Meal ideas

[Glitterballofdreams]

The cost of feeding my family is out of control! I think I need to try and make more basic dishes to keep the costs down.

Can anyone suggest their cheaper go-to family meals?

Following with interest

Some great tips already here.

I recently made minestrone soup - when I costed it out, I thought I’d made a mistake because it was so cheap!

Red cabbage is very cheap this time of year. BBC Food has a good recipe for a red cabbage, cauliflower dhal if you fancy a change. Slow-cooker is the cheapest way to cook down red cabbage if you’re making a traditional side dish.

Swede is also very cheap - dice it very small and cook with rosemary if you have some growing in your garden.

Looking ahead:

When Christmas comes along, look out for the 8p or 10p veg offers if they do them again, last year I bought heap of bags of potatoes, shallots and leeks for 8p. The shallots lasted in a dark cool spot in my cupboard for months. If possible shop yellow stickers on Christmas Eve afternoon and Boxing Day morning. I got several pots of cream for a few pence and batch-cooked leek & potato soup which I froze.

Next year if possible grow herbs. I’m self-sufficient in mint, rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley, oregano, bay leaves, dill and (now dried) chilli pepper. In spring/summer I also have fresh coriander and basil. Having a mountain of free herbs makes a big difference to how freely I cook with them. Also you can take cuttings of rosemary and sage and you can pot up excess mint roots - they make great thank-you gifts if you go to see someone for dinner!

Your meals are already good value choices.

Are you using leftovers to reduce costs? So, for example, if you do a roast chicken on a Sunday use the bits of leftover chicken and veg in a curry on the Monday.

If you’ve got a bit of curry leftover pop it in the freezer, even if it’s not a whole portion . Do that each time you make a curry and in a few weeks you’ll have a curry banquet!

I plan left overs that can be used. Eg I bake more potatoes than I want to eat. The next day I mix the left over potato with flour to make gnocchi.

If I make a Bolognese I will cook double. The left over then has spices and / or herbs added, sometimes tinned beans and I use this as a stuffing for cabbage or tortilla or peppers.

Shepherd's / cottage pie were traditionally made with left over meat rather than mince so a good use of a Sunday roast.

If you can do it then butchering a chicken saves money.

Look out for community fridge / larder / shops for good deals.

Sometimes FE colleges sell the food the students are making on catering courses. I have had really cheap bread from one.

Your meal choices are already fairly low cost so if your food bill is too high then I'd have a look at what else you're buying. I have found that cooking whole foods from scratch has reduced the need for my family to snack but with it being half term I knew we'd have the dc friends round so bought 36 bags of crisps from Aldi for £3.99. In Sainsbury's a 6 pack of Walkers is £2.20.

Four pack Petit Filous, total weight 340g, £1.95. Aldi's own same weight, £1.25 or Aldi 450g yogurt 89p. I might be saying things you already know but it could be your lunches and snacks that are pushing the price up.

Are you in the habit of wandering through the clothing section and picking out something cheap every time that you know dc will love? Without knowing your whole spend it's hard to see where to cut

https://thriftylesley.com/ is good for super cheap meals and she has a sister site for weeks when you don't have 2 pennies to rub together

https://eatnotspend.com/ will probably cost more than £7 pppw now but some good ideas to get you started

Your meal choices don't seem that extravagant, so time to look at where / what you source - it can all add up & make a massive difference. Basically know your prices.

Use Hotukdeals & the Trolley apps. Keep an eye out for the weekly specials. Use all the loyalty schemes & apps to your advantage. We particularly like nectar and lidl and have them on both our phones to maximise. In Lidl a £4.50 / 7.5kg bag of potatoes is your 'free veg' @ £50 spend, and a 36-pack of crisps is your 'free snack' @ £100 spend.

Shop at Farmfoods/ Home Bargains. If your employers have a discount scheme, use it to buy discounted gift cards etc.

And a good cheap meal is Pan Haggerty 👌

Second shopping around and tweaking what you buy. Beef has suddenly got very expensive, so use turkey or pork mince instead, also add in pulses. When I make chilli, it's a pack of mince, two or three tins of beans, same of tomatoes, pepper and onions to make a big batch for the freezer.

Healthier to cook like that too. Bolognese always includes lentils, I sometimes use a can of green lentils, it's not necessarily for cost, more health and environmental reasons, but it's also a bonus that it's cheaper.

Pork is often the cheapest meat for a roast, use the leftovers for tacos and to add to noodle dishes.

Use seasonal veg and cheaper versions eg carrots, normal broccoli instead of sprouting, cheapest cabbage like a PP said.

Where do you buy your corned beef? A tin of John West or Princes from most supermarkets is nearly £4 but last time I bought it from Aldi, it was about £2, also if you can go to Costco, a 12 pack was £25. It's sometimes also cheaper in places like Farm Foods.

