Ask Lemmy

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

Ramen. Spaghetti (sauce optional). Rice. Oatmeal.

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).

Dal makhani

Breakfast: oatmeal

Snacks: popcorn (air popped, buy kernels. ~~Need~~ I recommend an air popper, but they're like 20 bucks. Then you can eat cheap popcorn forever). Bonus tip: if you can get your hands on a cheap electric coffee/spice grinder or want to grind seasonings by hand into an extremely fine powder, you can make popcorn salt that coats the popcorn really nicely. E.g. curry popcorn (salt + curry powder), lemon pepper, ranch (get ranch dressing powder). Spritzing with a fine mist of water can help the salt stick.

Lunch/Dinner:

• Fried rice (egg, whatever meat/veg, I like doing soy sauce glazed canned sardines with it for a cheap meal)

• Red beans and rice

• Chicken & sausage gumbo over rice

• Enchiladas, rice, beans

• Rotisserie chicken tacos

• Collard greens and cornbread, you can add bacon or other cheap cuts of pork to add protein.

• Pasta bake (chicken, spinach, pesto, white sauce, little cheese, optionally dried tomatoes - dry them in your oven to save money or buy canned for a little more)

• Korean rice bowls. Chicken, gochujang (like $5-8 but lasts a long time in the fridge), red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil. Marinate overnight. Cook on stove or in oven. Serve on rice with side dishes: carrot and cucumber banchan - just get some matchstick carrots, combine with vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, chili flakes. Cucumbers: slice thin, salt, drain. Combine with sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes. Assemble.

• Filipino style Chicken Adobo (potatoes, carrots, chicken, onion, garlic, ginger cooked in a vinegar soy sauce based sauce)

• Make like 200 pierogis for like 20 bucks (and several hours) and freeze them for later. Boil or pan fry and eat with a sausage and some saurkraut. For fillings, I like a little ground meat with onion and mushroom and saurkraut - 1 part meat, 1 part mushroom, 1 part onion. Even cheaper is potato and cheese - typically this means mashed potato mixed with sour cream and cheese.

• Cabbage rolls. Head of cabbage, rice, ground pork, onion, garlic, a couple cans of tomato soup. Cook rice, mix with ground pork, diced onion, and garlic. Dunk cabbage head in boiling water for a minute or two, peel a leaf off, stuff with pork mixture and roll. Put all rolls in a baking pan on a layer of the tomato soup, top with tomato soup. Bake covered mins or until cooked (165f internal temperature)

• West African Peanut Stew. Lots of recipes online. Contains a mix of peanuts, peanut butter, sweet potatoes, collard greens, chicken/veggie stock, and optionally chicken. Very filling, calorie dense, and cheap. I make like 2kg of soup for <$20.

In general, if you want cheap food then look for cultures with rich food traditions born from poverty. Also look for more plant-based recipes or find ways to stretch your meat using fillers like cabbage and onion.

Examples: Louisiana Cajun, American South, India (at least the more modest dishes without lots of meat and cream/butter), Eastern Europe, Central and South America, even provincial French food & British "food" (I jest, but bubble & squeak or bangers & mash have fed many a hungry family)

Staple foods should include:

• Staple Starches: potatoes (sweet potatoes and normal potatoes), rice, corn, beans, lentils

• Chicken (whole raw or rotisserie) - benefit of a whole raw chicken is you can use the whole carcass to make stock and get enough meat for 2 people for a whole week. Rotisserie is the same deal, but precooked and not best suited for all applications.

• Filler vegetables: basically all of your cruciferous vegetables, onions, root vegetables

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.

I braise a whole bag of onions and use it the base for a big pot of Turkish-ish red lentil soup. This then gets portioned into 10 or so meals and frozen so it lasts till i have money again.

West African peanut stew but you'd need a place to get a huge bag of berebere spice.

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.

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.

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.

Ramen with frozen vegetables mixed in.

Bean tacos.

Some kind of dish using chicken thighs as you can buy the thighs for cheap.

If ground beef is cheap, cottage pie.

Various pasta dishes

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.

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.

Life of Boris has a funny (and actually useful) series on budget cooking if you're into that. Great watch imo

Playlist

Sandwiches and soup. I always preferred tuna, but grilled cheese or ham and cheese are solid too.

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.

My favorite food when I was poor was something I called bachelor chow.

Cubed and fried spam, a can of baked beans, and some rice. I’d get two or three meals out of it.

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.

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.