Consider the food bank too probably.
Bulk dry beans, bulk sack rice, canned beans for chilli when feeling lazy or on sale, meat only on steep discount usually making stew or chilli with the worse less/undesirable cuts. Stir fry when you find better ones. Frozen vegetables and fruit bags. Store brand usually. Basic frozen pizzas, pasta bags with tomato based pasta sauce. Pasta sauce cans are frequently on sale and baseline is a low price.
Bananas, kiwis, and mandarin oranges are usually cheap in Canada anyways for fresh fruit.
I have a meat grinder attachment on my used mixer, very useful.
You can do a lot with apps like Paprika or Supercook. You add stuff you already have and it spits out only recipes with what you have on hand already. Helps me use up what I buy efficiently and stops you from getting bored of eating the same stuff. Less food waste and flavour bordeom is always good for mood and wallet.
If you have space, gardening. Fruit trees alone fill a deep freezer eventually.
I’m growing potatoes, carrots, shallots, parsley and dill - and something called “mother of herbs” that I don’t really know how to cook with yet.
I’ll check those apps out, cheers.
My ultimate struggle meal:
In 1 pot:
- Rice (the good one from a sack, forget about minute rice)
- Carrots, sliced
- Whatever is cheapest between Sweet potato, Pumpkin or Eggplant at the time, cut into cubes.
- Thai Curry paste & Soy sauce
- Salt
- Cook 15 minutes
- Put into a tortilla with mayonnaise
Fast, really cheap, and has the important bonus that the only dish to clean is the 1 pot. When struggling, I also don’t feel like doing a lot of housework.
Sadly, I can never remember the best ratios, so the mayonnaise is rather mandatory as it can save a rather bland filling. Sometimes, I splurge and use guacamole instead, sometimes I also put in mini-spring rolls from the same shop I buy the rice and curry.
With my “recipe” out of the way, the important thing is to find some ingredients that have a low price for lot’s of weight, and then choose a recipe that’s like 90% cheap ingredients by weight. (Remember that some ingredients take on a lot of water, rice taking on twice it’s volume for example, so they’re cheaper than the price tag implies). I personally look for food that’s under 3€/kg. The other 10% of the meal can be way more expensive (curry paste in my recipe), but, because you only use so little of it, as a whole it’s still cheap.
Probably the absolute cheapest meal are homemade hash browns, potatoes are ridiculously cheap, with apples being the cheapest fruit where I live. Next cheapest vegetable around here are carrots.
I used to fry a pan of frozen veggies with salt and thyme, but these days I’m often lucky enough to be able to get a lot of rescued food for free.
Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!
1 cup dry beans, 1.5 cups water in instant pot. Press the “beans” button and go back to Lemmy til pot beeps at you (about 45 minutes). Can’t get much simpler.
Fry onions in coconut oil, add lentils and water, season with garam masala and/or other herbs and spices, optionally add dried fruit and nuts, eat with rice. The best thing about this is that all ingredients keep well in the cupboard so you can stock up a little when you can afford to.
budgetbytes.com great cheap recipes their older stuff was a bit more budget conscious. But you can sort by ingredient and find good bean and lentil recipes.
Soak the dried beans over night and the lentils at least for 2 or 3 hours.
Fry an onion and some cloves of garlic in oil. I prefer olive oil, but take whatever is available.
Add a good amount of canned tomatoes to it - canned tomatoes are typically more affordable than fresh ones while tasting better at the same time due to typically being harvested and processed when being ripe. Also they can be bought in bulk due to the long shelf-life.
Put some spices in: pepper, cumin, oregano, thyme, cardamom go well with it, or whatever you like. If the fancier spices are too expensive, just pepper does quite well.
Finally add whatever vegetables are available and affordable: bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, green squash, whatever you can get and like.
If you can get some minced meat, put it in the pot/pan before you add the canned tomatoes. The same goes for sausages: slice the sausages and roast them gently; it improves the taste.
More affordable than minced meat (potentially healthier than sausages) and a good source of protein (next to the pulses, which contain a nice amount of protein already) would be eggs.
Crack one, two, three eggs into the pan, put a lid on and let it cook for around 10 minutes. The result is close to eggs Benedict ;)
Have fun and hang in there!I had a similar (but much more primitive) dish:
I’d pour a can of tomatoes onto sausages as they cooked. It sort of braised them. Then I’d add basil for a European touch, or curry for something more exotic. Not sure how dried beans and lentils will go, but I’ll have to try it. Cheers.
