If there’s one rule to cooking on a shoestring, it’s to be adventurous. Hundreds of ingredients cost just pennies, but you’re unlikely to find them in the fresh or chilled aisles of a supermarket. Turn to frozen, tinned and dried foods. Here, among the packets of beans and pulses and bags of frozen mince, fish and veggies, you’ll find plenty of bargains. Classic cheap dishes such as stews and pasta have fed families for generations. But new ingredients and millions of free recipes online mean many more budget dinners can be 15 minutes away.
Be honest about what you can afford. An egg can cost as little as 15p. Highly flavoured meats such as sausages, chorizo, ham and bacon are also often inexpensive and you only need a little to make a delicious sauce or frittata.
Keep your cooking simple. Ready-meals have made elaborate dishes everyday, but these can be expensive to recreate at home. Egg dishes, stews and simple traybakes are flexible enough to use up what you have and will taste better for being fresh.
Finally, shop around if you have time. If you’re adventurous you can shop like a pauper and eat like a prince – especially if you visit markets or Asian and Middle Eastern shops to stock up on spices or buy fruit, veg and herbs.
Brilliant cheap pasta dishes
Who doesn’t love pasta? At around 10p per 100g portion, it’s easy to cook pasta with all sorts of sauces – or even a pasta bake – for a few pence. Make a sauce with garlic, tinned tomatoes, mixed dried herbs and whatever veggies you have in your cupboard. You can add browned mince, pieces of grilled sausage, tinned tuna or tinned beans, then just cook until you have a thick sauce. Grow your own fresh herbs to add at the end to make your sauce really luxurious.
Great family dinners for under £1 a head
2018-08-03 10:06 Click:145