Thrifty Recipes

So what are your hearty yet thrifty meals? And I don't mean your 9p packet of processed noodles

Since I am embarking on an experiment to live on just H's wages I need to be as canny with the food shop as possible. If it incorporates chicken even better as that's pretty much the main meat we eat, H doesn't like red meat unfortunately.

What are your best, cheapest meals?

Chicken cacciatore is good and if you put plenty of tomato and peppers in you can have the leftovers after you've eaten the meat meal to make a hearty soup (just add a good amount of stock and some both mix - dried pulses/pasta type thing) and serve with HM bread. You'll get so much extra flavour from having cooked the meat in it.

I do a beef stew bulked out with lots of root veg but you could equally well do it with chicken, then use the leftovers as pie and pasty fillings.

A couple of years ago there was a series called Economy Gastronomy, don't know if you watched it? but the idea was that you made one meal and used the leftovers for 2/3 more meals and the cookbook that went with the series has a lot of good thrifty ideas in and some really yummy meals to although I do find there is a little to much garlic in most of he recipes unless you have a vampire problem round your way?

Good luck with the living on one wage bit, we do it here and OH works at Mr T's so not even a big wage! You have to cut your cloth accordingly but it is worth it.

thats a good suggestion, I've thrown away left over sauce before (not loads but enough to probably make a bowl of soup) so that's a good idea I confess I didn't watch Economy Gastronomy but I will see if the local library has a copy

Chicken wings and thighs. Thighs best you get more meat on there. Sausages, minced pork and belly pork (king Ribs) also.

Most of our meals are 50p - £1 per person but I think the main saving is that most of them are vegan so probably not much help. When we did eat meat though we ate a fair bit of chicken and I would always shred it rather than serve a big lump to make it look like there was more. The kind of thing I make that are cheap are curry, stews and things like that rather than something with a big slab of stuff. It just means I can mix and match ingredients so if I only have a bit of something it can be chuck into the pot. Sorry, that's no help really is it?

LOL Alec it's always helpful
I am embracing a few veggie meals, cooking my first vegetable stir fry tonight. As a comfirmed meat eater this is a big step for me

Well I hope you enjoy it. I think the main advice I would give with veggie meals is to make sure you get some protein in there otherwise you'll be famished sooner than you think!

So what's the best protein to add to veggie meals? Is it basically stuff like pulses etc? I have lentils as I am not a massive fan although if they were reasonably disguised I might cope

Yeah lentils, beans, chickpeas, cheese, dairy or eggs. Anything like that. I used to have bean fear! I was such a massive meat eater before and was really reluctant to start eating all that stuff so started with red lentils as they disappear into mush then made bean burgers and things so there were no whole beans and worked my way up from there. I had a total mental block with chickpeas that took me about 4 years to get over, love them now!

Strangely enough Alec, chickpeas are the only one I get OH to eat without chuntering. He's not too keen on beans otherwise but will eat them sometimes as I really like them.

Thing is I REALLY hate baked beans, haricot ones aren't they. I don't like the powdery type texture - are things like green lentils like this?

Sorry Bitsy, forgot to reply.

Ikwym about haricot beans. Kidney beans and butterbeans have a skin on them so they hold together more than haricots do and I think are quite creamy. Chickpeas are harder - harder isn't the word really but they're not pappy and have a bit of a nutty thing about them. Green and puy lentils keep their shape when you cook them whereas red lentils become mushy and have no shape at all they're just pap. So all in all I think if you're going to bother with stuff like this at all then I'd go for red lentils or get a couple of tins of chickpeas and make some burgers *yum*.

But the thing is if you don't like stuff like that, you don't like it, no point in making yourself unhappy and cooking things you don't really want to eat just for the sake of saving a few bob. I'd rather have a smaller portion of something then some pancakes for pud or something that go through the trauma of beans once a week. JMO.