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3 cups navy beans 1-2 chopped carrots half a bag of peas, give or take 1 can of stock, or some bullion .5 to 1 tsp garlic powder .5 to 1 tsp onion powder 1 or 2 ham hock Rinse off your navy beans a couple times, then throw them into a pot with the stock and enough water to cover them and the ham hocks. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer for 30 minutes, add carrots and peas, cook until beans are done - total prep+cook time of maybe 2 or 3 hours if you don't bring it to a boil ASAP. If you cook the beans too long they'll thicken it up a lot. This recipe ought to work in a 4-5 qt pot, make sure you have a lid or expect to spend more time on it. Eat. If you want them to be a bit sweet, add .25 to .5 tsp of yellow curry. If you don't have hamhocks in the freezer (why aren't you buying smoked frozen hamhocks and keeping them around!?) then chopped ham will do, although you might want to add a bay leaf or something else to give a bit more savor that the hamhock bones would otherwise soak out into the soup.. And ham or bacon is expensive as gently caress, compared to hamhocks and pork necks. edit: navy beans are one of the ultimate "I am poor and have no time but want to cook even though I dunno how," beans. They're small enough that soaking is pretty much a waste of time, and that they are fully cooked within an hour or two if you have a little practise. If you don't have time to even do navy beans, then step down to lentils or split peas - same recipe works just fine. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 09:12
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My wife is a vegetarian for religious reasons so we have been cooking a lot more vegetarian meals. Baked Ziti that makes 6-8 servings. 1lb of pasta, ziti, shells, anything will do $1 1 lb to 1.5lbs depending of riccota cheese $2 1lb of Mozzerella, shredded $4 2lbs of spaghetti sauce $2.50 2 (1/2 cup)oz Parmesan $2 Cook the pasta for 3 minutes less than the package says and strain. Mix the pasta, ricotta, mozzeralla, and 3/4 of the sauce and fill glass casserole dish. Then top with remaining sauce and parmesan cheese. You can divide it into multiple smaller casserole dishes and cook them later. Bake for 30 minutes at 375. If you are not an ovo vegetarian you can add an egg to the ricotta sauce mixture. Season with parsley. Another one is spaghetti with garlic aoli. This will serve 4 people 1lb of spaghetti or angel hair pasta $1 6-8 cloves of garlic $.50 1/2 cup olive oil $1? 1(1/4 cup) oz parmesan $1 Cook the spaghetti and drain. Slice the garlic and place in a pan with the oil. Slowly heat to medium. Heat to medium low. When it starts bubbling lower the heat to warm. When the spaghetti is done take it off the heat. It should be done before the garlic is brown. Mix the spaghetti and oil. Top with parmesan and parsley.
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Oct 28, 2016 23:49
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If you wanna eat cheap you need to bulk up your meals with cheap vegetables. Buy whatever is fresh/frozen and cheap as dirt and toss that poo poo into what you're cooking. Pasta, soup, curry, stir fry, lentils/split peas - they're all just begging for you to toss in dirt cheap vegetables. Don't get trapped into thinking that abc dish needs xyz vegetables - most of the time the culture that invented abc dish used xyz vegetables just because they were dirt cheap. Once you get out of the "x doesn't go with y" mindset and just focus on making food that tastes good things get easier. As it turns out chunks of white potato taste just fine in a curry served over rice, and carrots are fine in a tomato sauce over pasta. Find cheap ingredients, experiment with them by adding them to/substituting them for more expensive items in recipes, and learn to embrace cooking with what you have instead of what you "need".
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Oct 29, 2016 00:39
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Experimentation is really important to learning to cook frugally, and that requires a certain amount of either cooking skill or adventurousness. One of my favorite accidentally-amazing recipes for instance, was using a half-pound of ground turkey or beef (i don't recall which) and a few summer squash with a little onion, to make the most amazing street tacos ever. The yellow squash added a level of sweetness that I had no idea could be had so easily, and it also bulked up my recipe by 3x. A lot of italian dishes I avoid for instance, because they require so much cheese, and cheese is expense and not super healthy.. There's a reason lasagna is so damned expensive. But ratatouille..!
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Oct 29, 2016 08:38
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:As it turns out chunks of white potato taste just fine in a curry served over rice, and carrots are fine in a tomato sauce over pasta. Find cheap ingredients, experiment with them by adding them to/substituting them for more expensive items in recipes, and learn to embrace cooking with what you have instead of what you "need". Why wouldn't they? Carrots are core to bolognese and potatoes are core to Japanese curry.
