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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Last time I checked, corn flakes weren't that cheap. My go to is still rice.
Rice + lentils is the ultimate poverty lifehack. A well-stocked spice drawer (expensive, but lasts a long time) plus those two ingredients can provide like 80% of your food indefinitely. Don't waste your time or money on ramen
Don't waste time on ramen? Ramen is a good base. Toss in some fresh veg, boiled egg, maybe a bit of meat or tofu.
Pretty quick and easy.
Though, I'm not talking about the maruchan stuff. Even the cheapest Asian ramen gonna be better than that.
You could also put those things in rice instead for much cheaper calorie/dollar. But it can be good to switch it up for sure
Frozen dumplings. Just throw them in at the start, and by the time it reaches a boil, they're ready to eat
Edit - I'll use the cheap maruchan stuff as the noodles for a stir fry in a pinch. Definitely takes a bit more cooking effort than boiling a pot of water though
Quality instant ramen is pretty delicious, but it's not that cheap or healthy
Get an appropriately sized rice cooker, it's a super easy and cheap staple food that's endlessly versatile.
Want Mexican food? Fry up some beans, veg, and/or eggs with cumin or taco seasoning and you've got a burrito bowl. Want fried rice? Toss it in too and season it. Want a simple breakfast meal? Fry an egg sunny side up and toss it on top. Feeling lazy or putting off a grocery store run? Pack it together and you get onigiri
You can even turn it into porridge (I've never tried it, my friend said it's good)
(Sponsored by The Rice Gang🍚)
If you have an Asian, Mexican, or Indian market where you live, you can usually find spices in bigger packs for lower prices.
Hell, if you live in/near a city that can support at least one east asian/indian/middle eastern store, you often can get a lot of whole spices for cheap. Couple months ago I bought ~5 pounds of various spices for 45 dollars. Then I get the super basics in big containers from big box places. Indian store - 8oz of green cardamom pods is $3.40, black is 4.00, star anise is 4.00, etc. The most expensive one I regularly get is like 1.25 an oz. but, usually, expensive ones are potent and you only need a little at a time. Then I can get, I think its 20oz, containers of things like garlic powder for 8 dollars at walshart.
Spices are expensive, but very easy to shoplift because they are so small.
It REALLY depends on where/how you get them. The tiny McCormick bottles are a ridiculous scam, charging like $6 for a thimbleful. Meanwhile, a lot of health food stores, if you just bring a mid-sized jar (just clean out an old pasta jar or something) you can put a bunch of spice in it for maybe $3 or less.
By ramen do you mean just regular pasta? Cause I'm not familiar with ramen so I had to Google it and you can't possibly be talking about the ramen I saw there.
Cheap instant ramen, not the nice bowls of ramen.
The stuff that's $.25 per package.
This is what I was talking about. $0.25 per package but no nutritional value and full of sodium. It can be dressed up pretty easy or be a cheap meal in a pinch, but it shouldn't be eaten every day like some (college) kids recommend.
There's the chubbyemu video on ramen
Oh, ok, that makes sense. Those bowls of ramen sure don't look cheap.
Most of the nice ramen are just the packaging and maybe some freeze dried veg. Get the cheap stuff. You can cut the seasoning packet down if you want to reduce sodium and add diy ingredients to make a far better bowl. egg for protein- carrots, mushrooms, spinach etc for variety. It's a good quick source of carbs and can be very diverse as far as a meal goes.
I've had several fancy ramen packs that were around $7 vs the usual $0.25. I agree they are not worth the price difference if you're looking for value.
That said, most of them are much better than the cheap ramen packs. They're worth trying some other time when calories per dollar is not the priority.
The YouTube channel That Dude Can Cook has videos showing other things you can pre-make to add to cheap ramen if time is not an issue. His noodles look way better than anything that just comes from a ramen pack.
