Ask Lemmy

i think that it helps to always have some rice cooked and waiting to bump up the calorie count to almost any meal.

When I was literal piss-broke, there was a college campus near me with an open food court. Couldn't afford the actual shops selling food there, but in that food court was a condiments station that randomly had one of those electric hot water dispensers for making tea, and styrofoam cups. It also had ketchup packets, saltine crackers, and pepper.

Turns out you can make a pretty passable tomato soup with ketchup and hot water. Bit of pepper and a handful of saltine cracker packets, and I had myself a hot meal for exactly $0.00

With some money to spend, rice is where it's at. Hitch a ride to Costco or Sam's with someone who has a membership, and they have iirc 50 lb bags of that short grain fortified rice for like... $15? That's well over 100 meals worth of rice.

Cook that up with literally almost anything that has some flavor or nutrients - whatever's cheap. Or just eat it straight... bland, but it'll fill you up. Eggs go great with rice.

Fair warning, you'll get fat. Cheap food is NOT usually healthy.

Rice and beans. Together they make a complete protein so can make up a larger bulk of your diet.

Pork loin, those gigantic big ones, are cheap per pound. Cut it into three for three roasts, freeze the other 2.

Try to get Multivitamins and magnesium. Long term you want those vitamins and minerals. Fish oil too. It's seems expensive but it's cheaper than fish itself.

Rice and beans is the staple pretty much everywhere else.

Don't buy ultra processed Mac and cheese or frozen pizza. It's nutritionally bad for you, and won't keep you full for long.

Start with rice and beans and canned sauce. Cheap, easy, and good for you.

You can obviously add chicken/tofu/protein, or try to start making sauces yourself. But always keep the rice and beans as a base. Every meal you eat, rice and beans. They're cheap as hell and close to what we evolved to eat.

Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!

I started eating a lot of chickpeas recently. Buy them dried, boil them for a couple minutes them let them soak in the water for a few hours. Then either roast them in the oven or if I'm lazy, toss them in the microwave for like 5 minutes, then add some seasoning. I snack on them between meals, or also toss them into things like soup or curry.

Also if you want a different take on ramen, boil them until they are al dente, drain the water and then stir fry with some cheap veggies or whatever.

Back in my early 20s there were a few things.

• Making beanie weenies were pretty inexpensive
• Ramen is the old standby
• Totino's party pizzas were also cheap calories
• Canned soups, stretched out with cheap crackers
• Peanut butter on celery or toast

No idea if those are still cost effective, but two or three of those could be stretched out over a week for under $10 at the time. I still eat all of those things at least every few years for some hits of nostalgia, even the cheap ass pizza.

Basically pasta.

I don't know where you are, but a 500g pack can be had for significantly under 1€ and is sufficient for multiple meals. Add a similar priced can of tomatoes, onions (optional) and some spices (I assume you have those).

Obviously there are other options for the sauce, many are cheap enough to consider when money is tight.

Falafel: dried chickpeas with garlic & parsley fried in oil. Very high calorie/cost, because the chickpeas are basically oil sponges, and it's hard to beat vegetable oil on calories/cost. $1.50 for 1000 calories.

Kimchi fried rice: Kimchi, rice, couple of fried eggs for protein. $2.10 for 1000 calories. Make your own kimchi even cheaper.

Chili noodles: cheap, store-brand spaghetti with chili oil-soy sauce dressing. Don't sub ramen for pasta - that stuff's expensive. $2.50/1000 cal. Make your own chili oil for extra savings.

Dal makhani

There's a few things I usually have at home because they're cheap, can be used for various dishes with or without additional ingredients and I will actually eat them before they spoil:

Beans, lentils, tomato paste, eggs, peanuts, cottage cheese, smoked tofu (not neccessarily a cheap item but I only use half a block or less per dish), bread, rice, spring onions, bell pepper, frozen spinach, hummus, cucumber.

Cuban beans and rice are very delicious and very affordable.

I used to fry a pan of frozen veggies with salt and thyme, but these days I'm often lucky enough to be able to get a lot of rescued food for free.

Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they're DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you'll find it's basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever

You do not need to be broke for: noodles made in herb water
Once you try it you may never go back to only salted water

Consider the food bank too probably.

