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There are a number of things to do to keep your costs down. One of the principal ones is to keep a notebook of items you generally buy, rice, flour, chicken, hotdogs, onions, bread...basic commodities stuff, and beside them have columns of general costs in the stores you go to. I keep mine in a pocket address book and that lets me keep the foods sort of alphabetized. If you go to a store and run across a deal or an impulse item that you hadn't planned on buying but you can stock up on you can check to see, a) is it really as good a deal as you think, b) can you buy it somewhere else cheaper, and c) have you ever bought it before. The second thing, this sort of thing gives you a planning tool to plot out your shopping. Some stores have better meat, some have better veggies, some have better prices on canned goods. With this you can actually figure out where to go for what you need, and if you are going to the good meat store, you can check to see what else is cheaper there, and you can figure out if going across town to the other store, or to another city to get cheaper prices on other stuff is worth the gas, time and hassle. $.03 per lb difference may not be worth driving 20 miles unless you are planning something else. The other thing to remember is time is money. The time you spend saving money should be worth what you saved. If it takes you an hour to save a buck that is a poor rate of return on your work. If you spend $5.00 to avoid 5 minutes of work that is not the best return either
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Jan 4, 2012 02:44
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snailshell posted:Would flavoring and cooking lentils using a Boston baked beans recipe be weird/bad, either in terms of flavors not going together or cooking time needed? I have a big bag of lentils and I am tired of daal. A long-long time ago when I lived in another country they ate lentils and rice with every meal except breakfast and sometimes we ate rice then too. It is filling, cheap, and as I have been told time and time again, it is a complete protein. It is just so gedamned boring. On the other hand there are indian lentil dishes that I've had that make me think I've caught my head on fire, so there are options, I just don't like cooking lentils, is all. Try it! the worst thing that will happen is that it will cook into a puree and you will have to add more cumin and red pepper and serve it over rice. again
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Jan 6, 2012 05:29
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One of the drawbacks of buying bulk to get the cheaper price is that the bulk stuff tends to go stale from exposure to air, and the weevils, flour beetles and mice get into it. One solution is to go beg the 4 gallon frosting buckets from the local bakery or nearest cafeteria, or do what I do and save plastic screw top juice bottles, peanut jars, and soda bottles. Especially the soda bottles. Rinse them out well (no-one likes peanut buttery or vinegary dry milk, for example) and dry them well and whatever will pour in will pour out again. I like the Langers square 1/2 gallon jugs and the plastic coca cola bottles the best. They are sturdy and they stack well, travel well, handle well, and as long as you don't puncture them by accident they are waterproof. Oh, and they are food grade and free, too, which makes them way better than tupperware.
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Jan 6, 2012 05:41
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I made this this morning, but put the gravy on hash browns. The major secret to gravy is to cook it until you cook out the raw flour taste, So be ready to cook it for a while. Oh, and black pepper is essential. Not white or green or jamaican, but black pepper. Potatoes are cheap by the way. You can make soup, hashbrowns, stirfry, curry, whatever with them.
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Jan 9, 2012 04:51
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Instead you wind up with a translucent, gellid mass with meat crumbles. Nom. I am a touch prejudiced here, but I find corn starch best used as an alternative to talcum powder, and gravy should be made with flour. amything else, well, it isn't really gravy, now is it?
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Jan 11, 2012 04:48
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But it makes me think of butterscotch pudding. I admit, I am flawed. I don't blame society, but I don't like cornstarch for gravy. 0
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Jan 11, 2012 05:20
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Yehudis Basya posted:
for a faster stock do the above in a pressure cooker. It will cook in about 1 hour. You will want to strain it and then use it in something that will be opaque since your stock will be cloudy. Oh, and throw in a rib of celery, a diced onion, a chopped up carrot, a couple of teeth of garlic and a tablespoon or so of vinegar. The vinegar will help dissolve the collagen and marrow and other tasty stuff out of the bones. The veggies you treat as a garni and strain out with the bones, by the way. Oh, and for raw peanuts: boil them in brine with star anise and or boil and serve them with rice. Rule .303 fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Jan 17, 2012 |
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Jan 17, 2012 05:13
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I know that canned refried beans are cheap, but you can make your own. I like black beans but I have pintos now: Soak a cup of beans overnight or longer. A week is too long but anytime shorter is good. What you are trying to do is get the beans to think it is time to germinate so they start breaking down the indigestible sugars that make you fart. Drain put in a pan and add more water to cover them. Boil them until they are soft. Drain the liquid, except reserve a bit. Pour the beans and maybe a half a cup of the liquid into your big skillet and bring it up to boiling again. Then mash it to paste with your spatula or equivalent utensil. Mash and stir it while it is boiling until it starts to get thick. Don't worry if it is a bit soupy, it will mostly thicken up as it cools. (do be careful, you are making a boiling hot goo that will stick like boiling jam if you spill it on yourself) you can add spice or salt or cheese or anything else. Tastes better than most canned stuff. It will last in the fridge for a couple of days and when you are tired of burritos, you can use it for soup thickener.
