Extremely cheap meals UK – budget recipes and easy meal ideas

Comments

1. Manchester Flik Chik says

   4 June 2014 at 18:33

   I’m a big fat cheat and struggle to corall ingrediants into a coherant meal but even I can cook Tex-Mex, curry and stir-fri! As for the other things I wouldn’t have a clue. *blushes with shame* So great idea, thanks!

   • Ricky Willis says

     15 June 2014 at 21:37

     I was never the greatest cook and really learnt as money (or lack of) forced me to. I suppose what used to put me off is not knowing how to cook and worrying that it will take too long. Once I started to get the hang of a new recipe it really does start to come naturally.

     • Manchester Flik Chik says

       16 June 2014 at 01:47

       I think I’m using the money thing as an excuse as I don’t want to spend a chunk of it on a big meal (that I’d freeze in portions) to accidentally arse it up & have to throw it away. But like you say, if I get good at one, then that’s probably quite a few lessons learnt which will intuativley help me with other similar dishes.

2. Mummygems says

   19 June 2014 at 13:11

   I would say I cheat at pretty much all those and use jar or packets mixes *blush*. For me I think its the fact that if I was to try something myself and it tasted nowhere near like the packets then no one would eat it and it would be a big waste instead! I tried beef stew with just gravy like my in laws make (which I love) and it tasted nothing alike! Shall eagerly await these recipes from you as I have tried a few of the fakeaways :o)

   Also just because I am nosey! I get that you do the fakeaway at the weekend but I wondered what foods you eat the rest of the time? Basic stuff or just the above or beans on toast etc? We are a family of 5 and I NEED to reduce the grocery spend and so was just wondering if you would share a basic weekly meal plan that you might have (I am currently putting together a monthly meal plan starting next wednesday – pay day)

   • Ricky Willis says

     24 June 2014 at 21:54

     Hi Mummygems

     Glad you like my fakeaways. They are great treat at the weekend when we have more time but in the week we do cook meals from scratch each day.

     We do have more normal things in the week, like the top 20 or meat and two veg and few other recipes we’ve grown to love.

     As much as possible, the ingredients we use are the store’s own brand. Some people have turned their noses up at it in the past but it’s just the same really, and you get the same end result – for a much better price.

     We try to use the slow cooker a few times a week, batch cook and freeze portions which is a real time saver as well.

     We normally plan a two shop and meal plan with small tops ups for fresh stuff mid week. A meal plan is in the pipeline soon so keep an eye out.

     • Mummygems says

       26 June 2014 at 13:22

       Thank you for your reply. Im making your Lasagne tomorrow :o)

       We use lots of own brand stuff anyways (usually Basics) and I try and buy yellow sticker stuff too. Trying to get the fruit & veg cost down at the moment so might re-visit the local farm shop and Aldi/Lidl.

       I look forward to seeing your meal plan.

3. Jennifer Roberts says

   20 July 2014 at 05:23

   Your fakeaway series is fantastic! I’m going to be trying a few of those recipes. I lived in England for a year (husband’s from there), and it didn’t seem like the people I met were very adventurous in the kitchen — my husband’s family would not dream of making many of the items on that list. Of course there are plenty of Americans who use convenience products as well (which couponing encourages). I think scratch cooking is the way to go. I’ve been doing much more of it in recent years, and it’s nice to see that some people across the pond like to cook, too.

4. Myles Money says

   18 September 2014 at 12:16

   I don’t understand why more people don’t cook from scratch. It’s not like we’re short of cookery programmes on the TV to give us inspiration, is it? And it’s such a lot of fun too. Thanks for the recipes. I’ll definitely be trying some of them out.

5. pamhill4 says

   8 January 2015 at 20:50

   I struggle making things “tasty” as have no real idea about herbs/spices and sauces for example so would cheat as above. My gravy for example is a lovely colour, not lumpy but tastes bland *sigh. Only confident with a recipe as can’t work out how to adapt it for myself. Yes I had some cookery lessons, far better than today’s lessons, but mum did meat and veg dishes only so had to learn from scratch. But yes I often turn to tins/jars/packets to help out and provide some guaranteed flavour. But a combination of spiralling food costs, fixed income and having to lower my salt/sugar intake for health reasons then I need to change! Just signed up to newsletter so looking forward to help all round!

