Cheapest Meals Ever

Jaybee_4

Pasta dishes are a favourite staple in our diet.
Quick and easy dish my DS enjoys is Pasta, chopped bacon, sweetcorn, mushroom mixed together (could use alternatives). Either do it Carbonara style - drop in an egg or for a more 'upmarket version' substitute smoked salmon (bought when bogof) instead of bacon and creme fraishe instead of the egg.

frosty

I buy a medium sized chicken,we have a roast dinner with it,then I pick every bit of meat off it,boil the carcass to make a stock,strain it (throw away bones)return the stock to the pan,add potatoes some of the chicken and any veg that need using up add a couple of chicken stock cubes and simmer until cooked,thicken.we have a bowl each of this chicken stew for lunch with homemade bread.Then I keep some of the thick stew to one side and make a pie with it,this is served with mashed potatoes and veg/gravy,or you can put any left over stew in an oven dish and top with mash potatoes and cook like shepherds pie,we waste nothing in our house.If there is only the two of you you could freeze some for another time,everything I make serves 5 adults.

Bogof_Babe

I think that for real cheapness (or should the word be economy?), you have to lose your previous assumptions about what constitutes a "meal". Although tradition more or less dictates, in this country anyway, that there should be a meat (or meat substitute, or fish) main component, some carbs in the form of potato, rice, pasta, bread, and one or more veg, this doesn't have to be the format for every main meal.

For example, our tea tonight will be salad, oven chips and garlic bread. It will be tasty and filling, but not quite the accepted standard. If either of us is still hungry we'll have cereal with milk, or a banana.

I've made the garlic bread from a bag of reduced rolls (bought on Christmas Eve but still okay, although they need using up). Likewise the salad was from things that need using, including sliced hard boiled eggs that went out of date last year!

So I would advise all those really trying to economise on food to experiment a bit with "surprises" (you can call them "[whatever] surprise" if you need to convince the family!) Another bonus of this is that you can incorporate things reduced for quick sale, and maybe invent a whole new meal repertoire, some of which might even be nice enough to repeat!

In the students book "Grub on a Grant" they suggest that at the end of term when no-one has any money left, mashed potato mixed with cooked rice is filling. Now I tried that once, just experimentally, and although I wouldn't call it gourmet, it was filling. It made me think about "thinking outside the box" (forgive the marketing speak) as regards meal planning.

jennet1

You could try corned beef hash:
Tin of corned beef
tin of baked beans
potato
onion
garlic
any herbs you have!

tootles_2

Macoroni cheese, cauliflower and brocolli bake,pasta with mushroom and bacon sauce and garlic bread, shepherds pie, bolognase, mince and tatties, corned beef hash, fish pie fish peas and mustard mash, quiche and salad, HM pizza, stews, sausage and bean casserole, roast chicken, then chicken casserole and chicken fricasse, bacon joint hot them cold with salad and use up the bits in a quiche....liver and bacon or liver and sausage casserole.....pasta with hm tomato sauce, tuna bake....tuna and pasta bake

toozie_2

elona wrote:

tr3mor

When I said I made "chicken curry" using a turkey leg I mean I "called it" chicken curry as "They do not like turkey" - meaning DH and 4 DDs!

Most mothers will know what I mean.;)

Laughing reading this, when my girls were little they loved chicken, and thought they hated turkey.

So at Xmas and sometimes Easter, when we had quite a big turkey, I explained it was a very greedy chicken that had eaten too much!

Worked for 2 to 3 years, until they got wise, they eat it now tho!!!

black-saturn

When I'm making something in my slow cooker I deliberately make it more liquidy than I need to. Then I freeze the liquid to eat as soup another day at lunchtime.

brokenwings

ditto black saturn

also, if your family will eat it, liver is very very cheap.
i make liver, mashed 'tatoes, any left over veg and onion gravy and i think its around 50p per person all in!

smokey112

one of my faves is

pasta (usually macaroni) - cooked

then add

fried - bacon onion and mushroom or any combination
add - 1 tin of condensed Tomato Soup

add cheese if you really really want

then serve
eat hot or cold

I always add a splash of vinegar - dont ask why - it was how I had it when me gran made it 30 years ago!!

Ang
x

Tam

We love sausage and tomato pie aka saus tom pie.

Ingedients:
1 packet of sausagemeat
1 diced onion
1 tin of value chopped toms
Potatoes to mash and cover your mixture(as in shepherd's pie)

Cook sausagemeat in a pan with the diced onion. At the same time cook the potatoes in another pan. Drain and mash.

Spoon the sausagemeat mix into an ovenproof dish/bowl and pour the can of value chopped toms over the top. Spoon the mashed spuds on the top and smooth down. Heat in the oven for about 20 mins. Delicious! especially with a dash of Worcester sauce on top.

This is a meal in itself and doesn't need any other veg serving with it. Very cheap and will serve 2 adults and 2 littlies no probs.