Healthy cost effective meals with meat

Meat_Man

I've been trying to improve my diet over the last few years. I started eating fruit instead of chocolate and drinking water and juice instead of fizzy drinks for example.

One thing I'm never going to compromise on in my diet though is meat. It is essential that every lunch or dinner I have contains meat or fish.

There are meat options I've found to be relatively inexpensive. Examples include chicken dippers and chicken burgers. You can also get ready meals such as beef hotpot for under £1 from Sainsburys.

However a friend of mine who is a similar age has recently battled bowel cancer. Fortunately he survived. He said that one of the biggest contributors was eating processed meat which is basically what the cost effective meat I've mentioned above is.

I've since cut out processed meat from my diet and am only using the fresh meat and fish that don't contain lots of things you've never heard of in the ingredients.

The problem is it's costing me a lot of money. There seems to be few meat options that cost less than £5. Even if I have a beef sandwich for lunch the cooked beef without rubbish to go in the sandwich is £2.90. It all adds up.

Vegetables etc. aren't a problem cost wise but I'm spending an extortionate amount on meat.

Any advice on how I can make my meat eating more cost effective?

Farway

Try for the cheaper cuts & offal

Cheaper cuts do take longer to prepare / cook, so see about a slow or one of the 6 in one type of pressure cookers

Offal is not for everyone, I like liver & but would turn my nose up at hearts or tripe, and no thanks to pigs trotters, Oxtail? Maybe.

Stews & casserole type meals may not be lunch box friendly but can be useful for cheaper meat cuts

Also buy joints, whole chicken etc and not ready prepared bits, like breasts, slices. Although sometimes bits, like wings, can be cheaper, you'd have to look at price per Kg to check.

For burgers, instead of buying ready-made ones, make your own using fresh mince. 

Just check before buying, but normally fresh mince is just minced beef, lamb etc without additives.

Comes with varying amount of fat in it, general rule, cheaper is more fat

Only need forming into burger shapes, nothing too hard about it

Cairnpapple

If you have freezer space, check for deals from your local butcher,  ours does a 'lean meat' pack. If you have a butcher or market stall that does game, sometimes you can get good deals in season, you might have to be ok with eating rabbit or pigeon though (both tasty!)

Give it a few weeks and the supermarkets will all be doing offers on large joints of meat for Easter, a carefully timed yellow-sticker trip might be fruitful.

Katiehound

For chicken buy thighs - skin on, bone in. These come very much cheaper than boneless, skinless because someone has been paid to do the butchering. Very easy to bone yourself.

I've just looked on Morrison's website- boneless & skinless are almost double the price per kilo

Extend meat with veg. One of the airfryer programmes recently showed burgers made with turkey mince & grated courgettes.

beef mince- extend with chopped carrot (or grated), diced celery and add a tin of drained green lentils. Cheap protein which will blend in with the sauce for the base of many meals.

Frozen white fish - Pollock- works out 50 pence per fillet. (Aldi)

have a look at the Batch cooking series showing currently on Channel 4. I realise you don't want 5 meals but there are some great ideas. Home made chunky chicken- chunks of chicken (thigh) coated in bashed cornflakes

cookiemaker

I bake a cheap gammon in the slow cooker to use for sandwiches, as well as with egg and chips obviously! Make a large beef bolognese, add lots of veg, onions, mushrooms peppers, tomatoes etc (and lentils to make it go further) in the slow cooker. Then you can eat it with pasta, make into a cottage pie with potatoes on top, lasagne as well as adding kidney beans, smoked paprika and chilli powder to change it to chilli which you can have in wraps, on jacket potatoes, with rice etc. Freeze in portions. I also cook a whole chicken in the slow cooker as well as pulled pork. Obviously you can do all these in the oven as well but the slow cooker is so easy, just dump and leave to do its thing. As someone said above joints work out cheaper so long as you have a freezer. Decent sausages can be a simple option, just make sure they’re not all filler. 

gwynlas

Canned fish, sardines mackerel pilchards tuna and salmon are all cheaper sources of protein than fresh fish.

Joints of meat are sometimes yellow stickered and if cooked, sliced iand frozen n portions can be good for sandwiches

Nelliegrace

An interesting challenge @Meat_Man, well done on the changes you have made.
We have meat or fish for one meal on most days, cheese, eggs, and pulses provide protein for another meal. Our meat ration is now £3 each a week. 

Are you cooking for one? If so, the freezer is most useful to make use of more economical family packs and offers on meat and fish, freezing them in portions. I buy plain meat, nothing in sauces or coatings, to get the best value for my money. There is not much fish in a fish finger. I check the chilled shelves at Aldi for the red sticker reductions and restock the freezer. I stocked up when Turkey thigh mince was on offer at Christmas, packing it in 100g portions for a meal for two. I have stopped buying sausages with strange additives and buy mince instead. 