6. Elaine Ferguson says

   10 June 2017 at 11:34

   I’m a lousy cook but being a single mum, holding down 2 jobs these recipes are are great and quick to make and freeze too. love them.

7. Antje says

   30 April 2021 at 21:45

   I know this is a very old article, but I came here through a link from a COVID-related advice site, so I think it’s worth adding my two cents in case some latter-day reader can use the advice.

   Honestly, I think food writers can be quite the clearly-not-scraping-by-working-12-hours-per-day snobs, the way they keep insisting on cooking basic weekday meals completely “from scratch” – and hypocrites, too. If you’re using convenient time savers like dried pasta (instead of making your own or at least buying fresh dough like any Italian would insist on), pre-cooked grains (like parboiled / fast-cooking rice; and bulgur / couscous / semolina were the world’s first convenience food, because cooking the wheat berries straight would have taken hours every day, so people learned thousands of years ago to grind and batch-cook the wheat and then dehydrate it in the sun), instant potato mash (even just as a thickener for veggy stews because it’s difficult to find properly crumbly, starchy potatoes these days – all you get in the supermarkets are the waxy ones that were bred to hold shape in salads, casseroles or while frying), canned (and therefore pre-cooked) legumes, or traditional spice mixes / concentrates like stock cubes, Worchester sauce, soy sauce or “curry powder” – well, then you’re not really cooking “from scratch,” are you?

   Personally, I hardly ever use sauces or soups from jars – I have a few in the larder, but only for emergencies (i.e. being too sick to cook and no leftovers in the freezer). But this is mainly because I always found the ready-made stuff in cans and jars over-salted and severely under-spiced. The latter problem exists probably for the same reason that canteen food (e.g. school meals) is generally bland: Spices and herbs are comparatively expensive and a lot of them are not very heat-stable, so you have to add them right before serving and you certainly cannot keep the meal tasting the same while keeping it warm for an hour or more to serve a large number of people. (Nor do they do well during the hot canning process.) My mother comes from a family of pharmacists, i.e. people who were used to dealing with and had easy access to spices and aromatic herbs, long before the rest of the population thought of adding “exotic” imports to the traditionally rather bland North/Central European cuisine.

   [Aside: Most of today’s standard kitchen herbs and spices have some traditional medicinal application. In my country, “gingerbread” is called literally “lifebread” because medieval people thought that with all those expensive spices from far-away lands, it must be very healthy. Some of this is snake oil, of course, but a lot of things really do have some proven medical properties. E.g. garlic as an antiseptic; mint or aniseed to settle an upset stomach; thyme tea to loosen mucus in your lungs to make it easier to cough up; chewing cloves provided a mild topical anaesthetic for a tooth ache – not enough to bother with today, but back before the invention of aspirin, it was either that or opium… (Contrary to common belief, willowbark tea does not work the same as aspirin – the former was traditionally used against fever, and when somebody isolated the active compound (salycylic acid) and chemically altered it slightly to make it less harsh on the stomach, they were quite surprised when that small change turned the stuff into the world’s first cheap, non-addictive painkiller.) I’m pretty sure the same is true for a connection between East-Asian spices and Chinese Medicine or Indian Ayurveda. For the Western kitchen herbs and dried spices that have been imported for centuries, basically, if the Latin name of the plant contains the word “officinalis” then it was traditionally used for medicinal purposes and pharmacists have to learn about it at university, to be able to at least custom-mix a tisane or salve based on a doctor’s orders, even today when medications are hardly ever made from scratch in the pharmacy anymore, like they were in my grandfather’s day. And if you already have a nice-smelling storeroom full of “drugs” (to a pharmacist, that word means “dried plant material”), why not use the stuff that doesn’t have side-effects in small amounts to create a bit of variety in the kitchen? As a result, ours may be the only family who thinks cauliflower in sauce hollondaise tastes “wrong” if it’s not dusted with nutmeg right before serving…]

   Anyway, that’s why we use about 30 different spices (plus a few spice mixes, of course) and a dozen fresh herbs on a regular basis, in my family, and I’m used to strongly spiced food.