They're talking about something like top ramen, a very low quality dehydrated shadow of real ramen. It's just a packet of noodles and a bag of seasoning. It's pure carbs and not very nutritious, but you could get it for like $0.07 a meal (who knows these days though)
There's also good instant ramen, which ranges from $1-$5ish, and is much closer in taste to the real thing. It's not super healthy either, but you might get some dehydrated vegetables, meat, and/or oil to go with the spices
Nah Ramen is awesome when used correctly (as an addition, not as a sole source). Rice is better though, healthier too.
.. lentils? 80%? What are you smoking
Lentils are great dude. I meant 80% of your food volume, not 80% of your meals, which I do acknowledge is pretty arbitrary
If we’re talking breakfast: 2 eggs, 1/4 cup egg whites, 2 oz breakfast sausage and a dollop of heavy cream.
Brown sausage over medium heat with a bit of oil or butter. Whip eggs, whites and cream together and add to pan with browned sausage. Finish with shredded mild cheddar cheese (optional). If you get it in a block it’s cheaper and melts better.
This comes out to around $2 a meal and nets 54 grams of protein if consumed with a glass of milk.
If you’re into Kombucha or Kefir, drink a glass 30-45 minutes after a meal like this. No, scratch that. I forgot probiotics feed on carbs, so if you’re a rice eater or cereal for that matter – take your probiotics, preferably from food or beverage, after a carb heavy meal.
Look at fancy ass over here! 2 boiled eggs, 1 banana.
I wish I liked boiled eggs, they’re a great source of protein. I used to work demolition with a guy that popped them like Pringles.
Did he work demo so no one was sure if it was explosions or his farts?
Not just protein, also tons of vitamins and healthy unsaturated fats. They have to feed a chick for 21 days before it hatches, so it's only natural that they are rich in nutrients
Salt, my friend.
Just eat cookies. Fat, sugar and flour with an egg or two. Cheap and delicious with a shitload of calories.
And rice is delicious! I like sticky sushi rice myself. Throw some chicken on there and you've got a meal!
lol that is some bougie rice.. I usually get whatever long grain rice that comes in those 20lb bags for under $7. $1+ per LB is a no go.
Jasmine rice is worth the extra cash, bro
The green Knorr's flavored rice packs are only $1.25. Makes enough for 2 days.
Rice is also expensive. My go to is bread and butter/margarine.
Dude, a 20lb bag is like $17. I use that shit in so many dinners and I still haven't opened the 2nd bag. Makes any dinner with veggies and meat feel like a feast.
I live in Europe: rice, beans, lentils, meat and vegetables are way too expensive here. Eggs were okay until the pandemic hit and prices went up. Now they've come down a little and I can afford them again. That and cheese is my stock now. Pasta is okay, but I can't eat much of it every day because it really fattens me up.
I'm in Portugal.
A quick search shows most beans, dry, to be about €2/Kg - $2.17/Kg at todays's USDEUR cross-currency rate - in 500g bags from the supermarket (which is about the most expensive way to get them if dry as bigger bags and different sources are cheaper). That stuff doubles or triples in size when you cook it, so one such bag is 5 - 10 individual meals if you eat nothing else (which I don't recommend, though it would still be a lot healthier than just rice or pasta because beans actually have a much wider variety of nutrients that the other ones).
(Granted, searching for the same thing in the site of Albert Hijn in The Netherlands shows them to be twice as expensive and less common there, though checking Morrisons in the UK shows them mainly cheaper than NL but more expensive than PT, though some are cheaper than what I saw in my searches of PT supermarkets)
More in general, for maximum savings and if you're in Europe (specifically the EU), you can order them via the internet in large quantities from some other country as easilly as from your own, especially since dry beans are absolutelly fine for shipping as they have really good weight to nutrition ratio, won't spoil and require very little packaging and no special protection for shipping. Whilst Portugal is big on beans and chickpeas, some countries favour other pulses such as lentils.
However you should get a pressure cooker if you're going to be using dry beans as they take a lot longer to cook otherwise so gas/power costs are about 3x higher if you cook them in a normal pan.
I don't have to worry about foodprices nowadays but if I was going for maximum savings in it whilst not risking my health too much it would be relying heavilly on pulses in general (so beans, chickpeas, lentils and so on).