Cheapest recipies.

tickleoria_2

Just another pointer- look for a slow cooker at a local car boot sale. They often come up for sale and sometimes for less than £1! This way you can cook 'real' food slowly using very little energy. Also there are loads of good slo-cooker recipes on'line for you to explore often using cheap cuts of meat.

P.S. A home made bolognese sauce based on the above recipe works out at about 30p...

Penelope_Penguin

Hi, sara, take a look at these threads:

Cheapest recipes???

Meal for two for 50p. Suggestions?

The Cheapest Healthy Meal Ever!

Feed 6 for £1.62

Cheapest meal

Your Cheapest Evening Meal.

cheap, easy family meals

Show Jamie How To Cook On A Budget Champagne Contest

Meal idea's under £1

I'll add your thread to the most recent one as it helps to keep the suggestions together.

Penny. x

notenoughcash

I tend to buy value everything, so just for example, there's me and two growing boys and typically I will make:

Large pack minced beef £2 split into 3 (66p each) would make

Lasagne - add an onion (10p) few mushrooms (10p) garlic (5p) can of value chopped tomatoes (15p) mixed herbs & few gravy granules (10p) dried lasagne sheets (10p) make a white/cheese sauce using butter, milk flour & grated cheese (20p) and jacket potato (50p for 2) would be less than £2

Spag Bol would be the same as the lasagne meat sauce (£1.16) with some value spaghetti (10p) and garlic bread (20p)

Shepherd's pie Minced beef (66p) with an onion (10p) a few frozen value peas (10p) a chopped up carrot (10p) and gravy granules (10p) and top with mashed potato (50p) serve in a yorkshire pud (value mix 10p just add water and an egg)

So there's 3 meals for about a fiver from one pack of meat. Not necessarily one after the other, I split the mince and freeze it and then take it out to defrost the night before, only takes about 45 mins for the lasagne & shepherd's pie and even less for the spag bol.

We have the odd day where we'll just have value spaghetti or beans on toast which is a matter of pence and then leaves enough of the budget to be able to have a treat night once a week, usually a saturday.

sara1880

i was wondering about a slow cooker, but i was concerned about how cost effective they were, as in electric all day long V's Gas cooking evening meals.Are they really that good on electric.

tickleoria_2

They use the same energy as a lightbulb (around 1 unit of electricity every 10 hours)- even less if you use the low setting. Compare that to an oven (2000w) which uses up to 2 units every hour! However, if you then go and cook your spuds etc. seperately to your slow-cooked meal then you start adding more energy useage and all savings go out the window.

The real secret to slow-cooker use is 'all-in-one' recipes. There are some great books out there that concentrate on that type of recipe.

Olliebeak

I tend to do 'one-pot meals' from my SC - sometimes with the addition of dumplings to bulk out further.

If you have a Pressure Cooker as well as a SC, these are a great way of cooking separate vegetables. I often use mine as a combination.

moanymoany

Just bought a large unused Cordon Bleu slow cooker for £5 at a car boot sale.

Now I will seek out the slow cooker recipe thread!

Stephen_Leak

I've found a few more recipes for very simple pasta dishes. They are clearly based on the basic Garlic & Oil Pasta, so I've added them as "Additions & Alternatives" to the recipe for this. I haven't tested any of them yet, but as they only involve adding an extra ingredient or two, I can't see how they could go wrong.

GARLIC & OIL PASTA (AGLIO E OLIO)

Per Person

INGREDIENTS

1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon of olive oil
125ml of water
¼ of a teaspoon of salt
100g of spaghetti
Ground pepper to taste

METHOD

Peel the garlic and chop it into tiny pieces.

Put the oil into a frying pan on a moderate heat. Add the garlic. Fry the garlic for about 5 minutes until it is brown, stirring to stop it sticking.

Put the water and salt into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Put the pasta into the water. Stir it to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan. Bring back to the boil and continue to cook, stirring to stop it sticking.

Begin testing it about 2 minutes before the packet instructions say it should be done. The best way to judge if pasta is cooked is to bite it. This is tricky, because if you fish out a bit and stick in your mouth you may burn your mouth on the boiling water. Wait a bit and blow on it, then bite it. If it is hard it needs longer. If it is chewy (or ‘al dente’, Italian for ‘to the teeth’) it is ready. If it is soft it is overcooked.

Drain the pasta in a sieve or colander. Season with the pepper.

Always ‘take the pasta to the sauce’. Put the pasta in the pan with the sauce and stir until thoroughly coated.

ADDITIONS & ALTERNATIVES

Use any other long thin plain pasta, like linguine (thin and flat), tagliolini (very thin and flat) or spaghettini (very thin and round), instead of spaghetti.

For Garlic & Parsley Pasta, add 25g per person of fresh parsley. Wash, shake dry and finely chop the parsley. Add the parsley just before serving.

For Garlic & Anchovy Pasta, add 13g (¼ of a 50g tin) per person of anchovy fillets in olive oil. If you are using the whole tin, use the oil from this to fry the garlic. Add the anchovies to the garlic after the 5 minutes, and mash up until smooth.

For Garlic, Anchovy & Olive Pasta, add 2 or 3 pitted black olives and 2 or 3 pitted green olives per person to the Garlic & Anchovy Pasta just before serving.

TIPS

If you use enough water, add the pasta when the water is boiling, stir the pasta and don’t wander off (‘Gli spaghetti amano la compagnia’ or ‘spaghetti loves company’) and don’t overcook it, adding olive oil to the water to stop it sticking is totally unnecessary.

PS. I have seen this dish on a restaurant menu for £8.50!

I'm certainly going to try the Anchovy & Olive one the next time I'm in Bath and visit the fresh olive stall. They are two ingredients that I would never have thought of using together.

Anyway, I hope this helps those of us struggling to make ends meet, and shows that you can make top quality dishes from the minimum of fairly basic ingredients.

As I have said before, I may not earn much money, but I do not consider that a reason to be poor.

zarazara

Thankyou! good thread.

Essex-girl_2

Thank you, I am not a great pasta lover but that dish is one that I do love.