33p-50p per person Meals

[Amaranth]

What meals can you make for under 33p or 50p a person?

What are the specially priced foods in your area that make it possible?

[boboff]

Value Pasta and Rice, Value Bolnaise, Sweet & Sour sauce, Curry Sauce, Beans, Toast.

Roast Beef and all the trimmings if you get lucky on Yellow Sticker frenzee!

[southeast-isher]

baked potato with cheese and butter?

[southeast-isher]

home foraged pesto stirred into pasta?

[GeorgeSalt]

What meals can you make for under 33p or 50p a person?

How many people?

Feeding 10 for £5 is often easier than 2 for £1.

£5 gets a fresh chicken, rice, tinned tomatoes, etc. and opens up several options for a tasty meal - if you can use/freeze all the portions. My favourite would be a not-risotto or a curry, bulking out the curry with fresh vegetables. Either of these options would produce at least 10 portions for £5 if you stick to the supermarket value ranges.

50p/person/meal is tight, but easier if you can spend £10-20 and buy ingredients for 20-40 portions at a time. Even avoiding the supermarkets, our local butcher has an offer for 2 chickens for £12 and get 2 free - why he can't just say 4 chickens for £12 I'll never know. But a chicken for £3 has a lot of meals on it.

[Carltonian Man]

At this time of year Bulgar wheat with chopped nettle tops and hedgerow herbs.

[safronsue]

this is good
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/falafel_80242

[sda]

Why those costings in particular - are you economising or catering for something? It could make a difference.

[herbalholly]

Our local butcher sells ox heart (for the dog) at £2 per kilo. I don't have a dog. It's £6 per kilo if it's not for the dog. I do have a dog.

When I make bacon (from belly pork) I can then make masses and masses of tasty meals for almost nothing. If I also make bread then I can do things like savoury bread, butter, cheese, egg, bacon and milk pudding. That's pretty cheap.

Mashed potatoes with butter, cheese and peas.

I can make veg and lentil soup for nearly free, especially with allotment veg. I've found that a hippy supermarket in the next town sells red lentils that are still cheap, whereas sain****ys supermarket are charging a fortune for red lentils these days.

Pearl barley is the cheapest grain that I can get in a supermarket. So we eat a lot of that. I'd like to buy organic wholemeal flour for making bread but we can't afford it at the moment so I buy standard wholemeal and go the extra mile and make sourdough so that I still feel happy when my family eat it. Rice isn't cheap where I live. Potatoes vary massively.

Supermarket scooped fresh fish can be amazingly cheap for us. If I pop in a few times and just look at the fish counter that can be a real boon. We got a kilo of kippers yesterday for £2. I'll be making mashed potato with flaked kipper and bacon and peas for dinner and there'll still be masses of kippers left in the freezer.

Do you have a freezer? Do you eat meat? Do you keep hens? Are you on a budget or is it a fun experiment?

[Amaranth]

Thanks for the variety of tasty suggestions. Large batch ideas or regular sized family ideas are both good as we can freeze some of the extra for a future meal—or just freeze the freezable foods. Economising is the goal. Lower priced meals are ok too, but we are trying to get as much nutrition in as possible.

Have a freezer, so when cooking a chicken or other meat we can save the extra meat and also the bones for broth. Don’t have hens, but sometimes friends give us extra eggs. What suggestions do you have for getting as many meals as possible from a £3 chicken?

We save the bacon fat in the fridge to flavor future meals.

Southeast-isher and Carltonian Man, what other foraged meals do you like this time of year? For the fall, does anyone have a recipe for rosehip jam?

HerbalHolly, how much better than sain****ys is the other place? Sain****ys currently has red lentils at £1.79 kg. Are any of their other dried pulses at the other supermarket at low prices? Though the advantage of lentils over some of the other items is shorter cooking times.

A kilo of kippers for £2 is impressive. Good note about the benefits of having a dog :-).

[wabbit955]

I have made this recipe many a time

rose hip and apple jam /jelly

1kg apples (I use wilds ones that are not to good for eating)
1 kg rose hips
2 litres water
chop apples skin peel core the lot
cook over low heat with water for 1 hour
add chopped rosehips simmer over low heat for 15 minutes
blend well and strain though a jelly bag over night
add 1 kg sugar to each litre water
boil to setting point
pour into jars

if you want to do a jam with just rose hips you have to cut them all in half and remove all the hair and seeds
which is far to much work for my liking
but if you up for it

1 kg rose hips all seeds and hair removed and well washed to remove hair
1 kg sugar ( pectin sugar would be better )
juice of 2 lemons
100mls water
bring rose hips lemon and water to boil slowly
when starts to boil add sugar
boil fast until setting point
jar up

[GeorgeSalt]

What suggestions do you have for getting as many meals as possible from a £3 chicken?

I'm trying to work out what we get from one..

