Let's lower our food bills.

[Bookaholic73]

I was wondering if anyone else is trying to lower their food bills and wanted some support. I know I do!
I'm hoping that we could support each other with info on where is cheapest to get certain items, what food is on offer at which supermarket that week etxc.

A bit about us. We are a family of 3, myself and my 2 adult sons. We are currently spending £800 a month on food, and i really want to reduce this by at least £150 a month.
My sons buy all of their own snacks, drinks etc, all i pay for is their main meals and my own food. They obviously also pay me monthly 'rent' but this swallowed up by rent and council tax.

Anyone else want to join in?

Its sort of a mixture of following the principles of these people

https://www.jennycancook.com/recipes/faster-no-knead-bread/

https://www.emmafontanella.com/the-easiest-no-knead-bread

https://steves-kitchen.com/no-knead-bread/

I have sort of found my own way, how long you leave the dough depends on the temperature of your kitchen etc

Also I do not touch the dough, a lot of these guides say to just fold it over a few times, I dont even do that, I just sort of put an oiled spatula around the edge of it an hour or so after I make the dough, then an hour or so before I put it in the oven. I dont shape it, I sort of plop it into the dutch oven from the bowl. I find the dough unmanagable so just do it like that. Comes out lovely

The carrots & parsnips also freeze well after roasting (we top & tail but don't peel etc).

The potatoes we just do a massive loaf of jackets & freeze them whole after baking. We then defrist for easy dinners as either jackets again or slice into wedges & re-heat as they are or use them to make loaded wedges / dirty fries.

£40 a week is impossible unless you only eat toast and porridge?!

Its not impossible, you need to be imaginative with herbs, spices, veg, pulses, nuts, dairy, flavour profiles

its £50 per week per person, so shopping for 3 people is £150 per week.

When I have students staying, I can shop for the week for 4 of us for £90 and that includes pudding but discounts lunch. We eat home made cottage pie, curry and rice, burgers and buns with chips, Sunday roast, bubble and squeak with cold meat or sausages, homemade pizza, pasta with chicken and broccoli in a white cheese sauce. Pudding is a mixture of yogurt and fruit, ice cream and school sponge with custard or meringues and fruit. Breakfast is a mixture of bacon/sausage sandwiches, frozen croissants cooked up that morning, chocolate porridge with fruit or cereal. I also have to buy the afternoon snacks, so usually get them each a packet of biscuits each and a packet of chocolate penguins type biscuits or I will make a Victoria sponge with raspberry jam & flapjacks.

Ive not spent more than £100 and this includes a bottle of wine for Sunday roast and invite friends over.

Ive not got students at the moment, so I search for a menu plan that can be frozen in portions, so ive got
https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/chicken-and-pearl-barley-broth/. makes 8 portions and can easily be frozen

https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/creamy-tarragon-chicken-casserole/ this I have the mustard, chicken stock and will get carrots and onions for the above recipe ( I will not buy shallots) and the creme brach can be used up with pasta and pesto, with the left over bacon. again this can be frozen in portions

https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/sweet-potato-chickpea-coconut-curry/ make a chickpea curry, double the quantity and freeze. I have the spices, so not much to buy - chickpeas, coconut milk and sweet potato

I shall make a cottage pie, again using up the carrots, onions, buy tomato puree (I never use tinned tomato in cottage pie) stock I will already have and make sure its big enough for 8 portions & freeze

Pasta, I will cook each week frozen broccoli and chicken left over from the Sunday roast - I often just roast chicken thighs, sometimes buy these frozen and roast or use for pasta dishes

My spend is £55-£60 for me and ds17.
I cook from scratch and we eat a good range of meat & fish, dairy, fruit & veg.

This week we have

• hake & chorizo risotto,
• spaghetti meat balls in tomato sauce
• chicken curry & rice,
• sweet peppers stuffed with herby sausage meat, & garlic bread,
• Pork & apple burgers
• cheese & tomato omelettes & oven chips
• pepperoni pizza & salad

The fruit bowl is always full, and there's snacks and biscuits for ds as well.

Hake & chorizo risotto is a good value meal for winter. Make a basic risotto, add sliced chorizo and let it colour the rice before adding any stock. Then add the stock until the rice is nearly cooked. Lay cubed frozen hake on top of the rice for the last five minutes, cover and let the steam cook the fish. Serve with sweetcorn. Costs about £4.75 for three large servings.

I think people should ideally give the calorie content of any meals - small and inactive people could easily spend 1/3 less than someone else

Just under £5 for one meal if replicated over all meals would be over £100

now whilst breakfast may be much cheaper quite easily / snacks like fruit and milk for tea also need to be included.

That’s a huge amount op, we spend around £60 a week for 2 adults here, excluding any wine. This does include everyday things like loo rolls and washing tabs but not shampoo as I buy from boots (fussy!)

I scratch cook 95% of our food which makes a difference and I try to make double so we have easy fall back food on busy days eg a shepherds pie costs £5 to make but covers 2 days thus £1.25 per portion, a cabbage is 3-4 days of veg and so on. Yesterday I made chicken stew, total cost was £4 and was enough for 2 days though admittedly I was still on the 8p a pack veg bought on the 23rd December mostly. I spent £42 yesterday for the week (due to having leftover veg) and that included dishwashing tabs and salt plus cooking sea salt which I buy once a year maybe. Definitely got enough food for week but admittedly I’m out on Wednesday (Christmas dinner!) but he’ll eat leftovers. I don’t actually understand how people spend so much unless it’s processed foods

My menu for this week for reference:
chicken stew and dumplings
roasted duck legs with red cabbage and potatoes dauphinois
more chicken stew
shepherds pie (2 portions left over for freezing)
Filled mushroom pasta with lemon sauce
dal and rice with aubergine pickle.
Have leftover chicken curry for him when I’m out in freezer.

the pasta was bought ready made but 20% off everything else from scratch including the pasta sauce

It’s been a couple of months since I posted on this thread.
November was a success, I managed to spend £650 instead of £800, but December was a bit of a free for all, with it being Xmas and NY etc.

