Cheapest recipies.

415SanFran

A yorkshire pudding with reduced veg and a gravy is good and filling, if you make a big one you could put cheap jam on it the next day for a sweet treat, I have been known to have this the next day for breakfast before now.

Could you make food once and use twice to help with the lecky? say like curry (reduced veg with 10p curry sauce)and rice one day and then say egg fried rice the next day with the rest of the veg and the rest of the rice, all you have to find is an egg.

Pink.

Hi CWaward,

In addition to the links above, these threads have lots of recipes and cheap meal ideas that may help:

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

I'll add this thread to the first link later to keep the suggestions/recipes together.

Pink

COOLTRIKERCHICK

this might sound silly, but it DOES save money..

If you can get hold of bbq for free, or some bricks to make a bbq, type thing.. in the summer you could burn wood outside and cook on it, i have boiled potatoes, used my old frying pan on there to fry bacon etc...

you can gt wood for free, and just store it..

This might seem a little extreme, but if you can cook for free you are saving. especially with the price of gas/electric going up...

[Deleted User]

All these are great advice, but I thought I'd just add that you can get a packet of lettuce seeds very cheaply and sow a few at a time, that'll keep you in lettuces nearly all through the year. There are all sorts of freebie offers on mse that you can grab freebie or very cheap seeds and grow your own, even on the windowsill. The thing is NOT to get carried away.:j

CWayward

Thanks for the additional suggestions and links folks, really appreciated!
The cheap meal threads are very helpful though some of them several years old so obviously the costings will be out of date. Good for ideas though, so I have bookmarked a few.
Unfortunately I do not have the space for another freezer (VERY small flat! Think postage stamp) and I can't do the BBQ suggestion as I don't have a garden (great suggestions for those with more space/a garden though!)
I'm growing my own herbs and a tomato plant and a bell pepper plant or two are on the way. I grew several good peppers last year using recycled 4 litre water bottles for each plant, growing seedlings from the seeds saved from my best pepper - should hopefully save me a few pounds.
I tried growing lettuce last year but it didn't come out very well (didn't taste right!) and I am limited for space.
Anyway back to the recipe suggestions - I never would have thought to put jam on a yorkshire pudding! Sounds good, I must give that a go if I can get my yorkshires recipe to work. Is it cheaper to make your own yorkshires or to buy them ready-made (factoring in the leccy?)

Homemade soup and pasta salad sounds like the way to go - I just need to get more organised with my little freezer and sort out some containers for portioning things up in I think. Think I will try making cheap veggie bolognese in a big batch tomorrow, add some chilli to half of it for a bit more variety. The recipe on cheap-family-meals for lentil pate sounds good too.

Lots of lentils, tesco value kidney beans, pasta, spuds...any other suggestions for cheap bulking-out foods?
:-)
Catherine

Hannah_10

If you're with E.On (paying 11.8p per Kw/h on prepay) and if your cooker is a 2Kw cooker, then in one hour switched on it uses 23.6p of electric. In a tiny flat there's good odds that you've got a 1Kw cooker actually, so whatever you pay per Kw/h is the hourly running cost. It will say the power use on the back of the cooker, look when you pull it out to clean it. You can find out your electric costs by putting your key in and pressing the button (there is only one) until it comes up on the screen as either price per Kw/h or price per "unit"- a unit is a Kw/h (a kilowatt hour). Even when you know the price per unit and the power of the cooker any figure you work out is a worst case scenario because ovens flick on and off to maintain the temperature you set them to, they don't run solidly for an hour because you baked for an hour.

CWayward

Hi Hannah thanks for the help. My cooker is a 0.7kwh tiny little 2-ring mini oven! My electricity company is 12.38p/kwh (don't think I can change companies as I rent the flat and it would mean getting a new meter fitted)
So if my maths is right that's about 9p (worst case scenario) to run my cooker for an hour? Does the heat setting effect that, do you know?
I can only really fit one thing in there at a time, so can't really economise much on cooking things at once.

Hannah_10

I make it just under 9p an hour too, and that would be if it was on max solidly. Changing supplier doesn't mean getting a new meter, it just means making a couple of phone calls. U-Switch does comparissons for prepay electric, have a look.

SunshineBear

I have started this as so that any cheap recipes that are filling and tasty can be put in one place.

Here are some others:


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



Here are a couple of my favorites.

I don't know if anyone is interested in this but I make a Chick pea Dahl which costs very little.

Buy your spices in bulk from an Indian Wholeseller, they last forever.

1small cup red lentils
1 medium onion
1 small hot pepper
2 cloves garlic
oil
spices: (these are all powders) 1 teaspoon cumin, 1ts corriander, 1/8 ts cardamom (Ground down), 1/4 ts cayenne, 1/8 ts ginger, 1 ts salt, 1/4 ts pepper.
Tin Chick Peas
water
spinach

Cut the onion and gently fry in oil untill golden brown add the garlic and small hot pepper (chopped)
Add the spices and continue to gently fry for 5 mins. (this releases the flavour)
add the lentils and take off the heat for 5 mins (this allows the lentils to soak up the flavour)
add water (aprox 2-3 times the amount of lentils)
Add the drained tin of chick peas (or pre soaked dried ones)
Keep stiring, leave it on a low heat untill you have a consistancey of stoggy porridge (or however you like it)

If it sticks to the bottom simply turn off the heat and leave for 10 mins and stir.


This freezes well and is best served with chupatties, rice or naan bread. Or all of them.

SunshineBear

For a variation take out the chick peas and replace with cooked cauliflower.

Follow the recipe as above and simply leave out the chick peas.
Cook the cauliflower until the stalk end starts to soften.
gently fry the caulifower in oil. I feel this adds to the flavour.
You can if you want start the cauli off in oil and put a lid on to gently steam it. You end up with more crunch this way.

Then pour the dahl over the cauliflower. Yum
Use brocholli (sic) as well for variation.

If you are in the habit of throwing the stalks away, DONT.
Chop them and cook them and add to either the Chick pea or plain dahl.