Frugal Recipes

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We live in Guernsey, where food shopping is extremely expensive and is becoming more so. We don't really have budget supermarkets here (no Aldi or Lidl - only Waitrose, M&S, co-op and a shop selling Tesco stuff). Therefore, with the rising cost of living and our wages stagnating, plus a huge mortgage (house prices through the roof here!), we are looking to save on our biggest expense: food.

Does anyone have any frugal but tasty recipes they can share?!

Cut down meat and increase vegetables in most meals.

Depending what you usually eat things like Chilli halve the amount of beef and double the beans, add finely chopped carrots and celery for more bulk.

Sausages, cook half the amount and slice them to serve, either cook with rice and vegetables or mix through once rice/pasta is cooked.

Add lentils to a casserole.

Cauliflower curry with boiled eggs, finely chop onions and any other veg available, sauté and add curry paste and tinned tomato or stock. Add cauliflower florets. Halve boiled eggs and add once everything is cooked.

Fajitas, or omelette, lots of onion and peppers/courgette with a small amount of chicken/pork/ham etc.

Do your local shops do the yellow sticker reductions? If so stock up and freeze things on the day of purchase.

Thank you! Yes, WR does but they don't seem to knock an awful lot off. I've read that in the UK they sell things on reduction for pennies but that doesn't seem to happen here - they blame shipping costs.

There is a local OLIO but I feel like I shouldn't use that because we have professional jobs and I don't want to take away from people who might really need the free food.

My local Waitrose barely takes any money off (south east). Usually about 10%. It may the the time that I go though, they may reduce more later on in the day.

Following on from the reduce-meat-increase-veg idea:

Pearl barley - available in Waitrose. In all your stews. Very filling. Very delicious!
Cook whole chicken as often as possible. (Jamie Oliver has so many epic mid week roast chicken recipes) Then boil down the carcass for stock which you can use in...

Risotto. Meat free apart from the stock.
Paella is also cheap and filling and can be veggie.

If you don't already have jacket potato once a week... start! A too easily forgotten staple. So cheap!

Slow cookers cost pennies to run and make good recipes even better.

Chicken thigh fillets instead of breast meat will reduce your food bill. There aren't many recipes you can't substitute breast for thigh. For this, buy boneless because deboning them is hell. Thigh takes longer to cook but is juicier and more forgiving.

Chicken thighs with bones IN are even cheaper and amazing when cooked in a casserole until the meat falls away from the bones. Add lentils or pearl barley for extra satiety. Waitrose sell both of these cuts of chuck at a reasonable price.

Stop buying bagged salad. Ever. Lettuce heads will do 4 x as many meals and keep longer, as long as you just cut off what you use. Bagged salad with its fancy "Italian leaves" is for posh only.

Stop throwing away veg scraps. Put them in Tupperware in the fridge and add them to your carcass stock once a week. (I'm serious. I do this.)

Cauliflower can be the main event, stop thinking of it as a side dish. Roast it. And eat the green bits too. Jamie Oliver does a whole roast recipe with paprika that is 🤤

Dried herbs and spices are your friend. I buy mine in bulk.

Learn to make pizza dough. Pizza is cheap!

All of the above ideas are also planet loving.

F

Wow amazing thank you ladies (am assuming all ladies, sorry if any gents!).

Going to make a note of all of these

I know the MN chicken gets laughed at but a whole roast chicken can feed a family of four at least twice. Slice or two of breast and thigh or drumstick each with roast veg on Sunday. Then strip the chicken (lots of meat on the underside) and make a chicken risotto or paella or biriyani the next day. You can then boil the bones for stock for soup if you want.

Butternut, chickpea and chorizo risotto - you just need a bit of chorizo for flavour. The bulk of the protein comes from the chickpeas.

Eggs are good value. Make frittata (fried diced potatoes, peppers, onions and peas with beaten eggs and dried herbs poured over, cooked on the stove for a bit and then finished under a grill with a bit of grated cheese. Serve with crusty bread or garlic bread and some salad.

Veggie chilli
Veg curry
Pasta pomodoro

As PP said of bagged salad - grow your own. Either buy salad with roots and plant and water it, cutting as you want or grow from seed.

www.goodto.com/recipes/tomato-risotto
We love this recipe also Google Tiktok feta pasta.

Frittata. Healthy and cheap.
Beans and cheese on jacket potato - easy, cheap, and fairly healthy especially with some veg on the side.

Dried Red lentils- source of protein, much cheaper than meat, healthy, and much quicker to cook than other dried lentils.
I use them in veg chilli, or use them to bulk out stews and mince based dishes to make the meat go further (eg chilli, bolognese, even lasagne).
I like to boil them separately, then add them to the dish as they cook in minutes this way and I don't like waiting for the lentils to soften before the stew becomes edible!
Other lentils, Chickpeas and kidney beans are also good but I buy them ready cooked in tins/pouches as I can't be bothered with the cook and prep time. Buying them dried in bulk would be even cheaper, but then you have to factor in energy costs and the cost of your time.

There is a recipe on BBC good food for "burnt aubergine chilli" which is amazing, but I use less soy sauce than the recipe says and just chuck in whatever beans, lentils and veg I have.

Bean burgers/falafel made with chickpeas or kidney beans are easy, healthy and tasty provided you have nice seasonings.

Avoid food like out of season berries, which are super expensive and not as nice out of season imo.