So I’m back to it this month.

Things I have tried and loved:
-Frozen berries instead of fresh. Great swap, even though the price of even frozen berries have gone up, they are still nowhere near as expensive as fresh.
-Pork mince instead of beef mince. Wow, such a huge difference in price, and we can’t tell the difference enough to stop. Beef mince is around £10 per kg, pork mince is around £5 per kg (based on both being 5%).
-Making iced coffee at home instead of buying one of those 1L cartons from the shops for £2. This is such an insanely easy swap to make and I feel a bit stupid not having done it before.
-Not shopping as soon as something runs out. I am only shopping once a week, unless we run out of eggs, milk or bread. In that case I’ll go to the local garage and get it, so I only buy that one item instead of walking out of Tesco having spent £50.
-Packing my own lunches for work instead of buying meal deals daily. This is a no brainier from now on.

I can be more consistent with the above things, which will help me save more money this month.

Just to add, Lidl or Aldi usually do smoked haddock scraps, if you really like bold flavours you could add those to the risotto instead of the hake, cheaper and stronger, only takes mins to cook the fish because they're scrap bits

I’m a newbie and so keen to stop spending so much on food! My kids are always hungry though so proving difficult

Just shamelessly resurrecting this thread to see how people have got on with some of these tips the last couple of months as im about to make some serious changes to our food bill/shop hopefully so reading through all this with interest!!

Hi Elle.
I have spent significantly less in the past 2 months, thanks in part to this thread.

it’s taken some serious commitment and effort, but I’m spending about £200 less per month!

I don't but anything in a packet fresh veg staples are peppers, tomatoes, onions, spinach potatos carrots.
Make stews
Currys
Pasta using the above and add mince or chicken

Wow that's brilliant amount per month!!!

I feel like i need to read this thread once a week before each shop as lots of good ideas and its amazing how easily things get out of hand on a big shop!

The one thing I would add, Ive posted a few times, Is frozen fruit and veg is the bees knees and saves huge amounts of money

I buy a 1kg bag of casserole veg ( or just short ) , add a 500gr pack of stewing beef - slow cooker or pressure cook and add a tin of beans - baked, cannelloni , butter, black eyed - whatever You stretch the meat and up the protein

Add the beans to every wet dish ,, you won't taste them, they melt down and a 40p can of beans will add fibre and protein , both very filling so you will rely on carbs less

I live quite rurally so have to have food delivered. There is no local shop. It's about 15 minutes so half an hour round trip. Because of this I plan what we are going to eat and also make sure we have easy basics in. I spend about £150 on a family of 6 including dogs, nappies, all cleaning products and laundry and kids pack ups. I plan meals but can change them if I don't fancy something and always have pasta, noodles etc in so i can feed people even if it isn't cordon bleu! I bulk meals with extras--so for example if we are having curry we'll have rice and nan. If we are having pasta we'll have a load of garlic bread. We eat well. Have meat most nights. I've cut back on fruit because the kids would just eat all of it in one night. We don't buy snacks like crisps etc. I've found that just doing one big shop is cheaper than whizzing around lots for bargains. for example if I go in Home Bargains I might sabe on cleaning stuff but I'll invariably spend more on random stuff. Basically I try and keep out of shops as all that heppends when I go in is that I spend money!

I’m not doing great, my spend is still hovering about the £950 a month mark, but maybe that’s a win as it’s not increased since about last September! I have swapped from branston beans to M&S without complaint by the teens. Plus downgraded the cartons of juice bought in Tescos for the teenagers (they have a small glass at breakfast), from the ones with a plastic twist top to the ones that need to be cut open - only a few spills that I’m aware of! Those probably save £5 a month..I will be looking for more swaps where I can.
Does anyone have any suggestions where I can get bags of mixed nuts, bags of pumpkin/sunflower seeds/chia seeds cheaper than supermarkets or H&B? Also chicken breasts - we probably get through about 10 large breasts on an average week.

my grocery bill was £500 in january so that has crept up!
but february was £380
so swings and roundabouts

I don't know if it's cheaper than you have already found. Aldi have a kilo of chicken breasts for £6.49. Aldi is cheap for chia seeds (£1.79 for 200g) and sunflower seeds (£1.15 for 250g). The mixed nuts in aldi are nice, can't remember the price. They do mixed fruit and nuts for 59p.

This is why I’ve been using chicken thighs, one tiny bone and 2kg of chicken for £5.50 in Sainsbury. Double the weight for less money

good plan @MikeRafone . Dp doesn’t really like meat on the bone but there are 3 of us that do!

My March supermarket spending reached £1050 😩 In our defence, we only eat out for birthdays, and get maybe 2 takeaways a year.

It takes 30 secs to take the bone out of a thigh and rip of the skin and you save near on £4a kilo doing it yourself

Small sharp knife is all required

Thighs are so much more suited to curries, stews, traybakes etc - they can take the cooking.

Filets ( breast ) I save for stir fry, or parmagano, breaded chicken etc , slicking through and battering out flat

I just cook the chicken thighs slowly and debone afterwards, deskin previously but depends on recipe