Roast the first day with veggies, 2 large portions
Second day cold, 2 large portions
Third day make pick carcase and make stock for a not-risotto, 4 large portions

It's the stock, the leftovers and the bits you pick off the bones that make the difference. There's an art to getting all the usable meat from a cooked chicken and then getting the best flavoured stock.

Not-risotto
Chicken stock
Chicken pickings removed from the cold cooked carcase before the stock was made
Couple of cups long grain or basmati rice
Chopped tinned tomatoes
Onion
Garlic
Veg of choice - leftovers, tin of sweetcorn, whatever-you-have/want (optional)
A couple of rashers of bacon, or some chorizo or garlic sausage or leftover cold sausages (optional)
Squeeze of tomato puree (optional)

Soften the onions and garlic in a little oil (or chicken fat skimmed from the stock). Add chopped bacon if you're using it. If any of the optional veg is raw it can be gently fried off at this stage.

Wash and add the rice to the pan. Add the stock. All in one go is acceptable for not-risotto. Add the tinned tomatoes. Simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the rice is almost cooked. Add the chicken pickings reserved from the carcase before you made the stock and any remaining veg, a squeeze of tomato puree for extra tomatoiness. Keep simmering until the rice is cooked.

If there's not enough liquid in the stock for the rice to fully swell and cook (it's going to vary depending how you make your stock), this is a great recipe for using up any leftover white wine. Or you could just add boiling water.


Not-risotto is legendary for the way the cook underestimates just how much the rice will swell with the liquid. It's not uncommon for the leftovers to equal the amount consumed. And it's just as nice microwaved or fried-up the next day.

[Milims]

I buy in bulk from the Chinese supermarket - it works out much cheaper than buying the small amounts available in the supermarket. As well as spices, lentils, split peas, kidney beans, black eyed beans, chick peas etc. If you soak and cook your own beans it's far cheaper than buying in tins. Beans are also good for bulking up food as well as a meal in themselves. I often make baked beans - tins tomatoes, onion, herbs, small amount of brown sugar and what ever beans you have. It's good to add ham or sausage.
This is good too: http://southamericanfood.about.com/od/m ... ariano.htm and can be made with pretty much what ever you have in the fridge.
I'm a total whoopsie tourist and whenever there is fresh meat with two reduced stickers, it's mine! I have a freezer full of chickens reduced to £2.50, beef and pork for around the same.
Particularly good is a ham or gammon shank (especially reduced twce!)- put it in the slow cooker with carrots, onion, celery and a musiln bag of split peas. Cook until the peas are soft and mushy. Remove the peas and puree with a little of the stock if necessary - that makes pease pudding - great with ham and salad in a bun or as a side with any cold meat or ploghmans etc. Cook the ham until it falls off the bone. Remove and add some more split peas to the pot, cook until they are soft and mushy. Blitz with the blender. Hey presto you have pease pudding, cooked ham and soup for pennies.
I'm lucky enough to work in a local hotel and have become friendly with the chef, local fishermen and a game keeper. The chef gives me the carcasse from venison - usually wih enough meat on for a couple of stews and bones for lovely stock. When he trims up the Sunday roasts he gives me the left overs for the dog, usually they are so good that we end up mincing them and making enchilladas for us! (Enchilladas are a reat way of making a littebet of meat go a long way ) The fishermen supply sometimes take us out on free fishing trips and we keep what we catch (provided that it's an appropriate size) and sometimes slip us a lobster or crab. The gamekeeper gave me some venison loin a wee while ago and is happy to bring hares for next to nothing. He's alo promised me a muntjac - they are classed as vermin and aren't really popular with the public for eating, so he can sell them for around £10, other venison he sells at about £1 per Lb. It's worth geting to know people like this if you can.
Good luck in your venture and let us know how you get on!

[Green Aura]

I do chicken either in pretty much the same way as George or I boil the entire chicken first. That way you get two goes at stock (I measure it in 1 or 2 cup portions to freeze - about 6 freezer boxes from the first pass and similar from the second) and you can get every scrap of meat off the bones from the outset, portion it out and use it in any number of ways
-in pies or pasties (bulk out with lots of veg and a nice cream or tomato sauce and serve with more veg and spuds,
-in pasta or rice dishes, with lots of pulses and veg and of course a nice sauce,
-in soups - with some of the stock
-other soups made with the stock are so tasty
- in butties or salads, cold with mayo (or, if you can stomache it, coronation stylee )
The second lot of stock comes from the bones, roasted and boiled with a tsp of vinegar in the water) - I've started cooking this for a longer time and making a much more concentrated stock. Takes up less room.

I only buy organic so there's definitely a need to get value for money!

Odsox grinds the bones to make bonemeal for the garden too!

[Bulworthyproject]

We're having rabbit stew today:
Air rifle pellet costs a penny. Home grown garlic, a few potatoes, a leek, a couple of carrots, herbs from the garden.
Nettle soup as a starter
A bottle of homemade wine
That lot must work out at less than 50p per person.