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Oct 29, 2016 09:40
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Rurutia posted:Why wouldn't they? Carrots are core to bolognese and potatoes are core to Japanese curry. This is true! It's also something that most people don't know.
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Oct 29, 2016 11:47
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Japanese Curry is interesting, because it's one of the few instances of someone going, 'How the hell do I get them to eat this? I know, chop it into tiny pieces, make a strong sauce, and hide it in the vegetables. THEY'LL NEVER KNOW THEY'RE EATING MEAT'. Japanese Navy curry yo. Traditionally served over rice and paired with a cup of black coffee.
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Oct 30, 2016 14:54
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coyo7e posted:Experimentation is really important to learning to cook frugally, and that requires a certain amount of either cooking skill or adventurousness. 3 or 4 cups of navy beans 2 frozen smoked ham hocks 3 carrots 1 celery stalk 3 "green onions" (actually they were equivalent to one or two medium smallish yellow onions) half a cabbage, diced rough 1 cube of bouillion fat pinch of garlic powder probably some other stuff I forgot. So I was planning on making potato-leek soup, but the leeks at the store near my house were $2.48 each, and then when I got home I found out that the bag of potatoes I bought a couple days ago was all riddled with mold and grossness (I hate buying bagged potatoes but they're so cheap it usually turns out ok), so I threw them out, and decided to make a ham and vegetable soup , and then decided to throw in a bunch of beans as well because hey why the hell not, it saves me craving a carb side or some poo poo So I put a half-full 5/6-qt pot on the stove and set it on the way to boil, threw in both hamhocks and then set to dicing up the celeery and adding it, and then the onions along with the garlic powder, and then set it to heat up to a boil. Once it came to a boil I added the beans (already rinsed with cold water, hot water will make them fall aprt and thicken up the soup prematurely), let them cook for about 30-50 minutes, then tossed in everything else and let it cook for another half hour until the beans were done, and then turned the heat off. I valiantly searched for a bay leaf but couldn't find any, and frankly the hamhocks and the one cube of boullion gave it plenty of salt and savory, and it turned out most excellent.
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Oct 31, 2016 02:05
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What are the best super cheap vegetarian recipes? I guess a lot of beans and rice, but that gets boring after a while.
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Oct 31, 2016 13:35
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COOL CORN posted:What are the best super cheap vegetarian recipes? I guess a lot of beans and rice, but that gets boring after a while. Indian food is a goldmine for cheap vegetarian meals - we have threads here, and I'm sure there are lots of resources online. But yes Rice and legumes are a good base for many meals, and you can jazz them up in numerous ways.
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Oct 31, 2016 13:51
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COOL CORN posted:What are the best super cheap vegetarian recipes? I guess a lot of beans and rice, but that gets boring after a while. http://www.budgetbytes.com/category/recipes/vegetarian/
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Oct 31, 2016 17:40
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Bless you
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Oct 31, 2016 17:55
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COOL CORN posted:What are the best super cheap vegetarian recipes? I guess a lot of beans and rice, but that gets boring after a while.
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Nov 1, 2016 05:34
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The Lord Bude posted:Indian food is a goldmine for cheap vegetarian meals - we have threads here, and I'm sure there are lots of resources online. But yes Rice and legumes are a good base for many meals, and you can jazz them up in numerous ways. Just wanted to add that if you can find an Indian store to go to, they have lots of premixed sauces and dry powders that are amazing. Plus you can buy spices there much cheaper at the supermarket. Like a quarter of the price or less. Definitely ask too. The folks at my local one are super friendly and happy to make recommendations for a poor clueless white boy like me.
