Learn to Cook Frugal Style

maisie_cat

If you can, invest in spices and herbs, it's amazing what you can do with onions, potatoes, fridge scraps and spices.
I would also recommend a multicooker, if I won the lottery I'd buy loads for food banks. In terms of electricity cost it's 1p-2p a portion to do pasta or rice and around 2p a portion to make a curry/chilli/bolognese when batch cooked.
Multicookers can be used in accommodation without decent kitchens, I had my first one when I lived in a questionable bedsit in a HMO and didn't like to use the kitchen. 
Virtually everything I make starts with onion and other aromatics sauteed, then add spices
My favourite cheap dinner is potato chickpea and whatever is in the fridge or the Lidl veg box curry, I'm not sure if it tastes better for being 15p a serving but I like to think so.
We eat much healthier than we did when we had money, we eat less meat and virtually nothing processed ready meal type stuff.
The Jack Monroe books are good but I found the BBC food website is really good and once you find the frugal ingredients that you love you can work around them. I also often google the things we have with the word recipe after it to find interesting things to make, today it's "feta chicken bacon pasta" because I have half a pack of feta and 2 slices of bacon lurking and found a chicken breast in the freezer.

Frugalista

What sort of things do you like to eat?

Siebrie

Cookbooks are workbooks! My cookbooks are full of notes, where I have added exclamation marks, substitutes (and whether successful or not), crossed out untasty recipes, calculated for more/less people.

maman

Siebrie said:

Cookbooks are workbooks! My cookbooks are full of notes, where I have added exclamation marks, substitutes (and whether successful or not), crossed out untasty recipes, calculated for more/less people.

I keep a loose leaf folder with plastic pockets for tried and tested recipes. I also have a recipe box for recipes I plan to try but they only get transferred to the folder when I'm sure they are keepers. 

otb666

i find my hand blender very handy to thicken up water in slow cooker to required thickness

HelenaPinky

Thank you all, I took your advice of looking on BBC good food slow cooker recipes websites and reducing the water and that frugal cooking is using what you’ve got and not having waste and googling ingredients with word recipe. I had never thought to use the original 6 people recipe and freeze. I was nervous (and still am!) but have given it a go this morning.

I got some bottom shelf ingredients out of the fridge this morning and laid them out for inspiration (photo) - I then Googled the ingredients and looked in my cookbook which was the most stressful part of the process!!! I knew I didn’t have enough chicken for the recipes, but found a tin of mixed beans (I saw on an advert about substituting beans for meat to help environment). I then gave up on the websites as they were too confusing, and half followed a Jamie Oliver recipe I had written down on my phone when watching his programme. It was much easier not having to adapt the ingredients from 6 to 4 people. 

Fried two chicken breasts, half an onion (was supposed to be 2 but I only had one so I added some spring onion? Is this okay I wonder?! This has been my downfall in the past, I adapt and it tastes weird), 2 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tsp salt, pepper, dried thyme. Recipe said add 480ml water and lemon juice so I did 280ml water, using your advice that I can top up later. Then was going to add 1 tbsp plain flour but found weebles in the flour (eeeeeek!) but luckily I keep it in a sealed tub so it hadn’t gone into the SR flour. So I used 1 tbsp SR flour instead (another substitution which I’m worried about!). I found weebles in flour once before about 10 years ago so I knew I what to look for. It was boiling by then so I tipped it all into slow cooker.

Then added three carrots chopped, 3 sticks celery, then added the extra 200ml water as that just about covered it all but with some sticking out. 

I’ve now left it with some potatoes and the tin of mixed beans next to it to remind me to add them layer!

Will check on water level later and add a tea towel to let some water escape if it looks too wet. The recipe says to add 60ml double cream at the end, we have single cream so will use that.

HelenaPinky

Frugalista said:

What sort of things do you like to eat?

Mostly traditional home cooking, stews, casseroles, would also happily make fajitas, enchiladas etc. anything really! Just nothing too spicy, and nothing *too* meat based (I’m a wannabe vegetarian, once I’m confident with cooking!). DH eats anything, and I have two young children to cater for who are sometimes good and sometimes fussy, but generally give things a try so that won’t dictate what I cook

Mands

HelenaPinky said:

The recipe says to add 60ml double cream at the end, we have single cream so will use that.

Double cream and single cream behave differently when cooked. The fat content in double cream (high) means that you can be pretty brutal with it and it will remain stable. Add double cream and bring your sauce to a boil and it will be gorgeous. Single cream has a much lower fat content and it will split and curdle if you take it too high. The sauce would still be edible but will look unappealing.

If this is a slow cooker recipe you will be well below boiling point so you can probably get away with it. If the sauce does split it's fine to eat and you'd know why for the future.

Best of luck with your cooking adventures,
Mands

Katiehound

Did I not read somewhere here that you can freeze flour to kill the weevils

thank you Google- yes you can freeze small quantities, they wont hurt you. However clear out the cupboards to check for any infestation. Lots of info online.

pamsdish

Katiehound said:

in the SC if the liquid is too thin you can always add slaked cornflour or flour near the end of the cooking to thicken it up. I think one of the problems may be that you really need to cover the food in the SC   at the start with liquid &the boney bits won't push down!

Great tip @Katiehound, slaking just means mixing with a little water, for the unexperienced.