Meal ideas under £1

jem1980

Homemade pizza note:

Homemade pizzas are even cheaper if you make the dough from scratch - it's super easy! all you need is flour and dried yeast (a £1 tin lasts forever in my house) and a splash of olive oil.


Also, for a home-made tomato pizza sauce, try frying onion and garlic, add tinned chopped tomatoes & whatever you have in the way of carrot (grated), mushrooms, peppers (mixed frozen ones are fine) even a bit of greenery such as a bit of courgette, a few frozen peas, whatever you want really, & some sugar and salt & pepper (&tomato puree if you want). Cook on low until it's all soft, then blend and reduce if necessary. Freezes great in ice-cube trays, so you can defrost small portions to make muffin pizzas etc. Much healthier than jars, and is cheap - especially if you use leftovers / reduced veggies + basics tinned tomatoes. If you don't have any spare veg, though, just do the basic onion, garlic, tomato combo. (it's also good use for those reduced / leftover fresh tomatoes that are too soft to eat uncooked - bung them in with the chopped ones.

Does wonders for your 5-a-day!

Mmmmmm, I'm very hungry now...

Enjoy!

freja

:dance:BEAN AND LENTIL STEW

use lentils and beans, dried ones that has to soak over night. use for bean stews with various veg on special price, like potatoes, carrots, courgettes, mushrooms, onions, peppers, garlic, chili and so on, cook the beans and lentils according to instructions, strain them, then add diced and chopped veg and a tin of tomatoes, leave to stew for an hour. obviously you dont have to have all the veg to make it the way you want it... and it can easily be adapted for more or less people and if you have some left over the next day, just add a tin of baked beans and you probably have a whole dinner again...

THAI STYLE NOODLE SOUP... (??)

boil instant noodles with more water that recomended, add some soaked and boiled beans, finely chopped leek and some leftover bits of chicken or a few shrimps, feel free to hot and spice up with chili and ginger to taste, have it as a soup with some toasted pita bread


good luck!

rigsby1967

lotto-dreamer wrote: »

Great idea for a thread Looking forward to some more ideas - here's mine

Chinese Pork Stir Fry

Diced pork (or one pork chop/piece of chicken/beef) - sliced thinly e.g. approx £1.75 for 330g)
1 x packet stir fry veg (approx 91p)
1 x packet Blue Dragon chow mein sauce (approx 38p)

Serve with rice!

total cost for 4 is approx £3.50 (includes rice)

quick, cheap and not too much washing up

Thanks for this recipe, We had it last and it was really lovely, i used the 10p noodles instead of rice and as the poster said, cheap and only takes a few minutes to cook.

salster1

hi cheap sausage pie,
bake cheap sausages in oven to brown with chopped onion, mixed veg from freezer. top with chopped tomatoes nd cover with mash bake in oven till golden. havent exact figures but way less than £1 per person, ok not the healthiest but everyone fed.

gab4o

mummy2jack wrote: »

I too have noticed that in our local Tescos

they're gone in my home tesco, but my university one still has them but at 11p) - probably because students buy loaaaaads of them :rotfl:

by the way, if you're making a stir-fry or anything, the 8/11p (or whatever cheap pot noodles in a packet you can find) are perfect to lob in!!! and they 'cook' really fast (i.e. leave them to soak in hot water for a couple of minutes)

lisa110rry

I'm sorry, haven't checked all the posts, but here are two that were favourites for us when our son was young:

Scrummy homemade pizza

Make up a scone dough (flour, oil, water, seasoning of s&p), and in the meantime, put a tin of chopped tomatoes, also seasoned, with a finely chopped onion and a couple of chopped garlic cloves, a squeeze of tomato puree and half a teaspoon of sugar on the cooker to reduce to a paste (about 20mins on simmer, uncovered). Roll out the dough, cover with the tomato paste, add some ham or whatever is liked, top with cheese which you grate yourself. Cook in the oven until crisp - the crust will slightly raise. Serve with copious quantities of salad. Even better if you allow the children to make their own personal pizzas!

Vegetarian Casserole with Dumplings

Roughly chop swede (just a bit), white turnip (just one, strong flavour!), carrots, leeks, potatoes, onions, whatever else is liked. Brown off each type of veg separately in a litttle hot oil to seal the flavour and put in a large casserole. After the veg is browned, add 2T flour to the flying pan and a squeeze of tomato puree, brown that off a bit, stirring and drawing in any veg bits left in the pan and add about a litre of hot veg stock, bring to the boil and when thickened add to the casserole. Season with s&p and cook in the oven on a low heat for about 90 minutes, covered. Make up some Atora dumplings, adding dried herbs of choice and put in casserole, cook a further 30 minutes uncovered. Absolutely delicious and so very good for you! Practically your five a day in one pot. Also freezable.

