Cheapest dinners for 5 days?

[Whatillnessgoingaroundnowffs]

Skint at the mo and need cheap dinner ideas from Friday to Tuesday this week

Any ideas? 🙏

pasta make with blended tomatoes tinned for a sauce add any veg in the fridge and sprinkle with cheese basic but cheap

Have you got anything in your cupboards to start with?
Meals for how many and your budget?
Otherwise how long is a piece of string.

Jacket potatoes
pasta and sauce
eggs in some form
porridge
beans on toast

Hmmm. A couple of my go to's are

Pesto Pasta - add whatever cheese or ham or leftover something to add a bit of protein, with some random salad or veg

J. Potato and beans

Also a case of having a real good rummage at what is in the cupboard/fridge/freezer. Making the most of what there is.

Pasta is always my go to- pasta bakes using Aldi own brand pasta sauces. Not the most nourishing thing in the world but it does the job when you're skint.
If you post some ideas of what you already have in then people can probably give better advice.

What's in your cupboards, fridge and freezer?

What's your budget to buy anything additional?

Make a veg stew/soup with chickpeas, beans or lentils? A potato, couple carrots, an onion, any other veg going cheap, tin of toms and some seasoning/herbs?
You can make flatbread with just flour and water and a bit of oil.
Lentil daal with rice?

Casseroles are your friend.
Literally anything you have on hand can go into one.
It's a "one dish" /cook & eat
There's a million recipes out there but it's best if you specifically type in the main ingredients you HAVE (not more stuff to buy).
You can use pasta/rice/barley/potato salad for the bulk
You can use any protein you have (beef, chicken, pork, tofu)
You can add almost any vegetable that you have on hand.
A lot of casserole recipes ask for a ton of cheese and cheese is expensive. You're better off with a tin of creamed soup. (Cream of mushroom / cream of celery / cream of chicken etc)
And then something crunchy on top for texture. Crushed up buttery crackers, even crushed up leftover crisps work fine.
Just like making soup in which whatever you've got in the fridge can be turned into a delicious soup (that more than likely you won't be able to make again because you won't have those exact ingredients,) casseroles are the same.

They're always different, always interesting, and always filling.
Quite inexpensive to make, and I hope that helps.

Lentils and rice

Omelette
Quesadillas (made with a tin of with lentils, squirt of tomato puree and a sprinkle of cheese, add any herbs or other spices if available in the cupboard)
Beans on toast
Jacket potatoes
Pasta with the most basic of sauce
Porridge

If you've got any veg about to turn, veg soup is good and filling, adding potato for thickness. Toasties go well with it.
Pasta bakes as said.
Depends what you have in.

Probably need to know what you di have, in terms of spices and stock cubes and what not.

if it’s getting to end times here I’m quite fond of making up a big ‘special fried rice’ meal. Cook the rice and let it cool as you should cook with it cold into a generous glug of cooking oil. Bung in whatever veg you have, any meat, season with Chinese five spice, ginger, lemon juice, garlic, soy sauce, tumeric, but of course you have to have these things already in the cupboard. Stir through an egg at the end. I like a big dollop of hot sauce on the top. It’s cheap and I usually do it to use up a load of leftover veg that looks a bit sad or a chicken thigh I’ve found at the back of the freezer but it’s really tasty and filling.

Jacket potatos
Omlettes
Pasta and sauce (a tin of tomatoes simmered with a bit of cheese / mushrooms and cream v cheap too)
Veg soup and bread

Veggie chilli made with beans
Soups
Jacket potatoes
Pasta
Omelette
Beans/eggs on toast

Best advice I can give is to do a thorough audit of what you have in your cupboards/fridge/freezer and start there. Even if you have to a have a few random combinations you are likely to be able to come up with a couple of meals without having to shop.

If your cupboards are genuinely bare then do a shop of the cheaper basics.
Large potatoes and cans of baked beans, pasta and a cheap jar of pesto. some cheap veg and tins of pulses like chick peas. You could do a curry veg? Can of tuna for tuna pasta bake. Eggs on toast?
Are you just feeding yourself - or are you feeding children or a partner as well? makes a difference as if its just you a casserole/pasta bake is unlikely to hit the spot unless you want to eat the same thing for 4 days.