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Nov 1, 2016 05:40
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Suppose I'll post what I've been making recently to avoid spending $10 on lunch everyday (rice and beans!). Cook some beans. Super lazy way to cook beans: Take a pound or so of dry beans, rinse, cover with water, heat til it boils, then turn heat off and leave overnight. Morningtime, drain, add water and boil again, adding salt/bay leaves/spices. Turn off, cover, and go to work/whatever. If they're not done then repeat until they are (usually 2 cycles is good). I have no idea if this is a good or bad way to cook beans. Take some big container (wok or pot), add olive oil, cut up 2 onions and cook them in the oil for a bit. Add a tiny bit of water (so things don't burn) and a lot of awesome spices - tumeric/cumin/salt/pepper/paprika/asafoetida/fennel seeds/sumac/etc. Be sure to stir often enough that the bottom doesn't get burnt. Keep heat lowish, add more water and slow cooking veggies - potatoes/yams, carrots, turnips, daikon, celery, etc. Also add whatever random ingredients like vinegar/fish sauce/coconut milk/sugar/soy sauce/etc. After the veggies are close to good, add a cup or so of washed rice and any faster-cooking veggies (bell peppers, frozen veggie mix). Cook til the rice is done, then add the beans (cooking for a minute if they were frozen). It's just rice and beans, but between mixing up the veggies, different beans, different rice, and different sets of spices, it's not repetitive at all. Also a good way to slowly get a feel for cooking (different beans fit better with different rices/veggies/spices). Lhet fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 06:24
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I noticed today that I've got like a dozen frozen chicken thighs and breasts in the freezer, and I wanna use them up and gain that space back. Only thing is that I don't wanna defrost them, because I don't know how long they've been in there, and while I never freeze anything that's already bad, I don't wanna take the chance that I'm gonna spend a day defrosting them and find them bad in the fridge. Anyone have any interesting recipes that use frozen chicken thighs and breasts? Bonus points if it's something that's not texmex or similar, since I just had a big vat of slow cooker salsa verde chicken(which these would've been perfect for had I realized I had them), and I'm kinda texmex'ed out right now.
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Nov 19, 2016 19:01
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Put them in water in the sink? Defrosts quicker and you can see if it's worth messing with the rest.
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Nov 19, 2016 20:41
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yeah if you don't want something like south american then shredded old chicken is probs not the best. Or you can do a multi-stage recipe which I doubt you're going to  for.How much bird you bangin? You could make a soup. But seriously, if you can't handle thawing out meat then don't buy so much you need to freeze it. It's a waste of money.
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Nov 19, 2016 22:31
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It's not that I can't handle thawing meat, it's that I'm worried that I'll thaw it and it'll be bad upon thawing. I accumulated this meat bit by bit after buying, say, a pack of chicken thighs and not using them all and similar.
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Nov 20, 2016 02:04
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then why did you freeze sketchy meat? it's not as though cooking style will make the food poisoning hit you less
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Nov 20, 2016 03:29
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If it would be spoiled when you thaw it, it would be spoiled when you cook it. Except cooking it would also waste the other ingredients.
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Nov 20, 2016 06:47
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i like nice words
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coyo7e posted:then why did you freeze sketchy meat? it's not as though cooking style will make the food poisoning hit you less I dunno man, there's some pretty notable cities where they were like, "Yo dumbass you founded a city in a place with lovely river water we're gonna die." And the guy's like "No, it's cool, my doctor said to just use a bunch of really hot spices and ghee in all of our food, that will protect us from making GBS threads ourselves to death." And thus was the story of the founding of (Raja Rasoi Aur Anya Kahaniyan on Netflix is great btw) (oh, and I'm not disagreeing. Don't cook chicken or anything else that's gone off, no matter how much chilies and clarified butter you use) Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Nov 21, 2016 |
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Nov 20, 2016 14:55
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Suspect Bucket posted:Japanese Curry is interesting, because it's one of the few instances of someone going, 'How the hell do I get them to eat this? I know, chop it into tiny pieces, make a strong sauce, and hide it in the vegetables. THEY'LL NEVER KNOW THEY'RE EATING MEAT'. I feel like this is something my mom would have done when I was a kid. I liked my veggies, but I didn't like mix textures. I also did not like meat at all.
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Nov 22, 2016 16:39
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Just made some refried beans with peruano beans (aka mayocoba). They're a little more expensive than pinto beans, but very creamy and a little lighter in color. I did it kind of like risotto, where I cooked the mashed beans down in the pot while stirring. The bean paste would brown a bit on the bottom and I'd stir it in as the water cooked off. At the end I added enough reserved bean broth (the cooking liquid) back to get to the right consistency. I'm not sure how much that adds, but I figured a little bit of browning would add some smoky/browny flavors. The only problem with refried beans is I end up eating more beans in a serving. I take roughly the same volume portions as I would pot beans, but it must be more beans since they're mashed.
