ok my first dip into this pool of knowledge

r.mac_2

as elona mentioned, baked beans are a great way to pad things out - not just shepards pie, but also chilli, stews and casseroles too.

I only like heinz baked beans when I have them as beans (i.e. a seperate veggie portion) but when they are mixed into a dish, the cheap economy supermarket brands are perfect and save you about 20p a can!

TAZ

thanks so much for your advice so far, i have been out and bought half the amount of mince i normally buy and will be bulking it out with beans tonight have also bought potatoes rather than frozen chips. hopefully they won't notice. my boys aren't normally bread eaters but it will be there this evening
wish me luck

Sarahsaver

my dad always used to water down tinned food, soup, baked beans atc, because he thought they were too salty anyway, and it makes them go further!

Lillibet_2

Oh yes, I totally forgot I do that too, always water down tinned soup & the odd ready made sauce that I end up buying with either water or skimmed milk. I also buy value long life orange & apple juice & water both of these down too, I find them a bit sweet otherwise but it did take a bit of getting used to at first. I reckon I get an extra (fairly large) glass out of each carton of juice this way. And when we have had unexpected guests I have been known to water down coke & lemonade to stretch it!

Queenie

Give them a 2 or 3 course meal instead of just the one: a home made soup will fill their tums before they get as far as the mains! Or, give them smaller portions of main and surprise them with a good old fashioned dessert (rice pudding, microwaved sponge pud).

Years ago, a family I lived with served bread with every meal including roast dinner (what better way to mop up all that scrummy gravy ) These days, that seems to be a long forgotten "trick".

It's also a lot healthier!! 5lb of mince between that amount of people really is a very large portion.

Meat portions in cookery books of old recommend 4-6oz per person off the bone, 6-8oz on the bone (this refers to how to guage how much to buy, so even with your 7 person household, the amount of recommended minced beef to buy would be approx 3½lb - by reducing your "guestimate" of how much meat to buy according to those old books, you would automatically reduce your meat bill by almost ⅓.

How did your mince turn out last night?

debbym

I agree that having smaller portions but more courses is a good idea - I ead somewhere that it takes about 20 min for your brain to catch up with the fact you've eaten and stop feeling hungry!

We have toddlers and have a 'carpet picnic' when we want to do a buffet style meal to empty the fridge. Star of the show home-made pizza, we use cheap value flour for base (gives a thin crust type pizza) top with spoonfuls of BOGOF pasta sauce (don't buy the special pizza topping sauces even if on special offer - biggest ingredient is water!) and then top off with things like sliced sausage etc.

Other things to bulk out stews etc
pearl barley
rice
couscous
broken up spaghetti
noodles
scone dough to make a cobbler top


for sunday lunch cook the roast on a bed of chopped root veggies and onions - they cook in the meat juices and therefore taste less vegetable like (also works for things like sausages/chops if you start the veggies first and add the meat after say half an hour)

DH also dislikes veggies and will pick through any stew etc to find the meat and eat it first. However if it is veggies/meat in curry or chilli sauce it goes down a treat! Must be a 'chromosome rot' thing LOL

As a final note if you really can't get them off the chips Tesco's sell "Garden Isle Big Fries" in their frozen chips section 750g for 10p and they are big steak cut oven chips that are better quality potatoes than the Tesco value ones!

pickle

Here's a recipe i made the other night (fused from various internet recipes) - my husband liked it so much that he wanted the next day as well (so had to make from scratch again!!)

Chorizo sausage and beans (enough for 5)

Ingredients

I chorizo (dried like salami) sausage (equivalent in length to about 4 regular sausages) - from LIDL in a pkt - (i'm sure that other supermarkets have similar)
2 sml onions diced
2 tins tomatos
2 tins kidney beans (or 4 if can't be bothered getting other kind) drained
2 tins cannellini or fagioli beans drained (white beans in a tin) - avail. at LIDL
2 teasp. paprika
2 tablesp. parsley fresh or dried (optional)
2 teasp. chilli (reduce if don't like chilli or omit)
2 teasp. garlic
generous splash tobasco (optional)
1/2 level teasp. of cumin
1/2 level teasp. of corriander
4 stock cubes (veg, chick or beef)
4 rashers bacon chopped up (optional)
4 desssp. tomato paste

Method

Take skin off chorizo and slice diagonally (about 1/2 cm thick) - fry chorizo until starting to brown a bit. Add onion, garlic and bacon and fry until onion starts to soften.
Add rest of ingredients and simmer for about 1/2 hr-45 mins
Serve with rice, mashed potatos (or roast potatos as i did)
I'm sure you could throw it all in a slow cooker and it would work.

debbym

pickle wrote:

Here's a recipe i made the other night (fused from various internet recipes) - my husband liked it so much that he wanted the next day as well (so had to make from scratch again!!)

Chorizo sausage and beans (enough for 5)

Ingredients

I chorizo (dried like salami) sausage (equivalent in length to about 4 regular sausages) - from LIDL in a pkt - (i'm sure that other supermarkets have similar)
2 sml onions diced
2 tins tomatos
2 tins kidney beans (or 4 if can't be bothered getting other kind)
2 tins cannellini or fagioli beans (white beans in a tin) - avail. at LIDL
2 teasp. paprika
2 tablesp. parsley fresh or dried (optional)
2 teasp. chilli (reduce if don't like chilli or omit)
2 teasp. garlic
generous splash tobasco (optional)
1/2 level teasp. of cumin
1/2 level teasp. of corriander
4 stock cubes (veg, chick or beef)
4 rashers bacon chopped up (optional)

Method

Take skin off chorizo and slice diagonally (about 1/2 cm thick) - fry chorizo until starting to brown a bit. Add onion, garlic and bacon and fry until onion starts to soften.
Add rest of ingredients and simmer for about 1/2 hr-45 mins
Serve with rice, mashed potatos (or roast potatos as i did)
I'm sure you could throw it all in a slow cooker and it would work.

Cannellini beans are the ones they make baked beans from so could use a value tin of those instead

fazer6

I used to do lots of jacket spuds but in a bag of potatoes you're always left with some smaller ones which I end up using for mash or roasts. Last night I experimented making my own potatoe skins (which I've always thought look tasty but very over priced). I microwaved the potatoes and scooped out the inside. Last night we had that mixed with a bit of butter and cheese with the lamb stew. I mixed a bit of potatoe with some cooked onions and cheese and spread it round the potato skins. Put them in the oven while the stew was in and they looked really tasty. My other half opened the fridge to get the milk and found them and says they're really good.

If you're planning to do mash anyway you may as well do this as you don't waste anything and get two meals out of your spuds.

pickle

I've used baked beans in mexican cooking before and it works fine as well but is a bit sweeter because of the sauce (which i throw in as well). Kidney beans are only about 13p at LIDL, so either would be economical. I think the fagioli beans at LIDL were probably very cheap also - its a great filler. Just don't blame me for the conequences later on!!!