Cheap easy meal ideas

[Unicorn55]

Evening!
Currently sitting trying to do an online shop. I need to spend less so trying to meal plan and batch cook! I'm a single mum though and struggle for time! Can I get your favourite cheap and easy/quick meal ideas please?😀

Fried rice - rice, veg, sesame oil, soy sauce and you only need a little chicken/prawns/tofu etc, quick and only one pan for washing.

Toasted sandwiches in the Breville, serve with a few wedges and salad garnish- always a hit.

Spanish chicken traybake

Cachio e Pepe pasta

My mum had to feed 3 of us, we generally had.

1 night a week it was stuff on toast, 6 slices under the grill at once, a pan of scrambled eggs, beans and tinned tomatoes would be done in the microwave. Sometimes there would be fried eggs instead of scrambled or mushrooms cooked with a knob of butter and garlic. Everyone got 2 slices of toast then helped themselves to toppings from the middle of the table.

Turkey goujons with potato wedges and peas/sweetcorn - turkey thigh chunks are cheaper than chicken and tastier. Leftover stale bread whizzed up in the food processor. Turkey dunked in egg then breadcrumbs, egg again, more breadcrumbs.

Chicken fajitas - tortilla wraps, chicken chunks/strips either fresh or leftovers from a roast, fry up onion and peppers, add in chicken and fajita seasoning. Serve in wrap with sour cream, guacamole, grated cheese, or whatever your kids like.

Pasta bake/ spaghetti bolognese

Pork chop with boiled or roast potatoes and frozen veg

Chicken drumsticks or pork ribs with corn on the cob and coleslaw

Hotdogs with fried onions

Look for a butcher in your town centre that does the big trays of 8/10 chicken breasts/pork loin steaks/drumsticks on 3 for £10/£12 deals. I get these and then break them down into portion sized in ziplock bags with marinades/seasonings and freeze them. Take them out the night before and they'll be ready to put in the oven for dinner and full of flavour so they just need 30ish minutes and you can roast broccoli, cauliflower, greenbeans at the same time. So 2 minutes to chuck everything on a tray and in the oven then 30 minutes to do other stuff and you have dinner.

A new discovery - and most of this is always in cupboards etc

Sausage & Pea Pasta
Squeeze sausage meat out of skins into little balls and fry off until crispy (this makes LOADS)
Add in chopped garlic, frozen peas and chicken stock.
Finally stir through a dollop of cream cheese and salt and pepper.
Add to cooked pasta and if you're feeling fancy a squeeze of lemon before serving.

Pea and bacon pasta - fry bacon bits while pasta and peas cook together. Mix tub of cream cheese into bacon pan, thin with a bit of cooking water, drain peas and pasta then mix with bacon/cream sauce. Yummy.

Jacket potatoes - to save energy use smaller potatoes and cook extra as they freeze well. Top with cheese (pop back in warm turned-off oven to melt if you like), or beans, or beans and cheese, or cottage cheese, or tuna and mayo.
(I top spare halves with cheese, fluffing the centre first, then freeze. Great for quick lunches - leave out to defrost if you remember then microwave for 2 minutes.)

Quesedillas - like fajitas but less hassle! Fry onions, peppers etc, with mince or chicken strips and a bit of spice/ squeeze of tomato paste (chilli powder, paprika and cumin are your basic fajita spice mix).
Drizzle frying pan with a little oil, pop in a wrap and add the filling with grated cheese on top, pop another wrap on top and let cheese melt then flip over to crisp the other side up. Cut into pieces like a pizza.

Shakshuka -fry onions, peppers then add paprika and cumin, chilli if you like it, next add a tin of chopped or plum tomatoes. Simmer for a few minutes to soften everything up together then make little wheels to drop an egg into, cover and cook for a few more minutes.

Sweetcorn fritters - my lot love these as a hearty snack or with some chicken nuggets and salad. Mix a tin of sweetcorn with an egg and a TBSP of flour (any kind), add a little milk if necessary. Drop spoonfuls into a lightly oiled pan and turn when brown.

Nachos - layer a deep baking tray with value tortilla crisps, diced tomatoes, red onion, avocado, grated cheese and jalapenos if you like them. Bake or grill till warmed and cheese is melty.

Mushroom risotto - the trick is to deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine after frying the mushrooms and garlic, letting it evaporate before adding the rice and liquid.