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Nov 23, 2016 06:14
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I like to blend about 1/4 the beans in the pot and add them back in
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Nov 24, 2016 14:05
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just use a potato masher
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Nov 25, 2016 04:48
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Just made a pot of beans with smoked turkey tails, the meat product famously banned in Samoa for making Samoans fat. Recipe: - 8c water - 2c dry pinto beans - 1/2c dry red lentils - 1 onion - 5 cloves garlic, minced - 3 jalapenos, chopped - 1.5 lbs smoked turkey tails, cut each in half/thirds - 6 chicken cubes - some coriander - some cumin - some pepper Cook in a pressure cooker for about 45 minutes. Results: - A little thin, but the leftovers should thicken up for tomorrow. - Red lentils were to thicken the broth because I'm too lazy to just mash some of the pintos. - Turkey tails did their job and made the beans smokey, plus added tasty clumps of meat and fat.
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Dec 6, 2016 15:19
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Okay thread. I am a single dude, and have a budget of $200 a month for food. I'm a pretty good cook, but have never cared about budgets before. Now I do... I'm curious how many of you would budget this out. I've read the whole thread, but I'm just thinking a solid refresher would be appreciated.
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Dec 8, 2016 08:37
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LionArcher posted:I'm curious how many of you would budget this out. - Shop at the Mexican grocery, at least for veg and fruit. - Eat chicken, eggs, and pork shoulder, not beef. - Cook food from scratch, don't buy prepared or frozen meals. - Think of it as $50/week, not $200/month. You have enough money to eat well, and you have a lot of choice in what you want to eat. You're not on a strict rice and beans budget (though rice and beans are amazing and you should eat them). However you will need to pay careful attention to how much stuff costs, and you must cook it yourself. That $7 grocery store sushi plate is your entire food budget for the day, so don't buy it. Also you should know what's in your fridge at all times and plan your meals around leftovers.
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Dec 8, 2016 12:53
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I spent about $25-50 a week on groceries when I lived alone and here's my advice: 1) "splurge" on certain items if it means you will actually eat it. I found out I hate the cheaper pasta. It's worth it to spend $.25 more on Barilla than Prince because I eat the $1.25 of pasta instead of throwing out $1 worth of pasta. 2) if you don't have an actual pantry, you can still buy things in bulk as long as they are in sealed packages. I have a small kitchen with barely any storage space and so I was buying things as I needed them until I took a Rubbermaid tub put in all stuff I knew I would use that I got on sale and put it in my closet. I keep a picture of what I have in there on my phone and just top it off when I find things on sale. It's also worked really well for the individually packaged things that would mysteriously disappear in a few days. 3) always have an easy option for a meal. Frozen burritos, eggs in the fridge, salad toppings and dressing, sandwich-making materials, etc. My biggest frustration with meal-planning is that the night I thought I had a bunch of time to cook something is invariably the night I have errands to run or things suddenly get busy and it's 8pm and I'm starving, and that's when you're going to want to go to Chipotle for dinner.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:00
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LionArcher posted:Okay thread. I am a single dude, and have a budget of $200 a month for food. I'm a pretty good cook, but have never cared about budgets before. Now I do... I'm curious how many of you would budget this out. I've read the whole thread, but I'm just thinking a solid refresher would be appreciated. $50 a week? You can eat pretty much anything except filet and lobster. I would buy a carton of eggs and a container of oatmeal for breakfasts. Bread and PBJ for lunches. Then for dinners just buy a bag of rice and sack of potatoes. 99 cent bags of frozen vegetables and whatever meat is on sale. $25 left over to spend at the pub.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:36
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Without even trying, by eating more or less the way the second post in this thread sets out, I spend ~$60 a month on food, so you should have no trouble at $200 per month.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:18
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If you're looking for a specific recipe to get you started, go make this gumbo. Leave out the seafood if it's expensive (I skip it because I'm allergic). And you might have to compromise on the andouille depending on where you live. Use a different smoked sausage if you can't find it. The rest of the ingredients are flour, oil, basic vegetables, and chicken, all super cheap.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:33
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ryanrs posted:If you're looking for a specific recipe to get you started, go make this gumbo. Leave out the seafood if it's expensive (I skip it because I'm allergic). And you might have to compromise on the andouille depending on where you live. Use a different smoked sausage if you can't find it. The rest of the ingredients are flour, oil, basic vegetables, and chicken, all super cheap. Hell yeah. Gumbo is a great cheap catch-all and you can use it to toss in any leftover meat you have or if you say hosed up cooking a pork roast or chicken and it was too dry. Just dice that up and throw in some gumbo later on. Don't sweat finding andouille, unless you live in a certain area it will always be overpriced compared to other stuff. I live far away from the cajuns these days and I use either linguica or kielbasa all the time for my gumbo / jambalaya etc and it's a perfectly decent substitution and much cheaper.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:50
