Favorite Frugal recipes.

[thesunflowergal]

Our food budget is very low this month, but I am rising to the challenge . Has anyone got any frugal recipes or meal ideas that they would like to share with me please?

Thanks Nikki

[bonniethomas06]

Hi SFG,
If you have a leftover roast chicken, you could try a meal we had on Monday. As we already had the chicken leftover, courgettes and mint in the garden and yog in the fridge, this was effectively the cost of the stock cube and the lentils and it was very tasty.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/7265 ... ith-mint-y

Mmmm. Also, if you have potatoes and chickens in your garden - we live on omlette and chips/salad in the week before payday!

Or, we bought some beef skirt from the farmshop for £6 - and have made 3 dinners out of it (for 2 greedy adults) - spag bol on the monday, chilli con carne on the Wednesday and fajitas on the friday (thanks River Cottage!). So with the tinned toms, pasta, rice and fajitas, you are only talking about £10 max for three mealtimes.

I quite like frugal eating, it is healthier and feels better than eating lots of expensive rich stuff. Although now and again I do get a craving for a big creamy bowl of Moules!

[thesunflowergal]

Thanks Bonnie. Great ideas. I drove past your village the other day .
My chickens are back on a go slow, so they are not helping. Seriously thinking of necking one that has never layed in the eight months that we have had her lol. I will look into Beef skirt, did you mince it?

Nikki x

[Green Aura]

Chickens are indeed the most frugal things going

Take one chicken in huge stock pot (with enough water to cover by a good couple of inches). Add a carrot, celery stick, peppercorns, bay leaf and parsley stalks. Boil til cooked. Keep stock.

Take all the meat of the bone (we use the skin too but you can chuck that if you don't want it). Divide into portions - we usually get 3-4 depending on size - with "extras" these portions feed at least three of us. Portion up the stock and freeze.

Then you can make chicken and veg pie - with lots of veg (this does us two meals each), stew, pasties, pasta with veg and a creamy sauce, curry - whatever. I generally try to make something that will last us a couple of meals - like the pie.

The stock will make tons of soups, sauces etc - I'd forgotten just how good chicken stock makes everything taste until we started doing this.

Our record to date has been 24 meals (8 meals for 3 adults) out of one chicken - with stock left over. I think that counts as frugal!

[Millymollymandy]

Moules are fairly cheap here - definitely a frugal meal! If you want really frugal ditch the meat and go for pulses and veggies. Soup is especially frugal and you can tart it up by serving with cheesy scones. Or do things with cheap tinned tuna from Lidl - goes well in a tomatoey sauce with cheap (Lidl!) pasta.

[Carltonian Man]

Hi SFG

This thread's making me feel really hungry. If you do fancy a meaty meal, here’s a few inexpensive favourites from the lamb counter

Spiced Lambs Kidneys (circa £1.20 for eight kidneys, allow three kidneys per adult but four each is better).

Half each kidney lengthways and remove the fatty web thing from the middle.
Put them in a pan with a splash of olive oil, sprinkle of salt & pepper, chopped chilli to taste and a couple of tablespoons of wine vinegar .

Cook until all the liquid disappears and then keep stirring until the kidneys become coated and sticky in their own meaty sauce.

Serve on a bed of rice cooked with a few crushed cardamom pods and splashed with lime juice. Accompany with homemade chapattis.


Crunchy coated Lambs Liver (£1.00 buys plenty enough for two adults)

Slice the liver and coat in a mix of seasoned plain flour and fresh chopped sage.
Fry in a little oil for about three minutes each side. The liver develops a crunchy coating but doesn’t have any of the dry granule texture normally associated with it.
Serve with rice, potatoes or pasta, maybe with a tomato and onion sauce. Goes well with stir-fried celery.

Lambs hearts (circa 55p each, allow one to one and a half per adult).

Slice off the top 1.5 cm of the heart which gets rid of the valves and bits. (I normally discard this bit).
Cut away any suet/fat from the outside leaving you with a generous handful of virtually fat-free meat.
Thinly slice what’s left and cook for a few minutes in a splash of olive oil. If it isn’t overcooked the meat will be very tender and tasty.
Serve as with either of the two above.

Hope this helps..

[bonniethomas06]

Thanks Bonnie. Great ideas. I drove past your village the other day .
My chickens are back on a go slow, so they are not helping. Seriously thinking of necking one that has never layed in the eight months that we have had her lol. I will look into Beef skirt, did you mince it?

Nikki x

Next time you drive by, pop in for a cup of tea!

