Cheap family recipes

[Florabella]

With soaring cost of living, I'm desperately try to bring my food costs down, so looking for inspiration for low cost family dinners. Three fairly fussy kids. One thing none of us like are lentils/beans which lots of cheaper recipes use. All suggestions gratefully received

Most stews/casseroles use onion celery and carrot as their bases. Plan a few stews/casseroles in the week, this way you can use all the veggies without wasting any. Any you don't use. chop up and freeze. they are fine for adding to further stews.
Try and have a good selection of stockpots/herbs and spices. It really expands what you can make with just simple ingredients.
Use a recipe finder. This one is pretty good. you can enter what you have in the house and it will come up with recipe ideas based on your ingredients www.supercook.com That way you can use what you have rather than going out to buy more

The big shopping sites often have a recipe or meal plan section.

You tube. Just search budget recipes and there's hundreds of videos on how to feed your family on a budget. Loads of meal planning ideas and lots of challenges like feed a family on £20 for a week.

Tinned tuna is really cheap. My children like tuna spaghetti, fish cakes and creamy pasta bake.
Other favourites in our house:
Fried rice
Frittata
Veggie burgers
Risotto

Eggs are good. Very versatile and nutritious, not too expensive. Delia Smith's recipe for tortilla is a big favourite of mine and uses eggs, potatoes, onion, salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil. Serve with salad and maybe some bread, lovely meal.

www.deliaonline.com/recipes/collections/delia-online-cookery-school/tortilla-spanish-omelette

Veggie dishes are often cheaper.

Pasta arabiata
Shakshuka
Root veg casserole.
Stir fried veg, noodles with cashews
Mediterranean vegetable pasta bake
Pasta with garlic mushrooms

Smoked bacon joint. As a roast on a Sunday with roasties, Carrots, cauliflower cheese.

Use some on another day for carbonara; and the rest for this dish:

Chop the bacon
Make a quantity of suet and rollout then add the bacon, roll up and put in foil then steam for two hours. Serve with Carrots and Broad beans in parsley sauce.

Cheap as chips and three filling main meals.

And another: tray of chicken thighs, pricked, smear with lazy garlic, salt and pepper, juice of a lemon and roast in the oven. Serve with cous cous (add lemon and coriander) and salad.

feta cheese and cherry tomato pasta bake is gorgeous and really easy to make

8 ounces dried pasta

500g cherry tomatoes

8- ounce block feta cheese
½ cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ teaspoon black pepper
3 garlic cloves minced
Can add basil or oregano for additional flavouring or chilli flakes if you like a bit of heat

Cost to serve 4 £5 to £6 assuming you had to buy all the ingredients. much cheaper if you already have oils and herbs already

In a baking tray add the tomatoes, chopped garlic olive oil and your herbs/spices and mix. In the centre of the tomatoes place a block of feta cheese.
Bake in the oven 200 degrees (180 fan) until tomatoes are bursting about 35 mins.

cook your pasta
when the tomatoes are bursting, take the dish out of the oven and smash it all together
add your pasta and mix. If it seems a little dry some of your pasta water to loosen the sauce up.

It looks a bit odd but it tastes heavenly. the combination of sweet cherry tomatoes with salty tangy feta is delicious

You could add cooked chunks of chicken or a spicy sausage to this too if you want the protein but its tasty just by itself

Make a big chilli. Make a big bolognese. Use loads of veg in each. Sweetcorn instead of kidney beans if the kids don't like pulses.

Serve the chilli with jacket potato and cheese one night. With rice the next night. Can also fill tortillas with chilli, fold over, add cheese and then bake till crispy.

Have spag bol one night. Next night make a lasagne with it and a homemade or jarred white sauce. If there's any left you can add some chopped fried mushrooms /ham/bacon to the bolog, and make a pasta bake. Serve with baguette if particularly hungry.

Can you give us an idea of a typical week's menu so we can make realistic suggestions?

As a kid I used to absolutely LOVE Cheese Pie with baked beans on the side (are baked beans an exception to the beans rule?!) It is very simple: a white onion, gently fried until translucent. Make up some mash and mix in few handfuls of grated cheddar or similar cheese. Put it in an ovenproof dish, scatter a handful of grated cheese top, pop it in the oven to bake until it's a bit brown in top. Sounds unlikely but it is really tasty.

My kids don't like lentils but they LOVE home made red lentil and tomato soup (the lentils disintegrate so they don't even know they are there, hence at home it is just known as "tomato soup"). Loads of recipes online.

