Challenge-£1.99 ready meal or what else.

lynzpower

for £2 for example we will make

Home made burgers
potato wedges
corn cobs ( from frozen)

£1 pack lean minced steak
1 small onion, say 4p ( half chopped for burger, half for slices)
2 bread rolls if you have to buy from greggs say? 12p each 24p
Couple of potatoes sliced into wedges say 20p
seasonings for wedges 5p
round lettuce 30p

Chop half onion finely, scrunch in with the mince.
Shape into burgers & fry in griddle pan
slice burger rolls in half- add onions/ relishes/lettuce/sliced onion/etc

Season wedges as per any of the recipes in the indexed collection.
Heat up corn cobs as per the bag.

Done. 2 meals, for less than £2

Damn nice too, thats what we are having for tea :beer:

CoD_2

all from sainsburys...
beef mince basic 75p
economy spaghetti 16p
chopped tomato basic 15p
6 closed cup mushrooms 27p
I loose onion 27p

total 1.60. this should do 3-4 main meal servings.

lynzpower

Cod, your being ripped off for your onions mate I got a massive bag ( 2 kilos??) for 79p last week :beer:

CoD_2

lynzpower wrote:

Cod, your being ripped off for your onions mate I got a massive bag ( 2 kilos??) for 79p last week :beer:

:rotfl: I know, I was just pricing up a version of the "nice" ready meal. sorry it could never be nice with all that rubbish in. I get onions from the market, grow mushrooms, herbs etc, mince comes from a farm near us

lewt

studentphil wrote:

I have costed my Spag Bol and it comes in at £7!

Which is very very costly, but I suppose divided between 4 meals is not too much!

do you shop at a cornor shop or something?

tawnyowls

Trow wrote:

He already did post his shopping list....
Although because I use soya mince it is cheaper than making a meaty one.

Even so, how much would it add on? I buy my mince from the Co-op if I can't get to the butchers - very good lean mince, and it costs £2.20 for a pound of mince (less if I can get the 2 packs for £4 offer).

Edit: Bummer. It's gone up to £2.70 now, with 2 packs for £4.50

studentphil

I think I am still a bit rubbish at this money saving!

£7 to make spag bol with some peppers and mushrooms in!
I am going wrong somewhere!

dannahaz

studentphil wrote:

I have costed my Spag Bol and it comes in at £7!

Which is very very costly, but I suppose divided between 4 meals is not too much!

You should also compare portion sizes. I bet your 4 portions are bigger than the one ready meal.

studentphil

dannahaz wrote:

You should also compare portion sizes. I bet your 4 portions are bigger than the one ready meal.

Probably but I do eat more than a ready meal portion size as two spoons on mince is not really filling!

ti1980

Phil, how did you get it to cost £7?
I would make a Spag Bol for less than £7 using ingredients mainly from M&S so a mixture of expensive and 'value' ingredients involved so this figure you are quoting sounds way too high.
My portion sizes are massive too.

Can you do a list of how much each ingredient you are planning on putting in will cost?

I've not made one for ages but here is a list that I would use.

£2.50 steak mince (M&S, don't get that gunk coming out)
£0.30 for 2 tins of chopped tomatoes (Sains or Lidl)
£0.27 passata (Lidl, much better than most 'value' ones IMO)
£1.79 peppers (M&S, they are very sweet peppers which I love)
£0.50 courgettes (M&S or Sains)
£0.10 salt, pepper and basil
£0.40 onion (M&S or Sains, 3 med sized onions)
£0.50 2 packs of spaghetti (Sains, I like their wholewheat one)

That comes to £6.36 which may sound a lot but that makes about 6 or 7 portions so £1.06 (6 portions) or 91p (7 portions).

If you got all the ingredients from Lidl or used more 'value' then it would cost under £4 easily. Especially if you didn't use the peppers and courgettes which are often really expensive from the supermarket.