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My partner and I have a $250 per month and we get by fine. Switch up pasta types (orzo makes a great change) and learn all the ways to cook rice and potatoes. That'll help with variation. Make use of all the different beans as well. We don't eat meat so we have savings there. As always, soups go a long way. Definitely think about it as dollars per week or dollars per trip to the store and always know your standbys. I have a rice cooker and abundant veggies for stir fry or some sort of rice bowl any time.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:10
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Learn to make soups and stews. Stuff like rutabagas and parsnips and potatoes and leeks can go a looong way (and stay the gently caress away from wal-mart good lord almost everything is overpriced there.) I like to do a long-simmered soup with, say, a diced potato, a couple pork neckbones or hambones or similar, some leeks or green onions, and then simmer it for ages with a diced turnip or parsnip in it, with a bay leaf, some garlic powder, a quarter of a head of cabbage or a few shredded kale leaves, etc. The potatoes will cook down to mush which thickens the liquid, the parsnips and rutabagas end up losing their flavor, adding their nutrients, and keeping their firmness and snap for those crock-pot meals. I've recently begun thinking about cooking in terms of energy usage costs as well and have started to measure the power draw and watts/hour for different devices. Even if you're fortunate enough to have a kW/h rate of less than 6 cents/kW on your utility bill, you might be shocked at how much it costs to kick that coffee pot up every morning, or to set that cast iron skillet on "4/10" on your stovetop and then forget about it for 40 minutes before you wanna make that grilled cheese sandwich. The amount of electricity required to heat up a kettle of water for that morning cup of tea can literally be the equivalent to running a non-gaming-computer or laptop for 24 hours - including watching a few movies and stuff. Running a 1500 watt microwave for 10 minutes is close to 250 watts - which can cost you between 2 cents (if you live in Oregon or WA) or 8 cents or more if you live in the midwest or another area with privatized utilities. I haven't really measured it out and I suspect it all ends up equalling out overall as long as you're not wasteful, but if you're poor enough to worry about grocery bills you also ought to be pondering how long (and how high) you leave the heat on, how many lights you leave on, etc. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2016 00:38
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coyo7e posted:I've recently begun thinking about cooking in terms of energy usage costs as well and have started to measure the power draw and watts/hour for different devices.
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Dec 9, 2016 02:22
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I'm eating a lot more dry beans with my pressure cooker now that I don't have to plan that poo poo a day in advance.
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Dec 9, 2016 05:31
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TychoCelchuuu posted:This is where a lot of dino's tips in this thread, mostly the ones about pressure cookers, come in handy. A pressure cooker can make your food in a fraction of time time and thus for a fraction of the energy. It's begun to change my cooking habits from "put it on simmer and leave it going for 6 hours" to actually giving a poo poo about how long I cook stuff, and my power bills have gone down a lot - even though I'm in the middle of a freezing rainstorm with the ceiling heat in every room running right now. I was simply trying to emphasize that if you're poor there are a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick, in terms of saving money. I used to think I saved a lot of money by unpluggnig my microwave after every use - now I realize that because I had to plug it in before every use I simply stopped using it almost entirely, which did drop my power bills by a couple bucks a month.  And for god's sake, go to your local utility provider's energy conservation department (they probably are open to the public and nobody ever visits them so they'll love seeing you), and they'll probably give you some nice coupons and a few corkscrew-CFL or LED lightbulbs which draw like 9% of the energy that your average oldschool bulb does. My bathroom vanity had 8 x 25 watt bulbs in it (a lot of vanities use 50 watt bulbs!) - that's 2 kilowatts (that's what you're charged by - kilowatts) for every hour I turn on the only light source in my bathroom - when I replaced it with 8 x 9 watt LEDs I got better cleaner light, and it costs almost 2/3 less to sit on the toilet and play phone games for an hour. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2016 05:35
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You should really do the math. Almost all of my electricity & gas bill is for infrastructure and fees, and has nothing to do with the amount I actually use. Even if you want to cut down your power bill, like you say, stuff like heat, lights, and big appliances are much lower-hanging fruit that also take a ton more energy. Like you say, the amounts you're talking about are like two cents. If you save that much at every meal for an entire month, you've saved $1.80.
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Dec 9, 2016 06:38
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