   [Money-saving tip: There are some herbs that are perernnial and easy to grow even just in some plastic ice cream containers with holes in the bottom – mint, lovage (nicknamed “Maggi herb” here because it tastes like a century-old local brand of concentrated soup stock), smallage / cutting celery, thyme, rosemary, oregano, winter savory, sage, lemon balm and Chinese chives / garlic chives (Allium tuberosum; Loses its flavor when cooked!). Others are annuals and can in some cases be a bit finicky, but are still worth the effort because the dried version loses almost all flavor – basil, parsley, dill, normal chives, watercress, summer savory – probably cilantro as well, but I haven’t tried growing that yet. Basically, if you use the leaves / stems of the plant to season dishes, not the roots or seeds, then it’s worth trying to grow it at home for more intense aroma and to save money. You can also grow some chilies in an indoor pot, but I haven’t bothered with that, as I don’t use much of that and the capsacin that makes them hot still works perfectly well after drying. I wouldn’t bother with those little pots of herbs you can buy in the supermarket vegetable aisle – those are force-grown under high-powered lamps and with liquid fertilizer in a practically hydroponic growing operation, which means the plants stand in far too little soil. Trying to keep them alive on a windowsill or planting them out in the garden after they grew up pampered like that is bound to make some or all of the die off. Buy seeds instead – herb seeds are normally very cheap – and try to plant them in normal garden bed soil, if you can – the soil for flower pots is too heavily fertilized for this purpose. Get some arugula and/or wall-rocket seeds while you’re at it, since it doesn’t keep well after it’s been cut and such small-leaf salads are always expensive in the shop. Japanese mizuna salad (a type of mustard green – tastes like radishes, but milder than watercress) is also easy to grow, even tolerates a bit of frost, and it readily produces a lot of seed if you manage to keep a couple of large plants alive over the winter, giving you enough seed for years to come. Also, buy some cheap onion sets (too difficult and too slow to grow from seed), plant them close in a pot and put that in a sunny spot – you won’t get big onions, but you will get a lot of onion greens and never have to kick yourself for letting spring onions spoil in the fridge again. If onion sets (little bulbs in a net, like for tulips) are not a thing in your country, you can at least re-plant the white parts of spring onions if they’ve still got roots, to make them grow some more greens. (Put the rooted bulbs with a couple inches of stem in a jar with water for a few days first, like cut flowers – they respond better to being planted if they’re already rehydrated. Spring onions that had their roots cut off may even grow new roots in the water, though that takes a bit longer and the water is likely going to get smelly.)

   But honestly, for most people, if the dish requires several obscure spices that you won’t otherwise use or expensive fresh herbs that would just spoil before you can use the rest, then I think it’s perfectly legitimate to use a just-add-water powder mix – both at the start to see what it’s supposed to taste like, and later as a base to add your own seasoning to (and fresh vegetables, of course). Even my mother, who now is elderly (so does have the time to cook properly) and watches a lot of cooking shows, will happily use instant soups or sauces as a shortcut. Partly because this cuts down on cooking time (i.e. you can keep the vegetables al dente and at least some of the vitamins alive, instead of slow-cooking e.g. tomato sauce or chili for at least half an hour like you’re supposed to), and partly because some naturally bland vegetables would be overpowered by adding spices, but as-is they’re too bland for our palate. (In her case, because her sense of taste has been noticably blunting in her later years. In my case because I practically survived on instant soups and frozen pizza as a teenager, since mom was working 80 hours per week, as independent shop-owners generally do, and my dad didn’t cook. My school didn’t do cooking lessons, so I only learned after mom retired and I was finished with university, we started growing some of our own vegetables as a way to keep physically active and to give us a reason to go outside and get some sunlight, and I took over the grocery shopping. Nothing motivates like knowing exactly how much more ready-meals cost than basic ingredients, and not wanting all your effort with the veggies go to waste.) The lack of flavour intensity is a problem with for example broccoli- or mushroom-based pasta sauces – the former doesn’t work well with any spices (other than a bit of subtle umami from parmesan or fried ham; garlic works but overpowers the basic broccoli taste, which I like a lot) and the latter hits the problem that you can’t buy foraged mushrooms in my area without risking radiation poisoning from Chernobyl. (Even if I had the time to go forage myself, the government recommends eating wild mushrooms only once or twice per year. Wild game like boar, which eat them all the time, are still tested for accumulated strontium before the hunter can take it home. If you buy wild mushroom at a farmer’s market here, they’re likely from even worse contaminated areas in Eastern Europe.) Besides, even if you could buy them, they would be far more expensive than basic strawbale-farmed button mushrooms, because of the added labour. And canned mushrooms have no taste at all, but since fresh mushrooms spoil quickly and I only go shopping about once a month, sometimes it has to be canned mushrooms. So how do you get some proper flavour into that pasta sauce? You use instant broccoli soup (and the cooking water of the broccoli, though we prefer steaming it to prevent vitamin leaching) or “wild mushroom” soup (with dried and powdered foraged mushrooms – much less time needed than to rehydrate large pieces of dried mushrooms, which basic supermarkets also don’t stock) respectively, and you just add the appropriate vegetable and some cream, plus maybe some sautéed onions and/or fresh chives in case of the mushrooms. And of course we use dried pasta – we’re not crazy. (I made pasta dough from scratch once and only because I didn’t have lasagna plates – it’s a lot of work and I cannot taste the difference. Also, fresh pasta does not get al dente, just soft, which is weird when you’re used to that specific consistency all your life.)