No, didn't mince the beef (but now you mention it we do have a sausage machine, so could have done) but just cut it into thin strips and then again into rough mincey tiny pieces. I made a big pot of bolognaise on day 1 and then just added things to it (i.e kidney beans and chilli) for the next meal. I guess you could also do a lasagne and stick in some green lentils if you wanted to make the mince go a little further. The bolognaise had finely chopped celery and carrots in it to stretch it too - likewise the fajitas had leuttice and freshly chopped toms with sour cream.

I am also impressed with how far blue cheese goes when you are cooking, yet makes food feel special. Our neighbour made a lovely tart with a sheet of filo pastry (£1.29 for 2 in stupidmarkets) and scored round the outside, layered some raw squash in the middle and crumbled blue cheese and about 5 walnuts (bashed into bits) over it. It made a lovely meal with some potatoes and salad...or runner beans in our case, to try and get through the glut.

[fran]

A store cupboard meal that was one of my kids' favourite meals :

Pasta - boil and drain, add tin of tuna, fried chopped onion, tin of sweetcorn and tin of evaporated milk, gently heat through. Black pepper and serve.

Poor man's carbonera!!!

[Mrs H]

Hidden Vege sauce is an all time fav in our house.
Grate a carrot and a courgette, finly chop an onion bung the whole lot in the pan, we don't cook it for very long as we like a bit of crunch to ours!! Put it in a food processor and add a squirt of tomatoe puree, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a teaspoon of sugar, give it a blast then back into the pan and simmer for about 5mins. This freezes brilliantly and you can use it with rice, pasta, noodles, baked potatoe really whatever you have and you can add more veg to it if you have it. Xx

[boboff]

Sardines on Toast.

Less than £1 for 4.

Sweet & sour Meat Balls.

Buy from Trago Liskeard 12 meat balls for 50p, again Less than £1 for 4 meals.

Thai Korma Soup

Use stock and Veg, blitz, Add 8oz cream of coconut (28p KTC T***o) Korma spices, feed 8 for less than £1

[StripyPixieSocks]

Our frugal recipes this week are:

Lentil Soup (Onion, , Garlic, Celery, Carrots, Vege Stock & Red Lentils) Make loads... freeze it for later in portions!
Ratatouille (Onion, Aubergine, Courgette, Mushrooms, Peppers, canned tomatoes) Make loads can be used on backed potatoes, over pasta, as a lasagne, blended as a soup with added beans or something similar
Muttar Paneer (Paneer, Spices, Onions, Tomatoes & Peas) we even make our own Paneer that way we get top quality paneer for low quality prices. Make loads and freeze once again
Vege Curry (Packet frozen mixed veg, Onion, Tomato Puree, Mango Chutney, Pataks Curry Paste, vege stock cubes, cornflour) Again, can be made in large quantities and frozen, if you have a litle chicken left over from a roast put it in one of the portions when you de-frost it.

Make cottage pie with beef mince and add a can of baked beans to make it go further

[oldjerry]

I don't really feel qualified to make any cookery contributions in this company, but here goes,my favourite dinner and I think it's pretty cheap: Twice as much SR flour to shredded suet,salt ,sweated chopped onion,fried streaky bacon bits,any other bits of sausage\salami etc.(omit if you already feel ill) stir it up add a bit of water,steam for anhour or so withgreaseproof paper over the top of a pudding basin (it swells up).dish up with boiled pots,veg and cheese sauce.........now I'M hungry!

[ina]

Perfect Scottish food for winter weather (well, it sometimes feels like that now...): tatties, kale and skirlie. That's chopped fried onion with oatmeal. also used as stuffing.

[sheena]

If you need to get a cheap substantial meal, get a gammon hock and pop it into a saucepan and top up with water and some herbs, bring it to the boil and add whatever veg you have to hand, this is really filling when you throw a handful of lentils, barley and peas in or you could just make it with the veg.
once the gammon hock has cooked, you can strip all the lovely tender meat off it, its delicious and there is plenty there to fill the hungriest tums.

If you are feeling adventurous make some lovely dumplings or bread rolls to go with it.
Happy eating.

[organicsi]

Once a week I audit the veg lying around in the fridge and rack and make a big tray of roasted veg. We have this with quinoa or couscous and a homemade harrisa. Its also great on pizza. It is also a great way to use up reduced veg you can sometime pick up at the end of a market . While the oven is on I also make a cake or biscuits to get the most out of the fuel used by putting on the oven. Mushrooms are pretty cheap at the moment and they are go a long way in rissotto. Last but not least when the pumpkins in the supermarkets are reduced because they bought too many for halloween buy them p and make them into pumpkin and ginger soup, its ace!