Hello there! I was wondering if anyone has some low budget meal recipes that they want to share. I wanna save money but I also don’t want to get malnourished on my low budget!
Eggs, and liver: nature’s multivitamin!
Try to always get some whenever you can fit it in your budget
Here’s how I ate for years.
Buy lots of dry grains. Brown rice. Quinoa. Wild rice. Barley.
Buy lots of cheap proteins. Canned beans. Whatever chicken is on sale. Tofu.
Always keep potatoes and onions on hand they last a while in the pantry.
Cook the dry grain, with diced onion. Pour beans on top. Hot sauce or whatever spices. Bake potatoes and any bonus protein you want to have.
Get tired of eating this with Sriracha? Use Frank. Or curry powder.
Dry beans are a lot cheaper than canned (less waste also). If you get a big pressure cooker, you can just soak a bunch of dried beans overnight and it only takes ~30min to cook up a massive pot of beans. Add more water and some stuff like carrots, onions and you’ll have same tasty bean soup. Split peas are great for thickening soup and making it really hearty.
Of course, it’s possible to cook beans/soup in a slow cooker or whatever but personally I love my pressure cooker and I’ve had less issues with burning stuff or uneven cooking as well. Great for steaming vegetables, potatoes (you can have mashed potatoes in ~15min). Can even use a pressure cooker to make rice and it’s very fast.
I cook dried beans a lot and have to say the canned beans are different. Dried beans often split during soaking and the shells are harder. I think for canning they cook the fresh beans directly. About the pressure cooker, I’ve done this too but found that at least for me the beans are more easily digestible when you cook them slowly and for a longer period of time.
Good and Cheap is a free book with healthy recipes that aim to be cheap. It’s almost 10 years old so it might not quite be under $4/day anymore, but for the most part the ingredients in it are still affordable.
Woah. That was WAAAY more vegetarian friendly than I thought. Thanks for that share.
Someone also recommended Budget Bytes, they also have some good vegetarian recipes too if you haven’t checked them out! I’m a sucker for the black bean quesadilla recipe.
I managed to get down to spending roughly £2 a week on food a while ago by only eating egg fried rice, I got pretty much all the nutrients I needed because you can just mix in whatever veg you want but it didn’t have enough calories. If you combine it with other meals though you’d be able to make a filling dinner for dirt cheap.
Check out Budget Bytes! She prices out what each meal costs per serving. Some really great some here!