   Personally, I also find heavily spiced sauces or chilis made without the assistance of instant mixes to be oddly… hollow in their flavour profile. Like, I can do it – it’s basically the same process I go through WITH the instant mix (given how much extra stuff I put in) for things like chili con carne or bolognese sauce, and of course I can do a basic roux with just the vegetable-frying oil and some flour, water and cream. But after I add the half dozen spices and herbs that are the “main attraction” of the dish, it usually still misses… depth or complexity. Like an orchestra symphony with just the first violin, the brass and drums, but missing all the “second fiddle” players that are supposed to provide the background chorus. So for me, sauce mixes provide that background of complex flavours that come from lots of other spices in amounts so small that I would overdose them if I tried to add them manually, and some of the umami you would traditionally get from the broth you should use instead of water. (I buy brand instant mixes when they’re on sale for the purpose of shelf restocking, which generally have replaced their monosodium glutamate with yeast extract. I do also use instant veggie or chicken stock – easier to get the dosage right than with stock cubes – but those don’t harmonize well with every dish.) My mother also likes to use a specific kind of onion soup as an all-purpose seasoning for dark gravies (and I put it in pumpkin soup, because the standard instant stocks all have a lot of celery, which would be completely overpowering in such a relatively bland soup) because it’s much easier to get than pure onion powder and sometimes you do find that you didn’t start with enough sautéed onions when it’s far too late because you already added the water and other veggies. This soup also works as a basic celery-free stock and provides a mild white wine aroma that I will tolerate. (Unike when she tries cooking with actual wine, which I always found tastes like rotten grapes.)

   Besides, the sauce mixes work as a binding / thickening agent (so I don’t have to faff about with the traditional roux, which takes quite a lot of attention in case of white roux, or time in case of dark roux. Of course, there is the kind of “modified starch” that you can add at the end to a hot liquid without clumping, if it has to be either that or boiling off the excess water for 15 minutes, thus destroying the vitamins. But what do you think is in those instant soups and sauces?) And I’ve found that without the sauce mixes, I simply cannot get vegetable-rich things like bolognese or chili – i.e. sauces where you can’t add some dairy product, egg or soy sauce as a natural emulgator – to emulsify properly. The water from the tomatoes and the oil will separate, which my mother finds unappetizing. The soy lecitine or whatever they put into those just-fry-the-meat-and-add-water sauce mixes helps greatly to prevent the separation.

