What are the cheapest meals you can make?

[Deleted User]

Fritatta is a favourite here, you can used mixed veg, cheese, bacon bits.

I usually do a large jacket spud which we cut in half and tomato and celery salad with it.

Anything with mince is good too.

katkin

Frittata is great if you have potatoes, eggs plus any scraps from the fridge / freezer.

Cheap sausages, onion and potato bake with a tin of baked beans on the side is satisying and filling. If cheap sausages can be done in a casserole with any veg to hand and tin of tomatoes they can taste pretty good.

YORKSHIRELASS

I think these discussions can get very confusing. Lets face it you could serve up beans on toast every night and spend very very little on food - but is that realistic?

I think the first question is how much can you afford to spend on food? If the budget is unlimited then the second question is how much do you want to spend on food? You then have to do the best you can with your budget.

I have a husband who works outdoors, an 18 year old with health problems and a big strapping 16 year old who is always hungry. We would survive on beans on toast every night but they would not be happy. Likewise no-one except me wants to eat vegetarian meals and they all love their meat so its a question of striking a balance between giving them meals that they enjoy and keeping costs down.

My budget is £280 a month for all food, cleaning and laundry products. My mealplan for this week is a roast pork dinner, homemade pizza and oven wedges, chilli with jacket potatoes, fajitas, shepherds pie, stew and dumplings and hm fishcakes and chips.

We cook from scratch and eat a lot of fruit and veg - we have just gone through 3 bags of 59p oranges. Nothing is ever wasted. I have no qualms about buying the cheapest meat that I can, cant afford to have too many principles. The exception to this is things like sausages or burgers but we rarely buy those anyway.

There are certain things that we like but cant afford - expensive fruit like blueberries and raspberries, things like scampi and a lot of fresh fish. DH likes diced lamb in a casserole but its a rare treat, the same goes for roast beef.

Oh and everyone eats the same here - that helps but I understand that with an autistic son that might not be so easy!

[Deleted User]

I live alone so can please myself what and when I eat.I enjoy both meat and veggie dishes and am just as happy with a veggie curry or chilli as I am with a meat based one.I too am pretty good when it comes to streeetching meals and often a soup and cracker meal is fine for me but then as I am retired and can please myself its probably easier than if I had a family to feed.

Last night my DD gave me some left over bits to take home from dinner She has enough left on her leg of lamb to make her family a curry with and I had some roasties,some slices of lamb,broccoli and a few runner beans with a couple of yorkshires .This will be reheated tonight for my dinner and I will make some gravy to pour on top.Along with a slice of cheese cake as there was quite a bit left over I won't need to cook for myself tonight .

Tomorrow's lunch will be soup and cheese and crackers and an apple as tomorrow nights meal comes in with the price of the quiz night at the local pub where I help run a team.At £2.00 for the evening its not only a great night out ,but its also another meal I won't have to cook.

So this week I will only be cooking on Wed,Thurs,Fri,and Sat as I go to DDs every Sun for dinner. My food bill isn't huge, but I also make and take cakes and biscuits to her house to help fill her always hungry sons up as I look after them after school and during the holidays

I am not keen on processed food and prefer to cook from scratch ,I rarely eat chips and don't like burgers at all I do like decent quality sausages and would rather have one or two high pork content ones for a meal with a pile of veg than the cheaper ones ,mainly because I just think the cheaper ones taste of sawdust and breadcrumbs :).

I love fish and am lucky enough to live not that far from Whitstable where I can buy it so fresh its almost jumping off the plate my appetite isn't huge though ,but I do love decent ground coffee and a nice cuppa so certain things won't be traded for cheaper stuff.

Frudd

Chilli prawn spaghetti (frozen prawns)
Dahl
Veggie Haggis (trust me! its basically oats lentils beans and carrots with a few spices)
Broccoli spaghetti (cook it in the same pan too)
Cassoulet (can be very cheap if using reduced cuts of meat as you bulk it with lots of beans)
Sausage meatballs with pasta (squeaze the meat out and ball up, the sausages go further and you can get away with 1 each, fry up, add onion, garlic, toms whatever.
Cauliflower Cheese (add other veg eg carrots, also leftover roast to make it a meal)
Leek and Potato soup

kboss2010

Macaroni cheese - 29p bag of pasta, 2 cups of hard cheese (cheap grated cheddar will do!), 1/2 tsp mustard, 500mls milk, 2 tbsp butter or margarine, salt & a few tbsp flour to thicken the sauce.

Make a roux by melting the butter in a pan and adding plain flour until it looks like a block of marzipan. Whisk in the milk bit by bit until the lumps disappear then add the cheese & mustard & whisk continuously until the sauce thickens. Pour over cooked, drained pasta.

The key to a good cheese sauce is continuous stirring & whisking - if you don't, it'll clump!

Mince & Tatties - make mashed potato with peeled boiled potatoes, a tbsp of butter, a splash of milk & salt to taste.

Fry 500g mince, 2 large diced onions, 4 large diced carrots and a cup of frozen peas. When the meat is cooked and the veggies are softened, add 2 beef stock cubes dissolved in 300mls boiling water. Add a couple of tbsp of plain flour to thicken the gravy & simmer until the gravy is thickened.

Tomato & Bacon pasta - 29p pasta, 4 rashers of bacon (fat removed & diced), 2 packets of passata, 2 pur!ed cloves of garlic, a diced onion, sugar, salt & a cup of frozen peas.

Fry the bacon, onions, garlic & peas until soft. Add passata. Add sugar (to remove the tang from the tomatoes) and salt to taste once the tomato passata has reduced. Mix into cooked, drained pasta.