Your Cheapest Evening Meal.

mitziwaltz

Tamale pie has always been one of my end-of-the-month mainstays--and if you make your own refried beans it's even cheaper. Note: cornMEAL is not the same thing as cornFLOUR! You get a 2 pound bag of the stuff in most ethnic food or health food shops for less than £1.50, and you can make cornbread with it too. Mmmmm...Medium ground yellow cornmeal is best for this recipe but white, fine or coarse is OK too.

TAMALE PIE
Cook 1 C cornmeal and 1/2 t salt in 2 1/2 C water until the water is completely absorbed. Stir constantly or it WILL burn. The result is cornmeal mush (call it polenta if you want to be fancy), and where I come from people eat it fried for breakfast, too.
In another pan, fry up a chopped onion, then add a can of refried beans, 1 teaspoon (or more) of chili powder, and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. If you have some black olives around, add 1/4 cup or more (sliced); if you like stuff really spicey, add 1/4 C of jalapeno peppers or a couple tablespoons of hot salsa.
Now press 2/3 of the cornmeal mush onto the bottom and sides of a 7 or 8 inch pan or casserole dish. I like to use a round Pyrex casserole. Put the bean filling in the middle, and top with the remaining cornmeal mush. The last step works best if you use a spoon and then gently spread the spoonfulls together. The idea is to seal in the filling if you can. I top mine with a bit of shredded cheddar cheese but if you don't eat cheese you can skip it.
Bake at gas mark 7 for about 25 minutes. The top should be crispy and browned.
Add a green salad and serve four very generously.
Obviously, you could add some leftover chopped chicken or ground beef or other leftovers to the filling too.

suzplustwo

My tip is never by those tins/bottles of sauce! Too much salt for a start...
For a cheap pasta sauce...

Fry off an onion and a bit of garlic in some oil
Chuck in tin of chopped toms, handful of frozen peas, grated carrot (good for hidden veg for kids food), chopped mushrooms, 6oz chicken or veg stock (if have left over wine, add it in water for stock). Simmer for 10 mins. Season to taste.
Just before serving, stir in some grated cheese or a good dollop of cream cheese.
Yumptious and costs very little.

It is also always worth learning the cooking basics eg making a white sauce and pastry. Takes very little time to knock up and can be used to create some great dishes.

flufff

I make my own pasta sauce.
Aldi plum tomatoes are the best as they are in puree.13p.Tescos value are ok but more watery
I whizz them up with a hand blender.Add in a fried onion and garlic cloves.Dash of basil is nice.
Can be used as pizza base.Nice over pasta with mozzarella on top or hotdogs or tuna added in.
Use it as a base for spagetti bolognaise or lasagne.If you prefer it chunkier add a tin of chopped tomotoes in.
Far nicer and cheaper than jar sauce.
I also puree carrot with it for my bolognaise sauce.Sneaky way of getting more veg into kids and finely dice muschrooms in my bolgnaise for that reason and to use less meat although priced similar.

Linda32

I don't think I'm going to buy the jar's of pasta sauce again, after reading this, and I thought they were cheap.

lynzpower

mitziwaltz wrote:

Tamale pie has always been one of my end-of-the-month mainstays--and if you make your own refried beans it's even cheaper. Note: cornMEAL is not the same thing as cornFLOUR! You get a 2 pound bag of the stuff in most ethnic food or health food shops for less than £1.50, and you can make cornbread with it too. Mmmmm...Medium ground yellow cornmeal is best for this recipe but white, fine or coarse is OK too.

TAMALE PIE
Cook 1 C cornmeal and 1/2 t salt in 2 1/2 C water until the water is completely absorbed. Stir constantly or it WILL burn. The result is cornmeal mush (call it polenta if you want to be fancy), and where I come from people eat it fried for breakfast, too.
In another pan, fry up a chopped onion, then add a can of refried beans, 1 teaspoon (or more) of chili powder, and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. If you have some black olives around, add 1/4 cup or more (sliced); if you like stuff really spicey, add 1/4 C of jalapeno peppers or a couple tablespoons of hot salsa.
Now press 2/3 of the cornmeal mush onto the bottom and sides of a 7 or 8 inch pan or casserole dish. I like to use a round Pyrex casserole. Put the bean filling in the middle, and top with the remaining cornmeal mush. The last step works best if you use a spoon and then gently spread the spoonfulls together. The idea is to seal in the filling if you can. I top mine with a bit of shredded cheddar cheese but if you don't eat cheese you can skip it.
Bake at gas mark 7 for about 25 minutes. The top should be crispy and browned.
Add a green salad and serve four very generously.
Obviously, you could add some leftover chopped chicken or ground beef or other leftovers to the filling too.

YUM sounds great, is that mexican? Or carribbean? YUM YUM

madfrenchgirl

eggs on toasts

cheapest meal ever...

honestly i dont try to count how much my melas are worth, i just try to eat healthy stuff at the lowest price for each ingredient...

as a main guideline, I would say, try to use everything you have every month, every thing that is in your cupboard.

the pasta sauce with any meat/fish always works best: try to put as many veggies you have left into the pasta sauce, add ham, mince, or tinned fish. For stuff that you cant use in a pasta sauce, make a soup out of it, anything works with a bit of stock!

A favorite of OH is pizza pasties: make a base for pizza but roll it out very thin, put in the tomato sauce and any other bits or toppings, along with cheese (try to buy it from LIDL), close it like a pasty, and then bake in the oven at 200deg for 45mins/1 hour.

They can easily be frozen, and you can take your pizza to work without making a mess.

flufff

omelette.......throw in any left over veg

flufff

got to say my dog gets most of left overs.......will even eat vegetables in preference to dog biscuits!Doesnt say much for dog food though

KatrinaC_2

probably a bean bake:

2 x tins of cheap beans ---- 20p
whatever veg is starting to go manky in the bottom of the fridge (peppers, onions, cougettes, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, frozen corn, baby corn, frozen peas...) ---- 50p
two large potatoes, mashed WITHOUT BUTTER OR MILK ---- 10p
cooked ham, sausage, salami, or smoked sausage etc ---- 50p
1 oz value cheese ---- 30p
splash of woucester sauce or henderson's relish ---- <1p?
fresh breadcrumbs if I have any ---- ?5p


soften the veg in a frying pan, mix with the beans and woucester sauce and put into a casserole dish. Top with the mashed spuds, cheese and breadcrumbs and bake.

Total cost is about £1.50 for a meal big enough to feed four adults, it takes about 10 mins to prepare and kids LOVE this stuff. It's also fairly healthy as you just fling in as much veg as you can in order to get to your 5 portions a day.

Kat

KatrinaC_2

Or another - stovies

either meat from the sunday roast or a pack of good sausages ---- max £2
2 large onions ---- 30p
4-5 large potatoes ---- 60p
2 oxo cubes ---- ?20p

fry off the onions and sausages if using until both are starting to brown. cut the potatoes into largish chunks (about the same size as you'd use to make boiled potatoes) and add to the pan to soak up all the meaty and oniony juices. Add the oxo (and cooked meat if using) and cover with water. Simmer until the potatoes are cooked and the gravy has thickened. Serve with greens if you like, although we always used to have ours with enormous piles of bread and butter when we were kids.

Kat