Bulk dry beans, bulk sack rice, canned beans for chilli when feeling lazy or on sale, meat only on steep discount usually making stew or chilli with the worse less/undesirable cuts. Stir fry when you find better ones. Frozen vegetables and fruit bags. Store brand usually. Basic frozen pizzas, pasta bags with tomato based pasta sauce. Pasta sauce cans are frequently on sale and baseline is a low price.

Bananas, kiwis, and mandarin oranges are usually cheap in Canada anyways for fresh fruit.

I have a meat grinder attachment on my used mixer, very useful.

You can do a lot with apps like Paprika or Supercook. You add stuff you already have and it spits out only recipes with what you have on hand already. Helps me use up what I buy efficiently and stops you from getting bored of eating the same stuff. Less food waste and flavour bordeom is always good for mood and wallet.

If you have space, gardening. Fruit trees alone fill a deep freezer eventually.

My ultimate struggle meal:

In 1 pot:

• Rice (the good one from a sack, forget about minute rice)
• Carrots, sliced
• Whatever is cheapest between Sweet potato, Pumpkin or Eggplant at the time, cut into cubes.
• Thai Curry paste & Soy sauce
• Salt
• Cook 15 minutes
• Put into a tortilla with mayonnaise

Fast, really cheap, and has the important bonus that the only dish to clean is the 1 pot. When struggling, I also don't feel like doing a lot of housework.

Sadly, I can never remember the best ratios, so the mayonnaise is rather mandatory as it can save a rather bland filling. Sometimes, I splurge and use guacamole instead, sometimes I also put in mini-spring rolls from the same shop I buy the rice and curry.

With my "recipe" out of the way, the important thing is to find some ingredients that have a low price for lot's of weight, and then choose a recipe that's like 90% cheap ingredients by weight. (Remember that some ingredients take on a lot of water, rice taking on twice it's volume for example, so they're cheaper than the price tag implies). I personally look for food that's under 3€/kg. The other 10% of the meal can be way more expensive (curry paste in my recipe), but, because you only use so little of it, as a whole it's still cheap.

Probably the absolute cheapest meal are homemade hash browns, potatoes are ridiculously cheap, with apples being the cheapest fruit where I live. Next cheapest vegetable around here are carrots.

Nothing against the other suggestions, but pretty much anything you can buy that is "ready to eat" (canned soup) or "easy to make" (Kraft dinner), even if it is already cheap, would still be cheaper to make yourself from scratch. Cooking, in bulk, is your friend.

Two cartons of soup broth $1.77 CDN/946ml each, half a bag of frozen veggies $2.57/500g, boom you have 5 soup meals for <$1 per meal. A cup of flour to make dumplings in that soup and make it more appealing. Compare that to a canned soup which seems to be up in price lately, between 1.50 - 3.00, and you're laughing, and eating a lot less salt.

I haven't figured out exactly the cost of making bread (I play with the recipe and how many loaves), but I am absolutely certain it costs less and tastes better than the cheapest bullshit bread you can get at a store. So less than $2 for a loaf, and it actually smells and tastes like bread and doesn't dissolve in your mouth like cotton candy. No bullshit preservatives.

Pasta with pasta sauce, ez and cheap af, filling. <$1 per meal.

Things that are more difficult imo are meat and cheese due to the cost. I like to buy frozen logs of ground beef which isn't that appealing on it's own, but is passable in chili and shepherd's pie. Cheese can go a long way especially if you shred it for pizza (and you already have flour and pasta sauce from above.)

Speaking of shepherd's pie, potatoes are cheap and versatile. One tube of ground beef with a layer of frozen veg and mashed taters on top, again <$1 per meal.

Not to mention rice which is maybe the ultimate value-for-money food when you just need something in your stomach. Foodies will crucify me, but I love to eat it with margerine (way cheaper than butter) and salt and pepper. There's so much more you can do with it, though. Good for bulking up soups too.

Sweet potatoes. Alternately, potatoes, carrots and green beans stewed together with cornbread or rice. If you can afford it, chicken, pork, or turkey for flavor and protein. It need not be expensive cuts, necks or tails will do.

Burritos. Beans, rice and whatever else you can get that's on sale it cheap. Make a batch Sunday night. The poorer was the more I would cook.

Boil some red lentils, add carrots when they're half done. Then some coconut cream and a stock cube. Fry up some onion and garlic with cumin and coriander powder, then chuck that in too. Eat with rice. Add some sambal.

I'm grateful I haven't reached my college level of broke (yet), but with the economy absolutely booming right now under our current leadership, money is very tight. I'm pretty good at figuring out meals with some budget to work with.