I made a fantastic chicken casserole with bone-in chicken thighs (I trimmed off a lot of the skin and browned the skin side in a pan first on a very high heat), celery, carrots, onions, rosemary, thyme, a stock cube, a tbs of flour. Very simple. The next day, leftovers became chicken soup - add water and a few handfuls of broken-up spaghetti, simmer with lid on for ten mins. Honestly the soup was even better than the casserole!

Oh I forgot to add, potatoes in the casserole too! And if you all like mushrooms add some - that deepens the flavour a lot.

Ps if you are using the oven, it is a good idea to pop in some Baking Apples ( de-cored whole cooking apples, you fill the hole with sultanas and brown sugar) then you've got a health dessert ready to eat, you can add custard if you want to make it extra delicious.

Cauliflower cheese with sausages was a big family favourite when we were young. I only realise now that it was part of the "cheap eats" rotation my parents were on! (frankfurters were often the sausage, I assume during extremely tight times!).

Bolognaise can be stretched out by adding an additional tin of tomatoes (or passata, if you prefer). I also add a chopped pepper and some chopped mushrooms to the onion mix, and grate in a large carrot. It goes further, is probably more nutritious. The trick though is to cook for longer - you really can't eat all that and enjoy it if it hasn't bubbled away for a minimum of an hour, preferably more like 2.

Chicken thighs are cheaper and make great stews/casseroles. One we used to eat a lot (must do it again actually) was to brown off the thighs. Then sauté chopped onion, carrot, celery, leak (or whatever of those you have). Add garlic, thyme, fennel seeds, a cinnamon stick and a star anise. A splash of white wine (if you have it) and chicken stock. Put the chicken back in. Chicken should be not quite covered. Cook in low oven for 2 hours or in slow cooker on low for 8. I used to strip the chicken for the kids, which also lets it go further, or you can serve the pieces whole. If the sauce is too thin, but on stove top, boil for a bit. You can add a thick dollop of yoghurt or creme fraiche too if you like.

I truly hope this link works..it's mega old and I think some person put it together from MSE in the early 2000's.

Wealth of recipes here, hth

web.archive.org/web/20121103151016/www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/recipes-all.html

If that link doesn't work, another to try is this one..

web.archive.org/web/20120814003244/www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/planners.html?opt=rcost

Your link works, utterly 👍

I, ve just found another site. It's for batch cooking where you do 3 recipes in one session 1 oven 1 stovetop and 1 slow cooker and the recipes share ingredients so it makes the weekly meals easier to plan. it also gives recipe ideas for leftovers or items you have a lot of. Might help with planning, reducing waste, and new recipe ideas.
www.freshandlazy.com/

Recipes with mince, potatoes and chicken drumsticks are cheap and freeze well. Ie

Chilli and rice
Spaghetti bolognese
Chicken tray bake.
Thai basil pork
Baked potatoes
Jerk chickrn with coconut rice

Etc etc

My staple go to veg is frozen stew packs from farm foods. They are 5 for £4. Onions, carrots, celery, Swede .

Add one, steering steak and spuds =stew/Scouse.

Add one, a small £3 gammon joint /£2 streaky bacon and a bag of split peas = peas and ham soup.

Add one and some leeks, diced potato and chicken stock/scraps = leek and potato soup.

I use one to pack out my Bolognaise £2 mince and pasata, and the veg renders down and makes a really deep flavoured pasta sauce.

Otherwise I do a very basic pasata based sauce with Tom paste, basil , oregano and a half tsp of sugar. You can chop up hot dogs and then mix it with pasta.

For a easy cheat sauce you can top a tub of cream cheese into a pan of drained pasta then add chopped ham or peas.

Sausage and beans on toast with cheese.

Toastie and soup.

You can add red lentils to bolognaise to bulk it out. They disintegrate so no one will know they are there.

My tips are -

If you eat meat - buy ONE thing for the week from lidl in a family pack even. Could be chicken thighs? Mince? Cheap joint? Whatever is on offer that’s large/family size and cheapest. Portion it out into separate bags/containers. Each portion feeds a family for a distinct dinner. Example - 1 single pack of budget chicken thighs, chopped up and portioned separately - give us -

1. Chicken, chickpea and squash Tagine (Morocco)
2. Chicken and spinach dopiaza (india)
3. Chicken and peppers in garlic black bean sauce (China)
4. Huge bowl of chicken Pho (Vietnam)
5. Chicken and pearl barley casserole (British?)

Once this meat is done - plan 2 veggie meals, 1 egg meal (egg curry, frittata)

And done.

You need a v well stocked spice cupboard, condiments, herbs, and tins of veggies, coconut milk, own brand passatta, various own brand grains and frozen veg.

Never shop outside of Lidl or Aldi.