If you are only cooking for one I'd recommend a book "one Pound meals" by Miguel Barclay. You probably don't want to spend out on a book right now but maybe look online for some of his recipes or get the book in the future. I live alone and use this book quite a bit.

Also, have you ever tried soy wadi?
It was something I discovered during the pandemic, I found it in the Indian section of the grocery store.
Extremely inexpensive, it's lightweight, and can either come in larger chunks (about the size of dog kibble to be perfectly honest) or smaller granules (about the size of grape nuts cereal).
It's a defatted soy protein I believe.

The reason I like it so much is because it's so cheap, high protein, and can be added to your existing meat, particularly ground beef.

Easy to use, boil some water, put the dried soy wadi in, (as mentioned I think it looks like brown dog kibble but you could also pretend it looks like cereal), boil (but be careful, making sure it doesn't boil over the same way that pasta does), drain, rinse, when cool enough, squeeze out the excess water as hard as you can with your hands, throw in a food processor for a few pulses so that the consistency is similar to ground beef...

Then cook some ground beef: half beef, half prepared soy wadi. (Don't go any more than half soy wadi because you can taste the difference.... Ideally, 1/3 soy to 2/3 meat) Makes a great filler, and unlike fillers like oatmeal or bread crumbs, this is a protein filler.

With this I can almost double the amount of meat that I make for a fraction of the cost.

Hope that helps.

Olio is also really good if it's in your area, always lots of veg, bread ect on there x

What you have is the cheapest way to start. What do you have in your cupboards/freezer?
What protein/pulses, what carbs like pasta/potatoes, what veg etc?

Mushroom omelette, home made chips, whatever veg you have to accompany

Pasta carbonara, spaghetti, eggs, milk (cream better but not if on a budget) bacon or ham, mushrooms, cheese

Jacket potatoes

Pasta and tomato sauce, pad out with veg such as onions, sweetcorn, brocoli, mushrooms, a bit of cheese if you have it

2 adults, 1 child

I have:

pasta
rice
caulifower
brocolli
carrots
bit of frozen veg
sweetcorn
2 large potatoes
lasagna sheets
pancake mix
6 eggs
butter
kiwis
tangerines
avocado
bread
spices
worceshire (sp) sauce
flour

Once you've done a provision check, you can ask chatgpt with some of the ingredients, i find it comes up with some good stuff for a cupboard/freezer meal that I wouldn't have thought of

Baked potato with beans - Tin of beans 30p each and a bag of baked potatoes is £1.50ish.

Lentil Dahl: red lentils (£2) onions (£1/2), garlic, stock, tin of tomatoes (30p), whatever spices you want/have in (I like tumeric and cumin and curry powder but whatever you have), serve with rice (85p).

Green lentils curry - couple tins of green lentils, onion, garlic, any curry paste, stock, tin of tomatoes, any frozen green veg (we like spinach). Serve with rice. I also add cubes of potatoes and let it simmer for ages until they are cooked, if you can spare a potato.

Butterbean stew - a couple tins of butterbeans, red peppers, garlic, onions, tinned tomatoes, any herbs you want, frozen spinach again, bung in the oven and serve with rice or bread.

You can make these with a bag of onions for a couple pounds, garlic bulb for £1, a few tins of tomatoes which are 30p each, pack of stock cubes for £1, bag of frozen spinach for £1.50, red pepper for 65p, beans for 30p each, bag of baked potatoes for £1.50. And a few pounds for the other bits.

Serve whatever steamed veg you have on the side.

Oh and cherry tomatoes & some mushrooms (may go off soon & veg)

I’m doing chicken curry & rice tomorrow, but need ideas for Friday-Tuesday

You could do a nice veg curry with that

I would make an enormous beef mince bolognase. Have day 1 with pasta. Day 2 add kidney beans and chilli, eat with rice and banana. Day 3, with jacket potatoes and cheese. Day 4/5 tuna pasta.