As far as I can tell, it's all exactly the same because I think it is made in bulk in South America and sold to suppliers across the world to put into small cans. In the past I've bought value corned beef and I compared the nutrition and ingredients with different types and it was all the same.

I watch a lot of Masterchef Australia and every episode someone makes an Asian dish, but it being Australia it is Vietnam, Laos, Singapore.

What I have learned is to make an 'Asian broth' you need boiling water, ginger and garlic. The ginger and garlic can be fresh, frozen or from a tube (but you need quite a lot).

If you add a veg stock cube you have a basic veg broth, then you can add other things, chilis if you like heat, spring onion, Asian veg, mushrooms, noodles, meat, I quite like to put left over roast pork in it but any meat works, you can also add a half hard boiled egg, wantons / dumplings if you can make them, gyoza but don't over cook them.

If you use garlic and ginger, a lot of large supermarkets have a World Foods section in the freezer where you can get it prepared in packs for about £1 or so for 400 g, so far cheaper than buying fresh and easier to use in curries and stir fry type meals.

I also buy block coconut which works out at about a quarter of the price of cans of coconut milk and you can use as much or as little as you like, the rest of the pack keeps forever in the fridge.

I make my own Asian dumplings using ready made skins and the smallest press from a kit I got for about 50 p in the sale in Sainsburys, a bit like this and keep them in the freezer as that sort of thing is £££s ready made and you don't know what's in them.

brocoli chicken, smoked bacon and cheese spread to make a pasta dish ( purchase frozen boneless chicken thighs in Sainsbury - a kilo and a half is around £5.50) use two or three thighs for this dish https://beatthebudget.com/recipe/chicken-and-broccoli-pasta/. (id add the smoked bacon for a bit more flavour

chicken skewers with a marinade ( use 4/5 chicken thighs for this dish) and service with fake Nando rice and homemade flat breads using greek yogurt and self raising flour. https://pinchofnom.com/recipes/nandos-spicy-rice/

Roast dinner (use chicken thighs instead of a piece of meat)serve with roast vegetable sand potatoes

chicken casserole, using the remainder of the vegetables you didn't use on the roast dinner and the remainder of the frozen chicken

Carbonara using the remainder of the smoked bacon that didn't go into the pasta, if any spare - freeze with baking/parchment paper between slices . I just use a tub of parmesan and smoked bacon, instead of the fancy stuff

Kacket potato and beans/tuna

pasta pesto with a bag of mixed vegetables

I agree with @LondonCheesecake . Your dinners look great - cheap, healthy and tasty. A few savings to be made as others have suggested (the Gorgonzola pasta and Asian broth are both being added into my rotation).

Our big savings are now coming from reducing the amount spent on snacks and lunches. We are reducing the UPFs (family history of depression and autoimmune conditions) . By making the bread, cakes, biscuits, Asian sundries (boa buns, spring rolls, samosa, pakora etc) I am finding that out food bill has been reduced. I am not going to lie it was a faff to begin with but now I just make extra for the freezer if I am doing a batch for dinner. Even if things are available we are eating less of them.... The non UPF food is more satisfying than their shop bought equivalent.

I buy the spring rolls wrappers.... Somethings are best left to others.

Also grow your own herbs and mix your own spices.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/how_to_make_pizza_50967

You can also make a batch of pizza and freeze them

I cut the pizza ball into four and roll out, dust in semolina and then pre bake for just 7/8 minutes - then load the tomato sauce and toppings. I do garlic mushroom, ham and olives with red onion and mushrooms. By making four small pizzas they are easier to pop in zip lock bags with parchment paper between. Once you have the ingredients you can make a lot to keep in the freezer. Easy to get out - top with cheese and cook ( you can freeze the cheese on the pizza but I choose not to.

I also keep 4 fish battered or bread crumb and a bag of chunky chips in the freezer - this is an easy meals to throw in the oven or air fryer instead of a take away.

We’ve been enjoying faggots mash and peas recently, a pack of faggots are under £2, bag of spuds, bag of peas.

Other cheap meals we’ve managed are:

bacon pasta

fried rice / egg fried rice with what ever veggies we want - sometimes we add pork belly or (if we’ve got the budget) salmon.

fishcakes and veg.

pork shoulders in the slow cooker, then out into a giant Yorkshire pudding with peas&sweetcorn and gravy.

If you want to make bread the easy way s

it works out about 70p per loaf and I can set it up in the time it takes the kettle to boil and then I cook in the oven when I get home in the evening -I leave it all day on the work top

Egg fried rice. Leftover rice. throw in whatever random veggies, a couple of eggs. Feeds a crowd, low effort and quick. None of my kids mind eating it twice a week.