Affordable family lunches: Your best canned food tips!

[EllieSmumsnet]

Summer holidays can stretch the family budget, but we’ve got a potential solution! Partnering with Love Canned Food, an initiative that celebrates everything canned food, as canned food is not only tasty, but also great value for money. It’s also high in quality, convenient to use and helps cut food waste. We're looking for your best tips and tricks for creating the perfect family lunch using canned food. Canned foods can be a great way to cut costs by up to a third, and they offer versatility and convenience.

• Share your tricks for creating the perfect family lunch using canned food in the thread below to be entered into a prize draw
• One lucky MNer will win a £200 voucher for a store of their choice. You can find out more about the VEX gift card and retailers here.
• Don’t forget to vote in our poll below.

Here’s what Love Canned Food has to say:
"Switching to canned food can save families up to 31% on their food bills while still enjoying great-tasting, home-cooked meals, during the school holidays . We aim to show families how easy and tasty canned food can be, while saving up to £160 too over the summer break*."

Share your family’s favourite budget busting meal ideas using canned foods.. One lucky winner will win a handy canned food hamper, plus a £200 voucher for a store of their choice! Let’s make summer lunches easy, affordable, and fun. Ready, set, cook! 🌟🍴

For more inspiration and recipes, check out Love Canned Food here.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!
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Tuna past comes to mind or in a jacket potato. You can add chopped vegetables (peppers, onion, sweetcorn, cucumber), mayo, salad cream, vinegar - whatever takes your fancy.

Can of black beans, mash them with some spices and make quesadillas with whatever you have in a tortilla wrap - grated cheese or feta, coriander, salsa, spring onions - heated in a pan.
Or as it all gets a bit too bulging for the quesadilla, I often just mix up the beans with the rest of the stuff and have a melted cheesy toasted wrap to dip in it.

You could probably do the same with the Old El Paso type refried beans or canned bean/meat chilli!

Lentils - I add a can of green or brown lentils a shepherds pie to make the lamb mince go further. If you season with a teaspoon of curry powder and Worcestershire sauce the lentils add to the flavour.

Tinned sardines are a lunch time favourite here, simple and quick served on toast, or made into a pâté with some cream cheese and served with toast or crackers. I also make a tasty pasta and sardine dish, or stir sardines in tomato into herby couscous.

One of the best summer lunches is Salade Niçoise, for which tinned tuna is an essential ingredient, it's a taste of Mediterranean sunshine wherever you may be.

Veggie burgers made entirely from canned ingredients are cheap, healthy and always go down a treat.
Tin of chick peas - drain and mash.
Add whatever flavouring you like - pinch paprika, garlic granules, chives, salt and pepper, along with a tablespoon of flour.
Add a small tin of sweetcorn. Mix together.
Shape into four patties using extra flour if sticky.
Shallow fry until slightly browned.
Serve in buns with salad or, for a complete tinned meal, with baked beans or spaghetti hoops!

Tuna and mixed bean salad is lovely.

If I'm roasting veg for lunch, I always add a tin of drained chickpeas. Sometimes I roast the chickpeas too but not always.

The obvious one is soup with a bread roll.

When I was a young adult I used to love heating up a can of new potatoes and adding tomato sauce and mayonnaise! Just that - did me for lunch. Yum.

Tonno e fagioli (tuna and beans). Not necessarily very authentic Italian recipe, but extremely tasty, easy, and quick! Drain and rinse a tin of cannellini beans (or pinto or borlotti beans - this would work well with other pulses too). Put in a bowl or serving dish. Top, tail, peel and thinly slice a red onion, or trim and thinly slice some spring onions. Add to dish, along with plenty of chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and either the oil from the tuna (see below) or some extra virgin olive oil. Mix well. Open one tin of tuna, ideally in olive oil, but any kind is good. If not tinned in oil, drain off the water. Add the tuna to the bean salad, heaped on top and still in large flakes. Sprinkle with a bit more chopped parsley. Serve with really good bread to mop up the dressing. Ciabatta with olives works well. You could serve it on salad leaves or rocket.

Tinned tomatoes and chickpeas.

In a pan with some olive oil and oregano and chorizo. Simmer until reduced.

Serve with rice or jacket potatoes.

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Corned beef hash.

Cut tinned potatoes (or fresh) into cubes. If fresh you need to boil first.

Fry onion the add potato's and a cubed tin of corned beef. You want it to get crispy bits on the bottom.

Serve with a fried egg.

Cannellini bean crush

Couple of tins of beans in a pan. Add olive oil or butter and any herbs you like. Crush with a potato masher.

Serve as you would mashed potatoes.

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Spicy Crab cakes

Tinned crab, mashed potato (bizarrely instant mash works really well). Season and add chilli and coriander and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Form into patties. You can fry as is or breadcrumb them. Yummy with hollandaise sauce and fries.