Cheers,

L

little_miss_moneysaver_3

Reading this reminded me of a turkey curry I made a couple of weeks ago.

Half a turkey drumstick (Was a whoopsie, but still cheapish full price) 50p
Value curry sauce 12p
Value tinned chopped tomatoes 33p
Onion 10p
Carrots 15p
Handful of frozen peas 10p
Approx 100g green lentils 8p

Comes to £1.38, but was enough to do 5-6 helpings! (around 28p)
I served with value rice (plain boiled) so that was a few pence too (estimate for 2 ppl 15p).

Not always good at ending up with cheap meals as the end product. But I was very proud of this attempt at the time!

LMMS

lisa110rry

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

I'm looking for the definitive CBH recipe but it seems that, if you ask 100 people for this, you get 101 answers.

The core ingredients do seem to be potato, onion and CB. The main question seems to be whether you boil and mash the potatoes (more time and washing up but healthier) or dice and fry them with the onion (quick, easy and s*d the arteries).

Dice and fry in a little olive oil for me.

little_miss_moneysaver_3

[QUOTE

I now never buy chicken breasts from the supermarket and these used to be the basis of probably 3 meals per week in the old days! Last week I bought a large chicken for £4.99 and roasted it. With the white meat (cause we are all fussy) I made chicken and mushroom pasta using some condensed mushroom soup for the sauce as I was short of time. We got 6 good sized portions from this and had enough white meat left for a chicken salad for 4 the next day. The scrappier meat from the wings and legs etc could be made into a pie or soup but in our house the dog gets it! 10 meals and the meat content was less than 50p per head plus a few dog meals too. Today I got a similar sized chicken on a mark down that was £3.49, it's roasting in the oven as I write - mmmm. Plus using the carcass for stock gives an excellent base for many other meals, especially risotto. [/QUOTE]

I'm going backward through the thread, but I saw this post. Ditto is all I can say. I was the same used to buy chicken breasts in massive bulk. But I use the darker meat, normally disguise it in a stew/soup/curry/sweet and sour - you get the drift. A whole chicken can normally do us (me and OH) for 5 meals each and a few lunchtime butties. I think he secretly cries each time I tell him i've bought a chicken, it'll be the dinner for the week! :rotfl:

mumoftwo

little_miss_moneysaver wrote: »

[QUOTE

I now never buy chicken breasts from the supermarket and these used to be the basis of probably 3 meals per week in the old days! Last week I bought a large chicken for £4.99 and roasted it. With the white meat (cause we are all fussy) I made chicken and mushroom pasta using some condensed mushroom soup for the sauce as I was short of time. We got 6 good sized portions from this and had enough white meat left for a chicken salad for 4 the next day. The scrappier meat from the wings and legs etc could be made into a pie or soup but in our house the dog gets it! 10 meals and the meat content was less than 50p per head plus a few dog meals too. Today I got a similar sized chicken on a mark down that was £3.49, it's roasting in the oven as I write - mmmm. Plus using the carcass for stock gives an excellent base for many other meals, especially risotto.

I'm going backward through the thread, but I saw this post. Ditto is all I can say. I was the same used to buy chicken breasts in massive bulk. But I use the darker meat, normally disguise it in a stew/soup/curry/sweet and sour - you get the drift. A whole chicken can normally do us (me and OH) for 5 meals each and a few lunchtime butties. I think he secretly cries each time I tell him i've bought a chicken, it'll be the dinner for the week! :rotfl:[/QUOTE]

I really admire people that can do this, you must all be very small eaters or buy super large chickens, or more likely that we are pigs and eat lots!!:D

I roast a chicken: Oh gets one breast (he only likes white meat) two teenage DD share the other breast, I have one leg/thigh bit so that leaves us with one leg/thigh which I can use in soup or I will mix it with some mayo and curry powder or tikka powder to make a sandwich filler for kids next day, but that is it (apart from the carcass boiling thing) gone is the chicken, no ten meals from one chicken for us :o so I still buy chicken breasts for stirfrying and curry etc, nice and quick, I cut them up really small and add lots of veg, onions etc