cheap soups reciepes/high food bill

cazspatch

HI all realised my shopping bill has crept up since ive gone back to weight watchers so am going to quit that again. Also we have taken out a small loan as our heating is broken and we can take no more. So i am going to have to cut back BIG TIME. currently spending £50 - £70 a week for 2 adults a dog and cat (including toiletries/cleaning) Far too much.

People often mention very cheap soups for the slow cooking but i can never find the receipes!!! Any help and receipes would be great.

thanks in advance

freyasmum

Hiya,

I'm a kinda chuck everything in and see how it turns out soup maker, but you might like this thread - there are lots of recipe there.

HTH

Boodle

I don't use my slow cooker for the soups, but make a huge batch each week to last 3 of us (one a toddler) about 3 days. I soak yellow split peas or marrowfat peas (or a mix) overnight. Whatever veg I have in, usually plenty of onion, carrot, potato and the celery heart goes into my big soup pan. I add a stock cube and enough water from the kettle to healthily fill the pan (usually a kettle and a half.) Sometimes I add red lentils too, others (when I forget to soak pulses) I use all red lentils as the pulse element. Add some spice (curry paste or chilli powder being my usuals) or herbs - I sometimes add a tin of tomatoes. I usually cook for a couple of hours until all is soft and thick. If it is looking a bit thin and un-broth like, I add a good handful or two of oats which disappear into the finished soup and thicken it up lovely. Sometimes I blitz it with a hand blender too. Add salt and white pepper to taste. I guess this could be done in the slow cooker just as easily but mine is too small for the amount I like to cook in one go. HTH

Pink.

Hi cazpatch,

I usually make soup on the hob but most soups can easily be adapted for the slow cooker. There are lots of recipes on this thread that may help:

Soup recipes

These threads may help too:

Adapting soup recipes to slow cooker?

Slow Cooker - Soup

Pink

Bitsy_Beans

I quite often do WW no point tomato soup, blitz two cans of chopped toms, add in a good squeeze of tom puree, bung in some chopped and sauted (sp?) onions (you could add some carrot etc to boost your 5 a day too) and if you really wanted you could add some red lentils. I add a splash of milk to give it a bit of richness and a pinch of sugar to take away some of the acidity from the toms. Would work OK in a SC although I tend to part cook lentils as I don't find they cook properly in a SC from raw.

with soup though I guess I'd chuck in pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. As long as you have enough liquid anything can cook in a SC.

Reverbe

I have loads of recipes for soups . I also make my own sometimes from scatch off the top of my head with veggies and stock and sometimes other
bits like rice n prawn or chicken. I can give you some or you can follow the tips here but I don't do them in a SC but a large stock pot on the hob.

Reverbe

freyasmum wrote: »

Hiya,

I'm a kinda chuck everything in and see how it turns out soup maker, but you might like this thread - there are lots of recipe there.

HTH

Freya me too. Now I have a lot of herbs and spices etc I just tend to sling things in - some of this , bit of that.. I don't think my soups are the same twice!! But always yummy. I find celery salt very useful , almost always put that and garlic in.

Stephen_Leak

cazspatch wrote: »

HI all realised my shopping bill has crept up since ive gone back to weight watchers so am going to quit that again. Also we have taken out a small loan as our heating is broken and we can take no more. So i am going to have to cut back BIG TIME. currently spending £50 - £70 a week for 2 adults a dog and cat (including toiletries/cleaning) Far too much.

People often mention very cheap soups for the slow cooking but i can never find the receipes!!! Any help and receipes would be great.

thanks in advance

This may not use a slow cooker, but it has got to be the simplest and cheapest recipe for the most wholesome and filling end result – ever. My box of dried peas cost 36p, so each serving cost just 9p!

PEA SOUP

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS

125g (½ a 250g box) of dried peas
500ml of water
Ground black pepper to taste

METHOD

Soak the peas in water according to the instructions.

Put the peas into a saucepan and cover with fresh water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat until it is just boiling (simmering). Check the liquid level from time to time and top up if it starts to dry out.

Continue cooking the peas until they are the desired consistency. Adjust the quantity of the liquid to the required quantity of soup.

If you have a food processor, put the soup in it and blend it to the desired consistency. If you have a hand blender, put it in the soup and blend it to the desired consistency. If you don’t have a food processor or hand blender, use a potato masher, press the soup through a sieve with the back of a spoon, or leave it lumpy.

Season with the pepper. Continue to cook for another couple of minutes.

ADDITIONS & ALTERNATIVES

You can use fresh, frozen or tinned peas. These do not need to be soaked.

Pea soup can be any consistency from a thin liquid with soft peas floating in it to a thick paste you can stand a spoon up in.

You can also make this as Pea & Ham soup, if you use the leftover cooking water from a boiled bacon joint.

luckylukey

I just chuck any veggies that are either v cheap from the shops or ones in my fridge that are on their last legs- add a can of tinned tomatoes because I like my soups tomatoey, fill up with good amount of water, some mixed herbs - i like the t value ones - leave it in the SC while I am at work and then stick blend so it is a chunky soup. Low fat and cheap.

chrisbethany

Hi - nowadays I make soup from scratch (where do you buy that, I hear you ask :rotfl:) but, when DDs were little and we had leftovers I often made 'waste not, want not' soup - they never recognised what was in it, once it had been blitzed !

Chris

Mellika

One thing - for cleaning products, just start using stardrops and vinegar. There's no need for expensive cleaners.

Also maybe for a while you could use soap instead of shower gel? Shower gel is just plain expensive, maybe you could mix and match if you don't want to switch completely.