Pasta is your friend here. Cheap, goes down well with children and you can play with the sauce you use to make it nutritious and add variety, plus you can hide lots of vegs in it easily. A few suggestions:

• any of the following combinations: Salmon(fresh or smoked)/bacon/crumbled sausage/chopped ham + peas/asparagus/courgettes + dollop of ricotta/cream cheese
• ratatouille (ready made from a jar/can also works, and you can serve it with cous cous or bulgur wheat instead of pasta)
• Carbonara (only egg, no cream), add stir fried cubed courgettes or peas
• Ricotta and courgettes (I grate and sauté the courgettes first, which takes 5 minutes, then blend with ricotta, basil, parmesan and a bit of garlic to make it a bit pesto-like)
• Tomato sauce, stir fried cubed aubergine, basil, parmesan and ricotta or mozzarella (works well as a bake too)
• As a salad: Canned tuna, quartered cherry tomatoes, basil, olive oil, olives
• Broccoli, boiled until very soft then stir fried with olive oil, garlic and a touch of anchovy paste. Mash it with a spoon within the pan to make it more sauce-like. Works beautifully with short pasta shapes, which you can boil in the broccoli water (after removing them) for extra flavour.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here!

Oven baked risotto
Frittata
Naan pizzas
Chickpea burgers

I’ve been buying a gammon from Aldi. I use it as a meal one night, then for sandwiches. I find it better than buying ham.

I batch cook a curry, cook from scratch but Chuck loads and loads of frozen veg in, and potatoes. I then freeze it in portions and add the protein at a later date, such as sausages, boiled eggs, bacon, even chicken nuggets some weeks. I'll also batch cook pasta or rice to go with it and freeze that too. I'll also do a chilli with loads of veg and potatoes to freeze.

Lemon pasta. Cook some spaghetti or other [aster, get a lemon, grate some of the zest and squeeze the juice into a bowl. When the pasta is ready pour over the juice and zest, add loads of black pepper.

I agree about 'things on toast', beans, cheese, eggs, maybe the odd bacon rasher.

Toad in the hole - home made.

Dahl / lentils.

Tray bake - this depends on what you have in but typically pieces of chicken, mushrooms, sliced onion, cherry tomatoes, slices of pepper - all on a tray. drizzle over some oil or use a low cal spray.

Eggs - scrambled, in pancakes, omelets, fried, baked - you can cook eggs in multiple ways.

Home made dips, a 50/50 mix of greek yoghurt and mayonnaise as a base then add garlic for a garlic dip, chili for a spicy dip etc - serve with veg sticks to dip.

Thick soup crammed with wonky veg. Takes a bit of time to cook, but then freeze in useful sizes.

Placemarking as lots of these look delicious!

I do this, we have carbonara one night and ham egg & chips another night

We love this recipie (we don’t add mint!) www.gousto.co.uk/cookbook/bacon-recipes/creamy-bacon-sugar-snap-mint-farfalle

Big pan of bolognaise sauce - half of it to be spag bol, then add chilli and kidney beans to the other half for chilli and serve with rice, or have with wedges or jacket spuds.

Hotdogs or sausage and onion baguettes (those part baked ones) with salad or corn on the cob.

Stoke oat cakes with fried eggs, mushrooms etc. Not healthy but very delicious and easy!

I do lazy curries sometimes -
cubes of paneer, chunks of onion, pepper and sweet potato or cauliflower all roasted together in a big pan
Add drained chickpeas and a jar of curry sauce and back into the oven to warm through
Can add different vege, spinach at the end, tinned lentils instead of chickpeas etc

Macaroni cheese. Easy, cheap and so tasty. I add different ingredients to it to pad it out like bacon, broccoli, cauliflower, peas.

I regularly made a large pot of slowcooked bolognese - I then split it and add kidney beans and chilli powder to one half, like another poster.

make* not made - wish there was an edit button...

If you are doing any cooking where the oven will be on for about an hour make sure to put some potatoes in on the bottom too so you end up with jacket potatoes. They can be frozen as they are and then reheated, or you can scoop the innards out and make mash which you can also freeze for another day, or scoop the innards out, mix with cheese, spring onion, cooked bacon and refill the skins, then they can be frozen for another day.

This is a great idea. Do you then just cook them from frozen, or defrost first?

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie you can cook them from frozen but they cook in less time if defrosted so you can just take them out the night before and stick them in the fridge.

At 220 degrees, defrosted take about 20 mins and frozen take about 45 mins

No idea where my Be-Ro recipe book has gone to but it has a page on 'oven utilisation' which basically showed how to do a weeks worth of baking in the oven all at once by putting specific items on top and middle shelves and then using the bottom of the oven for jacket potatoes and set custards (I think) to use every heat zone and available inch of space and reduce fuel usage.

Thanks @FatAgainItsLettuceTime

You are all amazing! Such great ideas and I had no idea you could freeze baked potatoes!

I like those Maggie bags you do in the oven. They are really cheap if you get them in b and m etc.

Chicken thighs are nice in them and a bit cheaper than breasts. I think if you browned sausages (for them to look good) would work well too

We make quesadillas for our little guy all the time. He's nearly 4 now but he's been eating them since at least 2. You can't get decent ones without preservatives in the supermarket in the UK unfortunately so we get ours from
here. They're really good for sneaking some healthy food amongst the cheese like black beans or chopped spinach.

When I have no Ideas what to cook I make minced meat with pasta. Just roast an onion, add meat, vegetables, mushrooms, spices and serve with pasta. It is very quick and tasty.