   Of course, I do know how to cook some things without sauce mixes – I make a pretty decent squash-and-chickpeas curry and a “Chinese-inspired” dish that started out as a fake-out stir-fry, but because I don’t have a wok or the ability to dry-fry this as fast as it should be in any other way, it’s more a huge heap of largely Western vegetables (and a little bit of chicken) cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce and served on rice instead of the original fried noodles, because the latter seem to cook very differently depending on the brand and don’t soak up the sauce very well. I think the difference here is that these dishes were mostly new flavour profiles for me when I first tried to cook them. (We don’t do take-out out here in the sticks and we haven’t been to a restaurant since I was a teenager. And in university, the “exotic” meal options were always the most expensive ones, due to the spices or need for quick-frying, so I mostly didn’t eat them, even though the cooks in the main canteen did an admirable job trying to widen the students’ tastes with cultural theme weeks.) So I don’t actually know what it’s “supposed” to taste like, and I had to switch out some ingredients from the original recipe because they were just impossible to get at a basic supermarket. As a result, if one of us does make some sort of instant-mix-based chop suey or curry sauce to save time, I always find it way too heavy on the coriander or the cumin, or all the spice complexity is smothered under far too much chili. Maybe my way of making these dishes is wrong. Or maybe those “too loud” spices in the instant mixes are just the ones that best survive the freeze-drying process.

   But still, in my view, it’s fine to take all the shortcuts that save you time / energy or otherwise help reassure an inexperienced cook that they won’t ruin the meal unless they actually burn something. Just remember that you don’t have to stick to the instructions (other than regarding the amount and temperature of the water you’re supposed to add – though too much can always be fixed with a thickener like starch, potato mash, semolina, smetana, or tomato paste.) and that adding more vegetables and herbs always improves the taste and healthiness of the meal. At the very least, almost everything can use some sautéed (= gently fried until they’re see-through and sweet) onions; and if it’s anything tomato-based, add a can of actual tomatoes to that little bit of red powder. (Plus maybe tomato paste and a bit of sugar, because even canned tomatoes are kind of bland to my taste, which admittedly is spoiled by years of fresh, homegrown tomatoes.)

   • Antje says

     1 May 2021 at 01:06

     I thought I’d share the recipe for the veggie curry, because it makes a very large pot and freezes well:

     1. Cut up a small winter squash (e.g. Butternut or Red Kuri / Hokkaido squash, the latter doesn’t need to be peeled) and 1 or 2 summer squash (zucchinis / courgettes – ideally the dark green kind for colour contrast) in roughly bite-sized cubes. I try to keep these as large as possible, since that means they’ll hold up better when you reheat the frozen portions – though large pieces also mean longer cooking times, of course. Alternatively to the summer squash, you could use an aubergine / eggplant. Originally, the recipe called for 1 pound of each type of squash, but I often use more – it really just depends on the size of your pot. If you have the stringy pulp of a Hokkaido squash left over at this point, you can use that as well, but keep it separate from the cubes. (After removing the seeds. They’re actually big enough to bother eating with this variety, so dry them, bake them for about 15 min at 160°C, and then de-hull them. I like to grind the baked seeds into a powder to add a “browned pumpkin” note to pumkin soup or a squash-and-fried-onions-flavoured humus-type bread spread I make, without actually going through the trouble of baking or pan-frying the squash for those dishes.)

     2. In the very largest pot you have, sautée 2 or 3 (depending on size) roughly diced onions in some neutral oil (rapeseed or sunflower) on medium heat, until they’re soft but not yet brown. If you want, you can also fry some finely sliced garlic when the onions are done – but I think this dish works better with freeze-dried garlic, because it’s too easy to burn the garlic in the next stage and you’ll most likely need more than you thought in the end anyway.

     3. Add the squash cubes and perhaps more oil, if that is needed to coat them all. Add 2 or 3 heaped teaspoons of curry powder (yellow), about 1 tsp. of some form of hot spice (chili, cayenne pepper, spicy paprika, freshly ground black pepper – whatever you have), 1 heaped tsp. of powdered ginger (I don’t bother buying fresh ginger as it gets mouldy too quickly and I don’t like the spice all that much, so use it only in curries), 1 heaped tsp. of extra turmeric (mainly just for colour) and perhaps 1 heaped tsp. of powdered cinnamon. (The latter is traditional, apparently, but it results in a somewhat musty background flavour that not everyone likes.) Stir, put a lid on, and let everything fry in the oil at a low temperature for about 3 minutes – until you can smell the spices when you open the pot. Stir a few times to move other vegetables down to the bottom, but the intention here is just that the spices need to “develop” in the oil, not to brown the vegetables. If stirring the large cubes is a bit of a problem at this point, your pot is too small. (It should be only half full so nothing will spill over later.)

