I personally know some folks who spend all their money on fast food, and then online it seems pretty common folks not knowing how to cook causes massive financial problems.
My super duper cheap meal that takes no effort is “lazy rice veggie soup”: Can of peas and carrots cooked with a bouyon cube until cube is dissolved Add cooked rice to mix, and heat until rice is flavorful with absorbed broth
I do a cup of dried rice, and a can of peas and carrots which means the soup has 800ish calories and I think it’s pretty good as it’s either 2 small meals that you can have sides with, or one large one!
So what are your cheap meals you like to make? The less well known, the better!
There’s a Filipino dish called Tortang Talong, it’s basically an eggplant omelette. Broil the eggplant, mash it flat, soak it in egg, and then fry it. People eat it with rice and ketchup but I personally like it with soy sauce. Sometimes I’ll add a little bit of ground beef or corned beef when I want meat.
Depends upon the locality of your definition of common. Around here it’s red beans and rice.
Hell yeah I’d come over for dinner
Gotta be rice and beans for cheapest. Not sure what it comes to exactly but rice, some veg or other, and a protein (usually tofu) is my usual go-to when I’m cooking.
Obviously you can spice this a million deferent ways. Like tomato + cinnamon, or chili flakes and green beans, etc etc etc
E: oh I just read the part about about being uncommon. I’d say a rich tofu scramble with veggies. You can even do like half and half egg and tofu. Sometimes I’ll do that to like upgrade my morning egg
I’ve been doing this for a while.
Buy a good five liter pot and ten pint sized containers. Make a pot of your favorite soup/chili/stew. Fill the containers and freeze. A good hot meal you can zap anytime.
Simple vegetarian chili:
1 cup dried pinto beans
1 cup dried navy beans
1 cup dried lentils
1 cup dried or canned corn
10 cups of water
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
2-4 tbsp ground cumin (by bulk bags online for $7 instead of overpriced jars in store and grind yourself with a cheap Mr. Coffee)
10 tsp or to taste of vegetable better than bouillon
Black pepper, chili powder, paprika to tastePut in instant pot, pressure cook normal for 45 minutes, natural steam release, switch to slow cooker on low until meal time.
Makes multiple dinners for a family of 5. Serve on its own, over rice, or in burritos. Pairs well with sour cream, diced peppers, siracha, etc.
Obviously the more you can but in bulk the cheaper it gets per person.
Vegetarian black bean soup:
1 pound dried black beans rinsed
1 large onion peeled and diced
2 medium bell peppers seeded and diced
2 quarts vegetable broth
1/3 cup Franks Cayenne Hot Sauce
6 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon ground cumin
Salt and pepperCombine in instant pot, pressure cook normal for 45 minutes, natural steam release. When done, use inversion blender until smooth.
Possible Toppings:
Chopped scallions
Cilantro
Jalapeno slices
Shredded cheese
Lime wedges
Sour cream or plain yogurt
FritosI think it’s called an immersion blender. Unless you want to turn those beans inside out.
Lol, you are right but I like the kind of weird the typo brings to the recipe. 😂
Chilli is s great thing to learn to riff with. You almost can’t go wrong adding things to it. What you list here is a good starting point, but I’d almost certainly add onions and peppers to it.
Farro or cracked wheat can add a little meaty texture to a veg chili. The best veg chilli I ever had had sweet potato, something I’d never have thought of.
How could I forget lentils! Another good one is lentil burgers
I grew up with polenta, so that’s an easy cheap meal I have.
For one serve mix roughly 3/4 cup of polenta with roughly 2.5 cups of water. Stir in a pot over a stove for about 10 minutes and you’re done.
It’s around $1 AUD per serve by itself. I usually add cheese so it’s a bit more for me.
Top Ramen is just about the only thing I could purchase for $2. Just for context, the cheapest loaf of bread I can buy is $3.
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Bulk buying big units of almost anything will lower the overall cost of serving sizes. Sure, the initial purchase might be expensive once, but in the end, you’re still saving money.
For example, I love rice and cook with it often. But the supermarkets around these parts only have these shitty 250g mini packs that already cost 2.50€ - just for the rice itself. No sauce, no veggies, no meat - just the effing rice. That’s 10€ per kg.
The overseas market one town over sells 20 kg bags of the same type of rice for 30€ which is equal to 1.50€ per kg. Sure it takes a bit of extra time to drive that far and you need to have 35€ to spare, but buying the same amount of the same rice in smaller packs would cost me 200€ instead.
If there is something you eat often anyway and you have a place to properly store it, always buy the “big” units.
The question is $2 per person per meal. So unless you are eating that whole loaf of bread by yourself, you can spend $3 on it and use a couple of slices per person, which would only be a few cents.
Easy veggie soup with brown rice. Take desired vegetables (I like yellow squash, zucchini, celery, potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic), chop roughly, add to instant pot, cover with water, pressure cook on high for 10 minutes. When done, spice it to taste now that you can actually tell the flavor. Use slotted spoon/spider to remove veggies, set to side. Extract 4 cups of the broth, add it to rice maker with 2 cups of brown rice. While your rice cooks, put half of the veggies in a blender, blend until smooth. Add remaining veggies back to the pot with the blended veggies. Stir in some sour cream to make it creamy. Serve it over the rice.