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Crab spaghetti

Cook spaghetti. Then stir in tinned crab, lemon juice, butter, red chilli and chives.

And....sausage, cheese and bean pasty's.

Take a sheet of ready rolled pastry (your choice of shortcrust or puff pastry).

Cut into 3 strips and egg wash the edges.

One tin of baked beans with sausages and one small tin without (or just a full tin to use half later).

Take the sausages from the beans and cut into rounds.

Put bean/sausage mix plus some grated cheese onto each strip of pastry. Fold and crimp. Egg wash the top. Cook for 20 mins in an oven.

Fab both hot and cold.

You can also do a quick chilli version (I tend to use leftover homemade chilli) with tinned chilli, rice and cheese.

We beat the fridge last week. What we call it when there's nothing left and none of us could be arsed to do the shopping tuna pasta and tuna topped jacket then bean chilli (bleugh I hate beans) and chorizo and courgette pasta. Felt like a huge achievement. Lost 3lb too so good for wallet, planet and waistline!

Fritters are great with canned veg. Flour, milk and egg, then add whatever you fancy. My toddler’s favourite is a tin of sweetcorn with a bit of cheese and garlic. He also likes them with canned peas. Spoon into a frying pan and fry for a few minutes on each side until golden.

I love this carrot and tinned chickpea recipe - I make loads as it keeps well in the fridge and the flavour intensifies.

https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/spicy-carrot-and-chickpea-pitta-pocket

We use canned food a lot as we love camping and I often try recipes out at home first that would be easy to make over a campfire or in one pan.

a family fav is camping stew- using one can of each; beef, potato, sliced carrots and peas, put in pan and heat over the campfire until hot, serve with baguettes stuffed with butter and garlic and wrapped in foil and heated over the fire at the same time.

my children also use canned fruit when making a fruit salad, or as a base in a trifle- the strawberries are best, and we use the juice/syrup in the strawberry can to the jelly and hot water which is the perfect strawberry layer.

tuna and sweetcorn filled jacket potatoes, or tuna and sweetcorn pasta - cheap filling and tasty

Pasta - in different shapes, and colours, makes for a meal my DC's will always eat, and I can bulk it with 'hidden' vegetables, chopped red, yellow and orange peppers, courgettes and sweetcorn to make a tasty nutritious meal which I can also take for my lunch when I am at work.

I'd like to tick 2 - tinned vegetables (corn, chickpeas and tomatoes) and pasta, to make a pasta bake, sprinkled with mozzarella makes a meal which can last 2 or 3 times for us all - I choose the own brand - they are as good as the 'branded' products and having a colourful meal makes it more appealing to eat.

Tuna and sweetcorn jacket potato - simple but yummy!

I need to explore the world of tins a bit more - I never think to use them but lots of great ideas here.

Tinned fish is a real go to when making a family lunch, I make quick salmon fishcakes (I add spice to mine to make thai style fishcakes) I pair this with a salad or sweetcorn, we go through LOTS of tuna fish, and make sandwiches, tuna pasta with rainbow pasta, or tuna and sweetcorn burgers - with a tomato ketchup made from a reduced can of tinned tomatoes, some white wine vingar and a teaspoon of sweetener.

I think all kitchens should have a tin or two of tuna to put with pasta or baked potatoes or on sandwiches.

For us it's baked beans - on toast, with a jacket potato, add barbecue sauce and onions, and bacon strips to make a cowboy tea, mix with herbs, breadcrumbs and mashed potato to make baked bean burgers,

Another vote for pasta and pulses - I can make a pan full of pasta, of differing colours and shapes, with a passata home made sauce, and mince and vegetables this makes a family meal for a couple of days - I can start with a bolognaise with pasta, and then add pulses and vegetables for the final day to make the meal last a day or two longer, plus if I use peppers they are full of juice to add more flavour and liquid to the meal. The pasta sauce.............................. 1 onion, chopped
1 garlic (clove), crushed
1 tbsp tomato puree
500ml passata
1 tsp fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp black pepper
½ tsp sugar

We use a LOT of tinned salmon and tuna for fishcakes and croquettes make with mashed poato (add lime zest , and chopped herbs from your garden for extra flavour) and home made breadcrumbs from stale bread in whizzed in your processor, tuna and egg roll ups mix with mayonaise and chopped tomatoes and wrap with salad in a wrap - then the trusty tuna pasta as above.

I really love this phrase 'beat the fridge'. I never manage it, but I should. Will try to keep it in my head over the next few months!

Seafood pasta - take a tin of tuna, mussels, sardines and salmon, make a pasta sauce and mix through pasta.

Spam fritters and air fried tinned potatoes 😋