill significantly by eating vegetarian 4/5 days a week

Also scones. Smart price flour and add in whatever you have. V filling and cheap.

Dhal and rice is delicious and I'd echo what people said about bulking things out with lentils, bolognese etc.

How about soup? Dirt cheap to make, endless flavour combinations and it might not satisfy them as a meal but as a starter before a more expensive main meal it would allow you to serve less.

Eggs, too. Omelette etc.

Protein and fat will fill them up if you can make it work cost wise, I do get that carbs are often cheaper.

Try asda, 7 meals for 4 people under £20

groceries.asda.com/aisle/just-essentials/just-essentials/all-this-all-in-under-20/1215686354495-1215686354496-1215686355171

You don't need to give up meat but there could be ways of getting cheaper cuts to reduce your food bill.

Chicken drumsticks or thighs are cheaper than breasts. If you prefer cuts without bones then Turkey is about 2/3rd the price of chicken.

In pasta sauces you can use bacon to add meatiness without adding a lot of cost.

Casseroles or stews with cuts like braising steak.

By meat when it's on multi buy offers and freeze, you can put it in a marinade in a ziplock bag before freezing and that sorts out your prep too.

Other cheap filling meals would be:

• soup and a cheese toastie for dunking
• jacket potatoes
• stuff on toast
• full English
• casserole
• chilli with lentils/beans for padding

You can also add some good old fashioned stodgy puds like crumble, cobbler, jam roly poly. All cheap to make if you use seasonal fruit (or blackberries you've picked and frozen).

Serve home made soup with bread as a first course, make hearty soups such as minestrone, bacon and bean, vegetables pasta & beans, potato & leek etc.

A gammon joint, boiled, served with colcannon and cauliflower cheese.

Sausage, bean and vegetable casserole. You could add suet dumplings or cobbler (scone) topping to make it more filling.

Liver, mash and onion gravy.

Serve portions of puy lentils, or butter beans or haricot beans cooked with herbs, alongside stews and casseroles to fill the hungry teens up.

Thank you, just had a read that's really helpful.

Dahl and rice

Baked potato and cheesy baked beans

Toasted sandwich

Frozen veg, not fresh

Omelette

Veg soup

This always sounds barmy but WW2 rationing recipes if your family aren't fussy eaters. One of our favourites is one sausage per person, squeezed out of skin,mixed with made up stuffing and baked, steamed fried, whatever your taste. Mash, vegetables, gravy. Yum yum yum. Loads of ideas online.

Cheesy pasta bake and peas

Sausage stew with potatoes, parsnips, carrots, swede, onions and squirt of tomato puree.

Toad in the hole and baked neans

All day breakfast (sausage, bacon, egg, plum tomatoes, baked beans and toast.

Jacket potatoes and beans

Fish, mashed potatoes and beans/peas.

Roast chicken, roast potatoes, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, Yorkshire pud and gravy.

Aubergine, tomato and mozzarella lasagne with roasted peppers.

Penne Arabatica

Spag Bolognese with lentils to pad out mince and a couple of handfuls of frozen peas added near to end.

Toasted sandwich and homemade soup. Tomato and lentil/vegetable/leak and potato with crusty bread.

Would they eat any of these cheap meals?

Try beat the budget recipies. We're saving quite a bit batch cooking too.
beatthebudget.com/

This has been good to read, as I am doing most of this. Home-cooked, with a good sprinkling of veggie dishes seems to help us keep costs down.

We had a lovely cheesy pasta bake this evening with peas. Very cheap, tasty, hot and filling and enough left for adult son to take portion to work as they have microwave. I am cooking a veggie meal 2-3 times a week.

Basically go Asian. Daals, veggie curries, stirfries, noodle dishes, all of which use little or no meat.

Thrifty Lesley is brilliant for cheap meals. She’s been doing it for years, the site is old fashioned rather than all shiny influencer. The recipes work and I really like how she comes across.

Agree with a pp that you can do a lot with frozen chicken thighs. Also frozen coley fillets. Both are fine for stew/curry type dishes and in the case of the fish fillets they really don't take much gas to cook from frozen. If you CBA to make your own then jar/powder pack sauce is fine, just add a bit of lemon juice and some frozen herbs that you buy in supermarkets eg parsley, basil etc. Get a big sack of rice and it will last you ages to go along with those types of meals.

If you are really struggling there will be food banks near you. A lot of them you don't need a referral especially if they're pay what you can type arrangements. Supermarkets often give them food they won't be able to sell so you're helping to reduce general food waste too.

Btw re veggie, unless you know what you're doing especially with teens it's difficult to get all the nutrients you need especially iron. Eg macaroni cheese is very tasty and will fill you up but it doesn't give you the iron and vitamins you need for your main meal. Sadly meat is the best source of iron.

Ooh I love thrifty lesley❤
Soup and a cheese toasty get my vote. I love lentil and bacon, but broccoli cheese is a winner x

We are a family of six with three teens and one pre-teen so I feel your pain. I batch cook on a Sunday to prep for two weeks.
Today I made this Tom Kerridge Chicken and Pearl Barley

I only used one pack of chicken breasts and doubled all the veg and pearl barley. I cooked it in the instant pot so the chicken fell apart. I also thickened the sauce with cornflour so it was more like a stew. Served it with mashed potatoes. It went down well and fed all six of us. Have put enough for another meal for everyone in the freezer and have an extra two portions for lunches left over.

I also used two recipes from Jamie Oliver's One cook book - the bolognaise and the sweet potato chilli. Used one 1kg pack of 50/50 pork mince for the bolognaise and the rest is bulked with lentils and veg. It will serve approx 15 portions. Same approximately with the chilli but black beans add the bulk. Will serve with Nacho's and sour cream one night and may blend to a soup for the other.

Do you have a decent wholesale veg seller near by? I have bought a massive 10kg bag of potatoes so doing lots of potato based recipes (leek and potato soup, cheesy bacon fried potato, cheese and potato pie) which work out very economical.

I also buy porridge oats on bulk direct from the wholesale and that is generally the only option for breakfast along with toast/eggs.

I make packed lunches everyday for everyone so we're not spending a fortune on food on the go.

Only problem with all of this is that it is very tiresome and I need to be very organised (I work FT and volunteer so I am relatively time poor as well as cash poor!)

Good luck!

Kale or broccoli Mac n cheese
Slow cooker chilli bulked out with beans
Chopped up sausage and bean casserole with veg
Chicken thigh curry
Corned beef and potato hash with a fried egg
Chicken thigh fajitas
Stew and dumplings

www.mumsnet.com/talk/cost_of_living/4724991-affordable-meals

OP there’s another thread running under the Cost of Living topic with affordable meal ideas.

Massive pack mince. Two onions. Big pack mushrooms. Gravy mix.
Chop onions and mushrooms finely. Make two big mince beef and onion pies. Serve with mash, veg and/or baked beans.

Sponge pud and custard. 4 oz sugar, same flour, same marg, two eggs. Serve with custard. Can add raisins, jam or a mashed banana in the sponge mix.

Lentil and veg soup. Chop up a lot of veg - onion, carrots, cabbage. Couple of stock cubes. Add red lentils. Blend.
Serve with grilled chesse sandwiches made with orange plastic cheese slices. Very filling.

Buy full fat everything.

Porridge made with full fat milk and peanut butter on toast for brekkie. Hard boiled eggs too if still hungry.