Thanks! Some great ideas here - giving this thread a bump

Its worth looking out for new cookbooks which do imaginative things with cheap or seasonal ingredients (I look in libraries and charity shops) too. I'm getting lots of ideas from Hairy Bikers Mediterranean Adventure, Jack Monroe's books and especially Abel and Cole Veg Box Adventure. I'd agree with slow cooker, also using pressure cooker if you have one, means food cooks quicker and gets more intense flavour. Means using dried beans are far faster, making soup only 10 mins.

Some of our favourites: meatballs in tomato sauce (with rice, capers, onion in the meatballs to bulk out the mince);
risotto with butternut and bacon;
macaroni cheese with tomatoes;
moussaka;
quesadillas;
chickpeas and chorizo stew with rice;
sausage in cider and onion sauce with butterbeans or baking beans added to the sauce and baked potatoes;
peas and ham and rice with parmesan;
vegetarian curries;
root vegetable cobbler;
vegetable lasagne;
pizza

Basically whenever I cook a meal I wonder how to bulk it up, either with added beans (Jack Monroe's trick of buying v cheap baked beans and washing the sauce off), oats, baked potatoes, etc. Then freeze one portion.

Good luck.

Thanks thats fab!

Any variety of vegetarian Soup and homemade cheese scones. Cheep, delicious, can be batch cooked and frozen in portions.

We enjoy Portuguese pate de sardinha (less glamorously known as fish paste in UK!) Just a tin of fish (40p or so) with a bit of lemon, parsley and butter (or other dairy you have to hand, I've used Greek yoghurt, creme fraiche etc). Whizz it up until you can't see any bits, it's delicious and nutritious! Great for lunches.

Along these lines but I don't put tomato in mine www.cooked.com/uk/Rebecca-Seal/Hardie-Grant-Books/Lisbon/Petiscos/Sardine-pate-recipe

I also think liver is a really undervalued meat, it's cheap as chips but delicious don't with bacon and onions or in a casserole. Can't get my head around other offal though!

Vegetarian food is cheaper BUT there's less of a central focus so you have to think about colour, texture, combination of flavours etc or you end up with bland mush. A sprinkle of nuts or seeds, a bit of pastry or crumble, all helps to jazz things up a bit. I love Meera sodha's fresh India book, it has recipes using cheap veg like cabbage and potato.

Having said that, I think you can save money and improve your cooking skills by not trying to cook from too many different cuisines, so not Greek Monday, Indian Tuesday, Chinese thursday etc! That's how you end up throwing out half-used tubs of sauce, stale herbs etc.

You are in a really mild climate... Make use of it and grow herbs, soft fruit, tomatoes, salad greens.
All really easy to grow but hard to transport so are expensive in the shops.

Create a tasty turnip cupboard of spices - make up your favourite flavours. For us it is bay spice, fajita, abodo, berebare, quate espice, chicken rub, five spice to give us US tasty, Tex mex, Ethiopian, french creamy, BBQ rub, Chinese base flavours. You can then add them to whatever fresh ingredients are about at the time. A pack of chicken legs can become a curry (of whatever flavour), stir-fry,kofta,BBQ,roast,kababs, pasta sauce, meatballs, dumdum, ramen soup, a soup of some other type, Cesar salad.... The choice is endless.

The general rule is the more work someone else does the more expensive it is for you. If you can easily take their work from your costs by doing it yourself then it is cheaper.
Grow your own -cheaoer because you aren't paying for someone to bring it to you in pristine condition
Cooking from basics... You aren't paying for someone to chop your onions or stir your sauce.
Look at what you like and see if you can do it cheaper. Practice helps too - when we started reducing food bills I would never have attempted flat breads (naan, tortilla, pita et al), Chinese dumplings, fresh pasta but now see that as an everyday thing.

Flour is the cheapest bulking ingredient... Bread, pasta, dumplings, cobblers, seiten etc are cheaper than potatoes or rice.

A couple of my go to recipes for using up bits from the fridge also happen to be super cheap.
Veg fritters - basic fritter battery from milk, egg and flour (i like to add mustard powder or paprika but not necessarily if you don't have it. Add in grated veg and / or Sweetcorn and whatever else you have, I normally put a bit of cheese and if we have any chorizo a small amount goes a long way. Cook like pancakes and served with poached egg. We have these most weeks as I can get them on the table in twenty mins and use whatever I have.

Similar type of meal but very adaptable to whatever you have in is this thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/yotam-ottolenghis-courgette-and-ciabatta-frittata/. Any bread works and you can mix up the veg used to vary it.

Also cobbler / dumplings on stews really bulk them out, and who's doesn't like a stodgy cheesy dumpling? I make Parmesan dumplings to put on chicken stew but also works on chilli, beef stew etc and makes the meal feel more substantial.

Jack Monroe has a free recipe blog called Cooking in a Bootstrap. It's free but requests tips if you can afford any. LOADS of great recipe ideas.

cookingonabootstrap.com/

Lots of great ideas here already.

Here are some economical meal ideas from me
Sausage and butter bean casserole
Pasta primavera
Spaghetti with sardines
Mushroom risotto
Mushroom stroganoff served with rice or tagliatelle
Fishfinger bhorta
Cauliflower cheese with sausages or bacon

Omg amazing thank you all - such good suggestions and yes, we will be growing an awful lot!

I blend a tin of any beans and put it in a bolognaise sauce. The kids don't even know.

Another way to stretch mince in bolognese style sauce is to add a tablespoon or two of pudding rice to the sauce with the liquid as it’s cooking. The rice absorbs the tomato colour and isn’t noticeable.