I buy family packs of chicken legs and thighs and freeze them in portions, defrosting one in the fridge to cook the next day. A whole chicken may seem too much for one, though it is better value than buying individual portions. Jointing a chicken is straightforward, YouTube is useful. Leftover cooked chicken can be used in lots of recipes, and the carcass makes soup. I buy a family size joint of meat when it is on offer and cut it into smaller joints, and dice some for stew. Whole leg of lamb is sold half price two or three times a year and makes several small roasting joints. Pork is fairly cheap, a joint or pork steaks. I cook a joint as a pot roast so it doesn’t shrink, and bake a pudding and cakes to fill the oven. Leftovers from the roast are good for sandwiches. Portion control really helps with the budget, a portion of meat is a thin layer, just enough to cover your palm.

Beef stew or casserole is not difficult and you could cook a family sized meal using basic diced beef and freeze portions. There is very little meat in a frozen ready meal 15%, in the one you mention, and not necessarily meat a butcher would recognise or be allowed to sell. 

Before he retired our local butcher was very helpful telling me how to cook the cheaper cuts of meat. He would save me bones and even chicken carcasses for stock, and I would ask what I could have for my £5 budget. Belly of lamb was £3, hearts and liver were very cheap. I would take him some of our quail eggs. 

JIL

Aldi do chicken mince for £2.50 for 500g.
This can be made into meatballs or burgers (add some aldi stuffing mix) or my daughters favourite, fried in a little chilli oil and spices, with onions, peppers and courgettes and served over rice or on little gem lettuce leaves.

I know thighs with bones in are more economical but again Aldi do big packs of boneless thighs and also big packs of breasts. They also sell packs of seasonings such as salt and pepper, Chinese and piri piri.  (I'm thinking of quick and easy)

Beef bought as a joint, cooked and sliced then frozen in portions ( or make the sandwiches without salad and freeze)  this will be much more economical than buying cooked beef. 
You can do this with other meats. 

t14cy_t

Meat_Man said:

I've been trying to improve my diet over the last few years. I started eating fruit instead of chocolate and drinking water and juice instead of fizzy drinks for example.

One thing I'm never going to compromise on in my diet though is meat. It is essential that every lunch or dinner I have contains meat or fish.

There are meat options I've found to be relatively inexpensive. Examples include chicken dippers and chicken burgers. You can also get ready meals such as beef hotpot for under £1 from Sainsburys.

However a friend of mine who is a similar age has recently battled bowel cancer. Fortunately he survived. He said that one of the biggest contributors was eating processed meat which is basically what the cost effective meat I've mentioned above is.

I've since cut out processed meat from my diet and am only using the fresh meat and fish that don't contain lots of things you've never heard of in the ingredients.

The problem is it's costing me a lot of money. There seems to be few meat options that cost less than £5. Even if I have a beef sandwich for lunch the cooked beef without rubbish to go in the sandwich is £2.90. It all adds up.

Vegetables etc. aren't a problem cost wise but I'm spending an extortionate amount on meat.

Any advice on how I can make my meat eating more cost effective?

hi, if you have a local butcher, go have a word. explain how many you are cooking for and how much money you want to spend. they will suggest what will make your money go further.

PipneyJane

Hello @Meat_Man .  Welcome to the MSE Forums.  Please take a look at all the recipes and posts at the start of the monthly Grocery Challenge - there are a lot of recipes, hints and tips to get the best for your meat budget.

Personally, I’d recommend buying your meat from a butcher and not the supermarket.  It may seem more expensive but you get much better value for money, e.g. lean beef mince that is ground by the person who is selling it - often in front of you - not mechanically stripped from beef carcasses and combined with God-knows-what part of the cow.  For the record, there are two of us in my household, we eat meat at most meals, and we spend less than £40/month at the butcher’s.  (We have a freezer, so go every couple of months.)

I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s bowel cancer.  A common cause is lack of fibre in the diet and lack of variety in the grains, fruit and vegetables eaten. I add beans or lentils to pad out meat-based meals.  Also, instead of rice for bulking things up, we use bulgar wheat, which has 4 times the fibre of brown rice and 8 times the protein.  It is really easy to cook:  combine 1 part bulgar wheat with 2 parts boiling water, cover and leave for 15 minutes.  Job done.   (For a man-sized portion, I’d use a quarter-cup measure of bulgar wheat.)

HTH

- Pip

Brie

I'm a big fan of salmon and am also very cheap so I look for the full side of salmon that Tescos or others might have on special and take it home and portion up and put everything that isn't needed immediately in the freezer.  Before Christmas they had this at £11 kg with a clubcard.  Alternatively look for their packets of badly cut bits - usually 4 chunks in a pack at about £15 kg.  You can be extra cheap with it and cook 2 pieces, one for dinner hot and the other cold for your lunch the next day - nice with a bit of salad with tomatoes.  

Likewise Aldi etc will have the very long pieces of pork for roasting.  Slice that into individual chops and freeze the majority.