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Jan 24, 2012 05:19
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You can drain them and let them sprout, I suppose. Doubt that would be a good flavor for refried beans. My pintos right now are a tiny bit old and don't soak overnight so well, so I do have to soak them longer. I don't like the recipes that say to boil the beans until the skins will crack when you blow on them. It is good for when you are in a hurry and need something quick, but I like to soak mine if I have a choice.
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Jan 25, 2012 05:02
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Everything tastes better fried in lard. I'll try the epazote and frying them dry. Another good bean is the garbanzo (Chick-pea). They soak like regular beans and go in soups or get mashed up for hummus like spreads.
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Jan 25, 2012 16:11
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SonicDefiance posted:Please bear in mind that yellowfin tuna and snapper are heavily overfished in this country. This site is a useful resource to use when considering what fish to buy; they also have a mini-guide you can print out and keep in your wallet as well. I've noticed that socially/environmentally conscious food shopping is not economical, and I wonder why that is. Surely if a wild caught product becomes endangered it becomes, by definition, rare, hard to find and the supply goes down on the market, so it should become more expensive, not less. Weird. I wonder what the Mercantilist explanation is. Seasonal veggies! Always eat seasonal veggies. And don't be shy in taking bruised or marked down produce, you can chop off the brown spots, or don't if you just want to stew it all up together. Of. course you turn down stuff that smells or looks really bad
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Jan 29, 2012 15:51
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Daealdric posted:If time is something you worry about, I'd look at using a pressure cooker. I make chicken soup in mine. Just throw in a bunch of chicken thighs, carrots, onions, and celery. Add water. Bring to pressure for 35 min then release. I make enough in my 6qt to last for a week. Portion it out in plastic containers, freeze, and use whenever you don't have time to cook. Pressure cooking is a wonderful way to save time and money. You can cook a cheap cut of meat like you had simmered it for 2 hours in about 45 minutes. Beans and rice in about the same time. Do the hard cooking on the meat first, and then toss in the veggies to cook at the end (after reducing the pressure) for about 15 minutes or less unless you want your carrots and parsnips to come out as mush. you can also do a bean, pea and ham-hock soup in around 30 minutes. If the beans are not tender enough you can cook them longer.
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Feb 4, 2012 04:21
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Bake in an oven proof dish with soy sauce, covered with tinfoil. Baste every 15 minutes or so. Serve with rice. (that was mom's goto)
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Feb 4, 2012 05:04
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There is always Ajiaco, which is a cream of potato and chicken soup. It uses sauteed chicken, sauteed onions, garlic, yellow and russet potatoes and chicken broth and cream. In south america you use a particular yellow potato that breaks down and liquifies, but you can either precook and mash or use potato flakes. In some places they put in capers and boil corn on the cob in it too. I've also seen it served at restaurants with fried plantain
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Feb 4, 2012 14:50
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If you have good storage then you can store for longer than a year, but that means cool, dark storage in sealed containers. You can soak them for a couple of days to try and plump them up, and you can cook them longer in a pressure cooker. When they just won't do that you can grind them up to add to bread dough or use the meal as a thickener in a soup or stew. Don't eat em when they smell or taste stale or rancid Rule .303 fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Feb 29, 2012 |
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Feb 29, 2012 16:56
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Prestos and Mirros cook at about 15 psi, the older Mirros have a rocker weight that has 5-10-15lb settings. If you can't afford the spendier steel ones and you are worried about Aluminum you can put a steel bowl inside to cook in. It saves the clean up and I find the Al pans get clogged up with the hard water we have around here.
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Mar 3, 2012 07:00
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A pressure cooker at 15lbs will only push 240F. Pasta only really needs boiling water; 212F (100C) I do use the oven between 300-400F when I make a Kugel with elbow macaroni: Cup or so of macaroni, can of cream soup, some sort of cooked meat (leftovers), chopped veggies (chop small), and dried fruit (golden raisins and go from there) Mix well and bake in the oven for an hour or so covered, and if you are interested, crumble up crackers for a topping and broil for a couple of minutes to darken it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 28, 2012 19:34
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 21:13 |
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Pookah posted:I've been making Kedgeree recently since my oven conked out -I started with this recipe: Kedgeri is both an Armenian and Indian recipe. The Indian uses poached eggs and the Armenian does not, but uses fried up beef or lamb. The "yankee" version I grew up with uses hot cooked rice, flaked white fish, Parlsey, milk and salt and pepper with chopped hardboiled eggs: mix together and reheat and serve. Not great but a cheap and fast comfort food for those that can stand rice casseroles.
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Oct 3, 2012 02:54
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