Cheap food shopping tricks please

stephen77

nurse-money wrote: »

How do people manage to get the grocery shopping so cheap?

We are a couple, no children and can easily spend £300 per month.

If you want cheap as possible.
A boring momentous diet using value lines with cooking from scratch will get you a very cheap diet, however it may not be that appealing.

However post a average weekly shop and we can see where you could make some savings.

PenguinOfDeath

Steve059 wrote: »

Now, if someone can find a fool-proof way of remembering to take the list with you ...

Put your lists on a note app on your phone. Assuming you're not in the habit of leaving your phone at home

VfM4meplse

stephen77 wrote: »

A boring momentous diet using value lines with cooking from scratch will get you a very cheap diet, however it may not be that appealing.

Tells us more about your cooking skills than anything else!

I can cook inexpensively and better than any meal out I've had for a long time, using fresh ingredients from the market stall, and without the assistance of cheap supermarket packets. The trick is to use economies of scale and your freezer.

This evening it is HM spicy creamy butternut squash soup.

welshbookworm

I am a useless cook (I regularly burn boiled eggs!) but my food budget (for1) is £20 a week max.
I buy mainly yellow sticker meat and ready meals.
3 chicken thighs can do 4 meals,
Roast the thighs and then cook some noodles and veg and roll them round in the roasting tray and you have chicken and veg noodles
Roast dinner
Fry onions and veg, add tomatoes and chicken and you have chicken to go with pasta
Fry more onions with curry spices, add to the left over chicken, tomatoes and veg from previous meal add coconut cream and serve with rice or chappattis
Chicken thighs are 5 for £2 in Iceland.

surfsister

dlusman wrote: »

Sorry to be curious - but why ?

i freeze anything ad everything!!! never any probs!! except when the power went off for 2 days!!! but got £60 compensation
anyway!

we enjoyed such huge meals trying to clear the freezer before it went off!!

Arlandria606

dlusman wrote: »

Sorry to be curious - but why ?

Because I can taste the difference when it's been defrosted, and it's unpleasant enough to make it inedible. I'm aware most people can't taste a difference though, so I'm not trying to imply that no-one should do it! Just that it doesn't work for me.

If the food's been prepared and part-cooked, it tastes fine to me, so I do that instead.

Steve059

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

Put your lists on a note app on your phone. Assuming you're not in the habit of leaving your phone at home

My old Palm Zire 21 PDA is enjoying an active retirement as my electronic shopping list.

Arlandria606

stephen77 wrote: »

If you want cheap as possible.
A boring momentous diet using value lines with cooking from scratch will get you a very cheap diet, however it may not be that appealing.

However post a average weekly shop and we can see where you could make some savings.

You should call up all those Michelin-starred chefs who have recently turned to cheaper cuts of meat and cooked it from scratch, warn them that they're about to lose their stars and clients due to their "unappealing" food.

It doesn't matter how much you spend on the ingredients - cost and quality aren't always linked and, especially with food, care and skill during preparation is key. Lack of appeal typically comes from poor cooking or lack of variety, not lack of expense.

Edwardia

Curry was specifically invented for the British army, to disguise rubbish/rotten meat. So I'd suggest using the cheaper cuts for really spicy food and let the better quality stuff (which could even be YS) 'speak' for itself and treat it in more simple style.

Learning about food can save money too. For example, I learned that New Zealand is a GM free country and has a mild enough climate to keep sheep out all year round. So I swapped far cheaper grass pastured GM free New Zealand lamb from Lidl for organic and it tastes better than organic IMO.

I look at fish and choose wild Alaskan salmon (fresh, frozen or tinned) over 'salmon' or 'Scottish salmon' or 'Lochmuir salmon', all of which can be farmed, even the expensive M&S stuff. Wild won't have been dyed or fed on ground up fish or GM cornmeal etc. Most of the time the wild will taste better and it's not always more expensive - I can pick up tinned wild in discount stores and can get YS in supermarkets.

Also, the next best thing after fresh home-grown or organic vegetables is to buy frozen. They get picked and packed within a couple of hours. There's no waste, the nutrients are preserved and they are really handy to have in the freezer. I keep frozen mixed veg, peas, petit pois, sweetcorn and oven chips (for OH) in mine. Mixed veg is really handy for a quick veggie curry.

Another thing I learned is that as long as it has the gold crown on it, it's proper additive free Parma ham (prosciutto) so I buy it in Lidl, not Marks & Spencer and get the same thing way cheaper and never get ripped off by stuff labelled Parma Ham with additives and no crown.

Knowing more about food helps to find the good stuff for the best price.

stephen77

Arlandria606 wrote: »

You should call up all those Michelin-starred chefs who have recently turned to cheaper cuts of meat and cooked it from scratch, warn them that they're about to lose their stars and clients due to their "unappealing" food.

It doesn't matter how much you spend on the ingredients - cost and quality aren't always linked and, especially with food, care and skill during preparation is key. Lack of appeal typically comes from poor cooking or lack of variety, not lack of expense.

Michelin starred chef are not using value lines for there best dishes. They will cheaper cuts.
However you missed the point, I was saying to eat the same foods every day to get the cheapest diet.
A cheap diet is likely to be meat free anyway.