Cheapest meal

Dustyblinds

One of my favourite cheap meals is pasta in homemade sauce. Fry an onion and clove of garlic with veg of choice, I use peppers, courgette, aubergine, celery or just what evers in season so will be cheap. I will chuck in any tomatoes that are past there best before adding either tin of chopped tomatoes or passata, whichever is cheaper at the time, season with herbs and/or stock cube of choice. Just add to cheap pasta and sprinkle some cheese on top. If I have any half packs of cream cheese or mascarpone or even cream that might not get used up I will add this to save them getting wasted.
It's a canny versatile dish as you can chuck in left over meat like bacon, ham sausage so you never get the same dish twice.

Sky_

Home made margarita pizza is pretty cheap too, if you don't overdo the cheese.

Dustyblinds

Home made savoury rice.
Again fry seasonal veg with garlic and add to rice which has been boiled in a stock cube with crushed garlic. Leftover cooked chicken, bacon, ham or sausage can be added along with frozen peas and sweet corn. I sometimes stretch it our further with a tin of kidney beans.

melanzana

Lentils fill me full of ahem....wind and stuff. So I avoid like the plague, sorry about that.

jackyann

I think that mostly the cheapest meals depend on the seasons, what happens to be a bargain, stretching left-overs etc.

I live in an area with a number of shoots. At this time of year the gamekeepers are clearing the freezer of pheasants, getting ready for the season. About £1 a bird.

Eggs - again, I live in an area where lots of local people sell delicious free range eggs 6 for £1. If I relied on supermarkets I'd spend more or get indifferent eggs (a while ago there was a thread about free range eggs and some farm gate sales are even cheaper)

Allotments and garden surplus is often bartered, and sometimes people just put out "help yourselves" baskets if they have a big glut.

Whoopsies off the supermarket shelves + some imagination

End of market day bargains and butcher's "weekly deals"

Between all of these we get a lot of delicious cheap meals.

Dustyblinds

melanzana wrote: »

Lentils fill me full of ahem....wind and stuff. So I avoid like the plague, sorry about that.

I read somewhere that if you boil pulses rapidly for 10 minutes, drain and rinse them then add freshly boiled water from the kettle to continue cooking this cuts out on the wind. I do this and it does seem to work, I also always rinse tinned pulses like kidney beans.

Dustyblinds

Another family favourite of ours is poor mans stew.
Minced beef fried with diced onion, a carrot and some diced turnip or swede. Add a tin of tomatoes, one large potato a stock cube and a little water, cover and simmer until veg is cooked.
Serve with crusty bread or Yorkshire pudding to make it go further, my lot love this.

melanzana

Dustyblinds wrote: »

I read somewhere that if you boil pulses rapidly for 10 minutes, drain and rinse them then add freshly boiled water from the kettle to continue cooking this cuts out on the wind. I do this and it does seem to work, I also always rinse tinned pulses like kidney beans.

The cost of all that, and the faff involved negates the use of lentils and pulses TBH. The windy city story is from the past too. Sorry.

melanzana

Dustyblinds wrote: »

Another family favourite of ours is poor mans stew.
Minced beef fried with diced onion, a carrot and some diced turnip or swede. Add a tin of tomatoes, one large potato a stock cube and a little water, cover and simmer until veg is cooked.
Serve with crusty bread or Yorkshire pudding to make it go further, my lot love this.

When we were kids, Mum made something like that, but she also made a pastry topping and it was GREAT for dipping into the stew.

They knew how to stretch things in those days. We were never hungry either.

suki1964

For us ( 3 adults not really on the bread line) it's more about less amounts of expensive proteins

This week one our my planned meals is steak With pepper sauce

2 small frying steaks which will be cut into strips

A large onion saut!ed till soft, a box of mushrooms sliced, the pepper sauce made into that. The steak quickly fried and stirred in. Shoved into rolls or piled on top of mash and served with veg

Three of us having a steak dinner for a £1 a head

For me it's about thinking outside the box and getting the best I can for what I'm prepared to pay.