1bag dried black beans
1half onion
Vegetable oil
Bay leaf
Red pepper flakes
Garlic
Salt
Water
Pick out any bad looking beans, then place them in water to soak over night. Next day, drain the water, put beans in a pot with 1tbsp oil, salt, bay leaf, half an onion, and enough water to cover. Cook for about an hour or until beans are soft. This can be divided into 4-5 quart bags and frozen to store. Do not throw out the water, store it with the beans.
Add about a cup of veggie oil, 1 tsp garlic, 2 tsp red pepper flakes to a pan. Cook over medium hear until aromatic. Add about 4 cups of beans and juice or 1 bag thawed. Stir carefully until it thickens, then mash with a slotted spoon/spatula/potato masher.
The first half makes beans that goes great with basically anything, the second is true, authentic refried beans. As a honky boy who only ever had then from a can, the refried beans were life changing and I married the woman that taught me how to make them.
I cook beans and rice regardless of how its going. Nothing can beat that. And you can add anything you want, which makes beans really flexible.
I can cook rice OK, but it’s never really enjoyable to eat. Always too bland. Never tried cooking with dried beans and lentils so I’ll have to explore that. Cheers.
Lazy mexirice: get a cup of rice or whatever amount you like, pour it over a hot pot already coated in hot olive oil. Shake it or stir the rice continuously in high heat. Keep looking at the oil wet rice. It will go from being fully clear to an opaque white. You can stop at white or continue until they get a more toasted brown orange color. At that point pour a good amount of ketchup from a squeeze bottle. Immediately following that with a cup of hot water. Now lower the heat fill the pot with enough hot water to cover the rice,. Finally cover the pot and wait 20 minutes. Add water if it dries too much.
You could toast a tomato and then add onions and such, buy ketchup is the lazy way. I do add some garlic powder.
Look up recipes for seasoned rice, obviously it ups the cost a bit.
Fry the dry rice in some type of oil until golden brown (stir regularly to prevent burning) then add some chicken stock or a bouillon cub to the water along with herbs and spices you like while the rice boils. I usually go with onion/garlic powder and some dried rosemary but fresh works good too.
Cuban beans and rice are very delicious and very affordable.
Rice and beans is the staple pretty much everywhere else.
Don’t buy ultra processed Mac and cheese or frozen pizza. It’s nutritionally bad for you, and won’t keep you full for long.
Start with rice and beans and canned sauce. Cheap, easy, and good for you.
You can obviously add chicken/tofu/protein, or try to start making sauces yourself. But always keep the rice and beans as a base. Every meal you eat, rice and beans. They’re cheap as hell and close to what we evolved to eat.
the answer is always either rice and beans or potato.
I’m a fan of Cuban rice and beans. I can’t make it all that well but it’s good enough and my version is palatable. Dirt in the hole!
i think that it helps to always have some rice cooked and waiting to bump up the calorie count to almost any meal.
Rice, potatoes, beans, and lentils are all solid low cost choices.
A friend had a recipie for a dinner he ate almost every night in college. One can of beans. One can of diced tomatoes. Put in microwave. Spice to taste. He called it “beans and tomatos”.
Rofl, but actually a better “recipe” than many college students are capable of.
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If you then add fried onions to that you get a lebonese comfort food
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Yup. Buy dry beans and dry rice – none of that precooked stuff. Buy fresh potatoes tho. If you can afford it, I’d also get a bag of onions, maybe carrots, and some spices that do NOT contain salt. You can also buy salt, but it is way cheaper per-gram to get salt and other spices on their own. Note that brown rice has more vitamin content than white rice (thiamine deficiency), but most white rice is enriched to compensate.
I have to admit that I do not do beans nearly as much as I should. I think it is because canned beans are not nearly the deal money-wise as dried beans are … and I am not good at letting beans soak without forgetting them and ruining them.
I’m not sure they’re quite ruined if over soaked. Cooking time will be greatly diminished. I’ve left beans soaking for 24 hours because I forgot, they turned out fine.
I thought at least 24 hours was the requirement
Overnight/8 hours is what’s normal where I am. Or boil for 10 minutes, soak for a couple of hours.
Yeah you can just soak them in boiled water to shorten the time required.
You don’t actually need to soak them before you cook them.
I’ve made plenty of bean dishes, starting with completely dry beans. It takes a little longer to cook because they are rehydrating while they cook, but they still come out great.