Can also skip the rice, use corn starch to thicken a bit, and serve it with pimento cheese and crackers. Sub brown rice for wild rice. Throw in some chicken. Use different veggies. Triple the potatoes instead of other thickening methods. Possibilities are virtually endless. It’s a different soup each time, which helps with variety. Excellent recipe if you grow squash, because them suckers are prolific.
Easy tacos:
Half a pound ground beef, large can of Rotel diced tomatoes with green chilies. Cook and drain the beef, add tomatoes and heat. Place corn tortillas (real ones, not those yellow “taco shells”) in a lightly greased skillet and cook on one side for 30 seconds. Flip tortilla, add cheese of choice (sharp cheddar, various supermarket “queso,” I prefer Oaxaca), cook another 30 seconds. Add to plate, spoonful of the meat/tomato mix. On the side, spoonful of sour cream with smoky hot sauce mixed in. Putting it on the sides prevents it from cooking off your taco too much. Dip and enjoy.
For myself, I like bannock or fry bread (amount of fat in the pan is one of the big deciding factors on which it is). Kinda like a cross between a pancake and an American biscuit. To make it, you just need to make a quick bread dough and pan fry it. Roughly 2:1:0.6 flour to water to baking powder and some salt. Mix, divide into smaller portions, and pan fry. That’s it. Using a whole grain and/or bread flour adds extra nutritional value.
Top with butter and or jam. Eat with fruit or vegetables for a balanced meal.
Do you have a preferred fat to fry in? Im thinking ive might have found another use for those bacon drippings.
Anything that’s handy really. Generally, I’ll use a less saturated one like light olive or avocado oil but, I’ve got some fat cap from a smoked pork butt in the freezer that I might try. It renders to a lard really easy in a pan and adds an amazing flavor from the wood smoke.
True . Baked potato, homemade fries or chips , mashed potatoes. So many ways to cook they and most of them don’t require much else .
Oh yeah adding a half can of Chilli makes it feel like a full and tasty meal!
I actually just cooked like 2 frozen hashbrowns with a can of Chilli yesterday and it was super tasty.
…$2…
Rice with sunny side up eggs and soy sauce. Pop those yolks, mix, mmmmm.
This was my parents’ idgaf meal, and as a kid I loved it both because I didn’t get it often, and because it had no veggies.
Add some furikake (Japanese rice topping) and a drizzle of sesame and chili oil! I do this every so often and it’s great.
Can you get chicken for 2 bucks? If you have eggs and rice already you can get some chicken and make up a cheat’s oyakodon. Braise the chicken in some water, soy sauce, and a little sugar and/or an oxo cube if you have one, and then when the chicken’s just cooked drizzle your eggs in and then slide onto rice. Also if you want to add veggies, slice up an onion and cook that in the sauce
(…I have no idea what food prices are like in the US 2 bucks would barely get you a can of beans where I live I think the only meal you could make under 2 dollars is “cup of straight cheap stock” or “one pizza bun”)
Bananas, potatoes, corn, oats, bread and rice are all pretty cheap. When I’m trying to not spend any money I’m fine with a bowl of oatmeal with some sliced bananas in it.
I read this at first as an ingredient list,band I was so concerned for your health and stability. Lol.
Just mash it and cook until it looks as sad as you feel looking at it. Then cry while eating it right out of the pot on the kitchen counter.
“Carbs, carbs… carbs, more carbs and oh! I almost forgot carbs.”
I’m more of a “cook over ripe banana into the oatmeal” person.
Gives it good flavor and a bit of sweetness.
I’m not sure about the exact price but it’s one of the cheapest dishes i can imagine where i live.
(slightly modified) janssons frestelse, traditional swedish christmas gratin
just chop some potatoes into sticks, slice some onions thinly, empty both into an oven-safe dish, season to taste with black pepper and mix it all up, mix up some fish sauce and milk and pour as much as you feel like into the gratin (i think normal is like, 2/3rds?), some breadcrumbs ontop, and into the oven at like 200°C until it gets some colour.
use actual anchovies if that’s cheap and you like bits of fish, and chopped up sun-dried tomato works great too (but that’s expensive here).
Off-topic but this could be interesting: https://traumbooks.itch.io/the-sad-bastard-cookbook
thanks for this, can never have enough cheap eats cookbooks
Thanks for the link! Just sent this to my older teen kids so when they’re on their own they don’t starve 😂
This is one of the best reads I’ve had in a while! Free download everyone, be sure to check it out. Especially people with depression or executive dysfunction that makes it hard to feed yourself.
This is fabulous! Downloading and sharing this with others!
Nope, most on topic link I’ve ever seen.
Also:
"Cheap. The Boomers destroyed the economy. Sorry to any Boomers reading this. We don’t like that you did it either. #NotAllBoomers. But if you voted for Reagan, Mulroney, or Thatcher and you don’t regret it, this cookbook isn’t for you. "
I like these people.
Delightful! Thanks for sharing! I just bought the printed book from Barnes and Noble.
Same! I got more than a few chuckles on the downloaded version and the recipe ideas never hurt to have in front of me.
