Energy efficient low cost meals

[Tigerblue4]

Just thinking it might be helpful to exchange ideas for low cost meals that use little energy.

For me, microwaved jacket potato with beans. If you can afford a little cheese on top and a sliced tomato on side for extra nutrition.

One pot curry with ingredients like lentils or chickpeas, can value tomatoes and some frozen spinach with spices added. Rice. Making extra and have for lunch on a cold winters day.

Homemade tomato sauce - onions, garlic, pepper and value tomatoes. Add whatever you have - kidney beans, chickpeas, cheese, chicken, tuna, mince or quorn mince and add herbs or chilli. Serve with pasta. Again great for lunch or freezing.

If it's just a couple of you, fry eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, possibly a sausage and serve with beans and slice bread.

Homemade soup made with seasonal veg/veg on offer, onion and stock with bread. Pulses or leftover meat can be added for protein.

If it's a quick lunch or tea, a sandwich with perhaps some tomato/cucumber on the side.

Use a pressure cooker fraction of the time and energy cost
dime veg done in 2 minutes as quick as microwave and taste better

Slow cooker lentil Dahl is a favourite of mine -cheap and so easy. Red lentils, onion, tin of chopped tomatoes, spices and chickpeas/sweet potato or whatever other veg you have needing used up. I'll usually have it with either rice or a Nan bread.

Chicken and rice soup is another fave in the slow cooker for me, and works best with cheaper types of chicken. Can be great for lunch or dinner.

I also really like the basic little cod fishcakes you get in big packs of 10 from Tesco or lidl. They cook in about 5mins from frozen in an air fryer. Add to the side frozen veg or beans etc.

Black bean quesadillas (mash up the tinned beans with some spices and add a chopped pepper or other veg, add to half a wrap with a little cheese then fry for a minute or so on either side until crispy. I usually make or buy a little tomato salsa to dip into, the leftovers of the dip then go into a pasta sauce or sandwich filling later in the week.

Nadiya Hussain has great recipe for egg wraps which are cheap, quick and easy.

Stir fries, one pan only needed

@3partypics do you use dried or tinned lentils for the dhal please? I've only ever made the ridiculously complicated Dishoom one but would like a few more

Slow cookers are the cheapest way to cook anything.
A big batch of chilli with a little meat and lots of beans and veg can be eaten several ways for days after. So with rice, with nachos/tacos/wraps/jackets.

There’s not much that won’t cook in a slow cooker though.

If making soup or stews cut the veg very small - or even grate it - and it will cook quicker

Fagioli all'uccelletto, aka fancy Italian baked beans. Delicious and basic store cupboard ingredients.

www.lacucinaitaliana.com/italian-food/italian-dishes/fagioli-alluccelletto-tuscan-bean-recipe

I used to do a veg curry in the microwave. Start with rice, either curry paste or powder, water. Cook rice halfway- for me that was 10 mins on 900- add frozen veg of choice and cook for another 10 mins.

Usually I cook bolognaise and leave it simmering for a few hours. Now I’m doing basics and instead of leave it to simmer I put in the fridge. The flavour develops and deepens overnight and I zap it in the microwave to reheat it. Also, a large batch and freeze what I don’t need for that day.

Forgot to say, I use lots of veg to bulk out my bolognaise, onions, carrots and mushrooms, the same quantity as the meat. You can also add red lentils to bulk it out further, or skip the meat and use green lentils.

I made a cheap pasta carbonara the other day. Asda essentials bacon offcuts are 75p for a big pack, spagetti is 25p, a couple of eggs and a bit of hard cheese. It wasn't quite as nice as the one I used to make with napolina fancy spagetti and proper panchetta, but was about 1/3 of the cost!

Definitely green lentils in anything mince based. I typically use half a pack of mince and a tin of lentils, so the mince goes twice as far. Once you've also added in carrot, onion, peppers and whatever else I can find in the bottom of the fridge, a 500g pack of mince can easily make 8 portions.

Anything that can be cooked for a short while on hobs.

For me, it'd be a stir fry (frozen sweetcorn, peppers are good value for money and can be added to anything else you have, own sauce of soy, ginger, garlic, honey cheaper than buying jar). A chilli, curry or I make pasta sauce similar to OP with whatever I have - if I have dried herbs I'll add pasta, if chilli flakes serve with rice. Chilli, curry and pasta are great for making in bulk, and either warming up quickly the next day or freezing and heating in microwave at a later date, thus saving some energy. All are filling, warming and healthy plus you can add offer veg on ends at supermarkets.

The cheapest calories come from 'staple' foods like butter, oils, pasta, bread, rice, milk. Relatively staple veg/fruit like apples, cabbage, tomatoes & bananas. Build your calorie intake around those. I am pretty sure eggs are still excellent value for high iron/protein foods.

Is it really cost-effective to cook just a small portion in a slow cooker? I ask because if you have to freeze or refridgerate & heat up items again, is that cost-effective when energy is so expensive? Canned beans might make more sense than cooking a huge lot of lentils, for instance.

Slow cookers, air fryers and microwaves are the cheapest to run. We use the microwave for reheating things although ours is also a grill and oven. It’s cheaper to run the microwave as an oven than our big oven. We don’t have room for an air fryer (tiny cottage kitchen) otherwise I’d have one as they are efficient but they are a fair outlay so not suitable for a lot of people whereas a slow cooker can be very cheap to buy (ours was less than £10).

The normal ovens and hob (gas or electric) are the most expensive to run and should be avoided unless being used to cook something that works for multiple meals.

Slow cookers are very efficient for cooking big portions that you can then reheat in the microwave. They use the same as a lightbulb. A chicken cooked in the slow cooker is far cheaper than in the oven. That’s if anyone can afford a chicken obviously….at this rate we won’t!

You have to cook the type of meal that works in a crock pot, though. I know it will work for some people but it's not how (what) my kids eat.

I live in the sticks but I was in Liverpool the other day. My first time in a major city in a long time.
Is anyone else amazed ar the dozens of uber eats etc whizzing round on bikes in the middle of all this impending financial doom?

Read a recipe for microwave chickpea curry. Put oil, onion and the spices in s Pyrex dish and nuke. Add rest of ingredients and nuke again. Definitely going to try that.