Adding to this. A pressure cooker brings the cook time down dramatically and I think it produces a superior result.
I second this.
Also works for things like cheap pieces of beef which normally require long cooking times before you can comfortably eat them.
Part of the reason to soak is for them to release sone long proteins that are hard to digest. You can achieve the same result by carefully removing the foam they produce at the beginning of the cooking (or replace the water completely after 10-15 minutes of boiling)
Oh, cool. Thanks for sharing that, I wasn’t aware.
That’s one of the reasons I love cooking. No matter how much I know, there’s always so much more to learn.
Do a quick soak (bring to a boil, turn off heat, cover, let sit for an hour) and use a timer.
Magic words: pressure cooker. Electric ones are simplest, press one button and wait for beepng.
I started vaguely planning my meals by the week sort of by accident. A friend made me a “weekly planner” whiteboard that had a “menu” section I thought would be totally useless.
But I started jotting down some ideas there, just on a whim, and I’ll be damned but I love it!
I don’t always follow my own plan, and I often just write the main/protein part and wing it a bit, but it’s great having at least an idea what’s coming down the pipe for the week, so I can actually plan prep and shopping, and use up what I have. It looks something like:
MON lentils TUE beans WED tofu ....Etc, so like now I know to soak beans overnight on Monday, and go buy tofu before Wednesday.
dry lentils can be cooked with rice in a rice cooker right with them because they are so small.
Fun fact FTW! Check out epazote for not only doing away with the pre-soak, but most of the renowned GI effects, too. 🖖🏼 A little goes a long way, (IIRC, ~ ½T for a 4-5gal pot) and it’s essentially dried grass. Get it from your local mercado/bodega for dirt cheap, change your life. 🥳
TIL, thanks
In general, when looking for ingenuous “hacks” in food, start with the originating culture. Thousands of years of poor people making the process more efficient, reliable, and just plain better? Sign me up.
I started eating a lot of chickpeas recently. Buy them dried, boil them for a couple minutes them let them soak in the water for a few hours. Then either roast them in the oven or if I’m lazy, toss them in the microwave for like 5 minutes, then add some seasoning. I snack on them between meals, or also toss them into things like soup or curry.
Also if you want a different take on ramen, boil them until they are al dente, drain the water and then stir fry with some cheap veggies or whatever.
There is this curry spice blend that comes in a small green carboard box (fits in your hand) that I find at a local indian groacery store. Its specifically made for chickpea curry. Anyway dump a bunch of this shit and a little salt on your chickpeas before roasting. Its genuinely so goddamn good I eat it every other day atleast. I’ll see if I can’t find the name
Found it
Falafel: dried chickpeas with garlic & parsley fried in oil. Very high calorie/cost, because the chickpeas are basically oil sponges, and it’s hard to beat vegetable oil on calories/cost. $1.50 for 1000 calories.
Kimchi fried rice: Kimchi, rice, couple of fried eggs for protein. $2.10 for 1000 calories. Make your own kimchi even cheaper.
Chili noodles: cheap, store-brand spaghetti with chili oil-soy sauce dressing. Don’t sub ramen for pasta - that stuff’s expensive. $2.50/1000 cal. Make your own chili oil for extra savings.
God I fucking love falafel
To add to this, buying from specific ethnicity markets tends to be cheaper. If you have nearby Chinese/Eastern, any middle eastern, Mexican/Latin American stores, you can find a lot of really cheap staples to make.
I moved recently and the overall lack of ethnic stores is driving me up the walls! They are usually both cheaper and better quality than anything you find at the supermarket… I guess I moved to white-as-butter-land :/
Same here, Mexican food is my favorite, but new location has no decent Mexican restaurants or stores.
Back in my early 20s there were a few things.
- Making beanie weenies were pretty inexpensive
- Ramen is the old standby
- Totino’s party pizzas were also cheap calories
- Canned soups, stretched out with cheap crackers
- Peanut butter on celery or toast
No idea if those are still cost effective, but two or three of those could be stretched out over a week for under $10 at the time. I still eat all of those things at least every few years for some hits of nostalgia, even the cheap ass pizza.
This is all processed food that’s not only more expensive than just cooking something but also horribly unhealthy. Loaded with sodium.
When I was really low on money I had one small saucepan, one pan, a spatula, and a few dishes and silverware. No soup pot, no mixing bowels, or any other prep stuff. No spices or other ways to make flavorful food.