Not sure if this only applies to Costco prices right now, but rounding up I got a 4.5lb bag of quinoa ~$13, a 5 pound bag of red beans for $10, and a 5 pound bag of red onions for $6. So a total of ~$29. Depending on how many people you're feeding you can stretch that several weeks. If you go with rice instead of quinoa it's cheaper and also still gives you a complete protein when you combine it with beans.

My father in law always said he lived for an entire year in college eating nothing but potatoes. I wouldn't recommend trying that but I guess it's an option?

Also recently made a loaf of bread for the first time. All you need is flour, yeast, oil and water.

Chickpeas and lentils are very cheap and can be used to make a lot of recipes. Buy some taco seasoning, tortillas, and lentils. Make a giant pot of that, and it will last a while. Lentils are pretty similar in texture to ground beef, so it works pretty well. This may sound weird but lentils are also really good as a meat substitute in spaghetti.

It gets really boring eating the same thing everyday, so I've also used this website to make some really good meals: https://www.budgetbytes.com/ They have a ton of options for both meat and vegetarian meals.

This was like 10 years ago, (so shit is definitely more expensive now) but when I was between jobs I had to make $50 for groceries for two last a little over 2 weeks. I went through the recipes on there and found a bunch that sounded good and contained the same core ingredients. Made a list of core and extra ingredients I would need (garlic, ginger, etc) and then went to Walmart and got everything I needed within budget.

The mujaddara was and still is my favorite (I always end up needing double the water the recipe calls for to cook the lentils and rice) https://www.budgetbytes.com/mujaddara/

Also keep in mind if you buy something like fresh ginger, onions, or mushrooms, but don't end up using all of it right away, you can chop it up and freeze it for later so it doesn't go bad.

I've stored chopped frozen ginger by itself in a ziplock bag. It seemed fine to me but apparently you're supposed to put it in oil and then freeze it. Some people use ice cube trays and make small aliquots of oil and ginger or other herbs.

I've been told repeatedly you shouldn't freeze onion, but when you're broke and need to make what you have last, whatever. It might lose some flavor and texture, but I always saute onion anyway. If I was trying to eat it raw or something I could see that being a no.

Mushrooms have to be cooked first (as far as I know). Chop and saute with olive oil and a little bit of butter or coconut oil (there is something about the extra fat that helps preserve it when frozen). After cooking, spread out on a nonstick surface or sheet of parchment paper, put them in the freezer and then once they're frozen, move them to an airtight container.

Back when I was in the US like 5 years ago, I've been able to stretch my meals out to about $40 per month.

You can make a flavourful cheesy-pasta (not actual mac-and-cheese) with some pasta, some chicken bouillon, a tablespoon of butter or margarine, and a slice of processed cheese. For protein you can buy cheap chicken franks and chop it up, and for veggies I like frozen peas and frozen broccoli. Get store-brand for the cheapest possible options.

I was so stingy that I was able to stretch one box of pasta out to 11 meals, and I still looked forward to each meal.

To keep myself from going insane, every grocery run (every three weeks) I rewarded myself with a gallon bucket of store-brand ice-cream and two packs of store-brand chocolate sandwich cookies, all of which I completely devoured within one week.

I lost hella weight and felt really good about it. Unfortunately, I've gained it all back now.

try to opt for dried beans over canned if u have time canned beans are expensive these days. lentils especially red lentils cook pretty fast from dry, whereas white beans or black beans take longer but if u can cook a whole bag it should last u ab a week. u can season w season salt or bouillon or some cheap spice mix so u dont have to buy a bunch of individual spices.

Beans and cornbread. Or beans and rice. Cornmeal is especially cheap in the US with how subsidized it is, so cornbread is a good way to fill out a meal.

When I was poor I ate boiled chicken and rice for every dinner. Breakfast was either cereal+milk (you can try ringing up multiple boxes at the self checkout using a "small" box but bag the bigger boxes), or yogurt+granola (I'd steal granola by ringing up bulk granola as cheaper bulk items and ring up the single yogurt cup in a 6 pack and pay <1/6 the actual cost).

Hopefully you like Indian food, because there are loads of lentil dishes that are super cheap. Dal Makhani plus some basmati rice (and if you’re ambitious, make some naan from scratch). Basically lentils, a few spices, an onion, some garlic and ginger, and rice.