     4. Pour in a 2 portion can of diced tomatoes (unsalted) and as much water as you need to cover the squash cubes, put in the squash pulp if you have any, add a couple of soup spoons of instant vegetable stock (2 stock cubes?) and a couple heaped tsp. of freeze-dried garlic. Stir and close the lid. Let everything simmer on a medium heat for about 15-20 minutes (whenever the winter squash has cooked through and reached the consistency of cooked potatoes, and the summer squash is still al dente and not mushy).

     5. In the meantime, cook some rice in salted water. Basmati is nice if you have it, otherwise any non-sticky parboiled rice will do.

     6. After the squash is cooked, drain and rinse a 2 portion can of chickpeas (or a bit more especially if you used more squash – up to a pound of cooked chickpeas, if you had batch-cooked dried chickpeas and freezed them for humus and occasions like this) and add them to the vegetables. And since all those ground spices make for a rather “gritty” mouth-feel, and also for better emulsification, this dish benefits from adding some dairy-based creamyness, unless you really must keep it absolutely vegan. About 3 soup spoons of liquid cream, sour cream, smetana or even yoghurt will work. (In the original recipe, you were supposed to serve plain yoghurt on the side, but since I don’t like the taste, I stirred it in and the result was surprisingly creamy. But normally, I use smetana, which has about 30-40 % fat and also serves to thicken the curry somewhat.)

     7. Now taste-test the curry – it’s important to do that AFTER adding the cream, as it “swallows” a lot of spice and even salt. (Good way to save a dish if you accidentally put in a bit too much salt or chili…) If it’s not salty enough, add more instant stock or plain salt. If it seems to lack acidity / fruityness, add a couple soup spoons of tomato paste and blance that out with 1 or 2 tsp. of sugar. But don’t overdo it – see below. If it’s not spicy enough for your tastes, add more curry powder and/or more of the hot spice – powdered cayenne pepper or hot paprika works best at this stage, as those show their heat immediately. But this curry is meant to be quite mild. You may want to add more freeze-dried garlic at this point, though I like to sprinkle garlic chives over the dish when serving, also for colour contrast. If you want, you can add some virgin olive oil to add some different unsaturated fatty acids – though I think it works better to cook that for a couple of minutes to reduce its rather penetrating aroma.

     8. If the curry is still too liquid (it should be a thick sauce), add a couple heaped soup spoons of instant potato mash as a thickener and keep simmering for 1 more minute.

     9. In the meantime, microwave some dark raisins in a cup of orange juice for a minute to soften them. (Alternatively, you can soak them in cold juice over night. The juice WILL boil over in the microwave.) Or even better, if you can find some dried and candied cranberries (even basic supermarkets often have them as part of trail mixes) – those bring their own acidity, so they just need cooking / soaking in water. Mix about a soup spoon of these (per portion) into the curry right before serving for a sweet-sour-fruity counterpoint to the salty-spicy sauce. Works much better than using the traditional mangoes or other canned fruit, in my opinion. If there is such a thing as dried sour cherries or candied red currants in your country, those might work as well. But DO NOT put them into the portions you intend to freeze – the raisins will absorb a lot of salt during the freezing process and come out tasting like bacon turned semi-liquid by an attack of some sort of flesh-dissolving bacteria. (Took me some time to identify what the hell I just ate, the first and only time this happened to me.) It’s much better to just add them freshly soaked whenever you defrost the curry – it’s not like raisins go bad.

     10. Serve the curry on the rice and add a generous amount of fresh herbs on top. Anything from the Allium family will work, except for leek (e.g. onion greens, chives, the green parts of spring onions, etc.) Or alternatively, this dish is spicy enough to be able to take a few leaves of basil without that being overpowering – it comes in purple or green, so why not use both? Arugula or wall-rocket work as well, especially if it’s an older plant that’s grown rather more peppery than nutty in flavour.

     • thara ravishanker says

       1 August 2022 at 08:46

       thank you