Cheap processed food is more affordable in the short term than spending money on stuff that will make cooking cheaper in the long run. I’m not saying it was the best choice, just answering the question of what I did make.
Crock pots are relatively cheap and often available second hand, so are larger pots. I have been poor and know exactly how hard it is to feed myself with little to no money left after bills. Buying junk is not cheaper, it doesn’t actually sustain you.
I’m really enjoying you second guessing all the decisions I made when I was poor! Not only was I struggling, but apparently did it completely wrong!
No, I’m second guessing the advice you’re passing on now. Just because you were young and didn’t know better doesn’t mean you should teach other people to do the same things. Get over yourself.
I’m not giving advice.
Now you’re just being disingenuous, not only about the obvious nature of this thread but the obvious nature of your answer.
Third party here!
That other guy needs to fuck right off. You’re contributing reasonable stuff, they are not. Fuck em.
There are always people like that in these threads. Lemmy, Reddit, same thing. “Dirt broke and need to eat? Buy some kitchenware! It’s quite cheap if you have the money for it!” Don’t let them get to you!
Lol, in the long run it is totally worth having even the basics and being able to make food from scratch but when I was poor I was also working two jobs so didn’t have a lot of extra time for making food that took more than a few minutes.
Being poor is really expensive!
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” James Baldwin
Well considering I’m speaking from the experience of my own poverty, I might actually know what I’m talking about. I’m not saying go out and buy a $200 pot set. But you can get a $5 pot from a second hand store or garage sale, or these days something like Facebook marketplace that didn’t even exist when I was going through this, and you’ll make that up by not buying the garbage that the other person suggested. Your money will stretch a hell of a lot farther that way. Or you know, just dismiss me and other people because that person is insecure.
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Assuming someone asking how to eat when poor has access to fresh ingredients and the time/means to prepare them
I agree that how healthy something is should be put on the back burner (hah!), true, but when cost is the most important factor, produce is unbeatable. While not created equal, the means to prepare for most are 1 pot, 1 board and 1 knife, and there sure are recipes that don’t take up too much time.
Someone asking for recipes can be expected to have some time to cook them, while working 2 jobs is way too common nowadays, there are still more people struggling for money with some time on their hands. If you have no money, no time and no energy for cooking, you’re beyond asking for advice and should instead be asking for help.
produce is unbeatable
When available.
Every supermarket I ever went to had a vegetable aisle and potato sacks for a few €. Variety in produce may be low, but that’s what a Turkish supermarket is for.
Granted, I never lived in an American BestBuy town, so this might be a cultural thing. But produce being unavailable or even just being out of one’s way seems insane to me. You sure that normal where you live?
No, I just made it up because everyone actually has the exact same life experience as you do.
Well, same back to you. I never doubted you having that experience, but I asked if it’s normal.
Your own source says it’s only 12.8% of the US living in such areas. So it’s safe to assume that OP would also be interested in the cheaper recipes that involve mostly produce. Your life experience isn’t universal either.
Rice and beans are available pretty much everywhere. Granted it might be farther than a corner store but it keeps so it is worth it even in a food desert.
Basically pasta.
I don’t know where you are, but a 500g pack can be had for significantly under 1€ and is sufficient for multiple meals. Add a similar priced can of tomatoes, onions (optional) and some spices (I assume you have those).
Obviously there are other options for the sauce, many are cheap enough to consider when money is tight.
Yeah I’ll have to get creative with pasta. I can’t just eat rice, dried beans and lentils forever haha. Cheers.
Even a little bit of butter is great! Also teaches you to cook pasta correctly.
If you’re doing anything with pasta that involves butter you’re doing it wrong, but you do you.
An Italian home cooking staple is pasta with butter and sage. Just melt the butter with the sage and gently fry while boiling the pasta
Yes my statement was probably a bit too broad. I meant any pasta with a sauce you generally don’t want butter (or oil) on, as it causes the sauce to stick less to the pasta. Which is the whole point of having the sauce in the first place.
You have luckily never been that poor :-)
I actually have. A can of tomatoes is (or at least was back then) cheaper than a pack of pasta, and can also last for more than 1 or even 2 servings. If I add (just) butter to the pasta, I’m making it worse because I’m one of the seemingly 5 people on earth who don’t like butter.
But my comment was meant for pasta with (any) sauce, see my other reply.
Well you do you then. It was pasta + butter, not anything else.
While pasta might contain calories and some protein, there’s a lack of other nutrients.
I advice going for pulses instead of pasta.
Dried pulses have a long shelf-life so they can be bought in bulk to reduce the price per meal.You can get nutrients from the sauce. IMO tomato sauce is very tasty and can be pretty cheap as well. Probably the cheapest would be tomato paste and water as a base. Or canned tomatoes. Depending on how cheap you want to go you can add vegetables to your liking. Onions are always great but also carrots or peas.
Rice bowls, rice with chickpeas, rice with beans, throw some furikake and kimchi in there and some sriracha mayonaise.
Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!
I love ban chili, it’s relatively cheap, vegetarian and incredibly versatile. Meaning that with one big pot of chili you can have 3-4 different meals without having the feeling of eating the same thing over and over.
I usually make a big pot and then the first day we can make burritos with tortilla shells, the next day nachos, you can eat it with rice, a baked potato use it as a base for soup or make vegetarian burger patties with it.
Bulgur wheat makes a really good textural element in vegetarian chili.
I eat cheap all the time, but rice and beans is the classic. If you can afford a can of tomatoes and some spices, then you can upgrade this to rajma masala. That’s one of my fav post workout meals. Throw in some alliums, and other vegetables as you can (frozen is often p cheap).
Actually just look up vegan Indian recipes and source ingredients as cheaply as you can. Like dried beans, lentils, chickpeas, and spices — ideally purchased from bulk store — and you’ll be healthy and satisfied for less money than you would believe.
I’m grateful I haven’t reached my college level of broke (yet), but with the economy absolutely booming right now under our current leadership, money is very tight. I’m pretty good at figuring out meals with some budget to work with.
Not sure if this only applies to Costco prices right now, but rounding up I got a 4.5lb bag of quinoa ~$13, a 5 pound bag of red beans for $10, and a 5 pound bag of red onions for $6. So a total of ~$29. Depending on how many people you’re feeding you can stretch that several weeks. If you go with rice instead of quinoa it’s cheaper and also still gives you a complete protein when you combine it with beans.
My father in law always said he lived for an entire year in college eating nothing but potatoes. I wouldn’t recommend trying that but I guess it’s an option?
Also recently made a loaf of bread for the first time. All you need is flour, yeast, oil and water (forgot you do also need salt and a small amount of sugar to activate the yeast. I’ve used juice from different fruits (grapes, oranges) as an activator when I didn’t have sugar, but never tried that with bread specifically).
Chickpeas and lentils are very cheap and can be used to make a lot of recipes. Buy some taco seasoning, tortillas, and lentils. Make a giant pot of that, and it will last a while. Lentils are pretty similar in texture to ground beef, so it works pretty well. This may sound weird but lentils are also really good as a meat substitute in spaghetti.
It gets really boring eating the same thing everyday, so I’ve also used this website to make some really good meals: https://www.budgetbytes.com/ They have a ton of options for both meat and vegetarian meals.
This was like 10 years ago, (so shit is definitely more expensive now) but when I was between jobs I had to make $50 for groceries for two last a little over 2 weeks. I went through the recipes on there and found a bunch that sounded good and contained the same core ingredients. Made a list of core and extra ingredients I would need (garlic, ginger, etc) and then went to Walmart and got everything I needed within budget.
The mujaddara was and still is my favorite. I always end up needing to double the water the recipe calls for to cook the lentils and rice. I will also say it is definitely a time consuming recipe compared to the others I tried. Make it on a day when you can set aside enough time to slow cook and caramelize the onions instead of sauteing. That is definitely the key. https://www.budgetbytes.com/mujaddara/
Also keep in mind if you buy something like fresh ginger, onions, or mushrooms, but don’t end up using all of it right away, you can chop it up and freeze it for later so it doesn’t go bad.
I’ve stored chopped frozen ginger by itself in a ziplock bag. It seemed fine to me but apparently you’re supposed to put it in oil and then freeze it. Some people use ice cube trays and make small aliquots of oil and ginger or other herbs.
I’ve been told repeatedly you shouldn’t freeze onion, but when you’re broke and need to make what you have last, whatever. It might lose some flavor and texture, but I always saute onion anyway. If I was trying to eat it raw (or caramelize it later) I could see that being a no.
Mushrooms have to be cooked first before freezing (as far as I know). Chop and saute with olive oil and a little bit of butter or coconut oil (there is something about the extra fat that helps preserve it when frozen). After cooking, spread out on a nonstick surface or sheet of parchment paper, put them in the freezer and then once they’re frozen, move them to an airtight container.
