General Category > TBR Kitchen
Good, low cost meals
unite for individuality:
Here are some meals that can be prepared at relatively low cost, and are tasty and satisfying.
Rice based meals - Rice is a major food staple around the world. It is the main ingredient in many kinds of meals.
Prepare the rice like normal - in boiling water. When you strain out the rice, save the water, and use it to make tea or soup. The water contains many nutrients that washed off the surface of the rice during cooking. Add other ingredients to make the rice into a satisfying meal. Ingredients such as chunky soup (Campbell's, Progresso, etc.), beef stew, etc.
Chicken - Chicken is the least expensive meat. Leg quarters are usually the least expensive (and tastiest!) part of the chicken. They can be bought at low cost frozen, or fresh (Walmart usually has them for about 69 cents a pound, at this writing). Boil the leg quarters for one hour in a big pot of water. This will make them so tender that the meat actually does fall off the bone! You can dice the meat into small pieces, and add them to rice dishes.
Pork - Pork is often available at low cost, especially before Christmas and Easter. Check the packaging. It might be pre-cooked and ready to eat. It's best to not cook it again. That only destroys the tenderness. If the pork is not cooked, boil it in a big pot of water for an hour, just like chicken. Fried pork often comes out very tough. Boiled pork is always at least fairly tender. You can cut it across the muscle fibers to enhance the tenderness. Diced pork can also be added to rice dishes.
Hot dogs and bologna - Prices can vary widely between brands, and from one week to the next. Flavor can also vary between brands. Hot dogs dipped in barbecue sauce can be very tasty.
Potatoes - Potatoes provide plenty of calories per dollar. It's best to not peel potatoes. Most of the nutrition is in the first millimeter under the skin. You can buy devices at the grocery store that you shove down onto the potato with both hands, to easily cut the potato into slices, sticks, or wedges. They can then be deep fried, pan fried, or baked in the oven. All the enhancements (meat, eggs, veggies, soup, etc.) that can be added to rice dishes can also be added to potato based dishes.
Eggs - One way to prepare eggs is to crack them open over a big pot of boiling water. Then, when the eggs are cooked, ladle them out with a strainer. If you cook eggs this way, you can cook a dozen or two dozen or three dozen all in one session, and then have plenty of egg on hand that is ready to eat. You can also add pieces of cooked egg to rice or potato dishes.
Pasta or noodles can be inexpensive, if you look for it on sale, or buy store brands. Rice and potatoes are healthier. Spaghetti sauce can vary widely in price. Pasta sauce can often be found at about the half of the price of the cheapest salsa.
Store brand tortilla chips are usually much less expensive than name brand chips. Tortilla chips are made from corn and tend to cost less than potato chips.
Popcorn is one of the least expensive snack foods. Pieces getting stuck in your teeth can be annoying.
With the cost of food skyrocketing, these meals can help keep everyone fed without going broke. I'm sure there are many more possibilities. Comments are open!
Gefn:
bkmk
roamer_1:
Masa. Learn to make masa.
With that you can make your own tortillas - It's a pretty easy process if you have a bread maker that can handle the stiff dough... From there they can be pressed out (using a tortilla press) or rolled out and passed over a hot cast iron pan to cook - They actually 'cook' in seconds. With a little practice, and developed efficiencies, 12-24 fresh, so-mo-bedda tortillas await you in about 1/2 hour's time.
Those can be quartered and stacked, then the stacks halved, ad halved again, to form your own chips, which go through the fryer in no time at all.
WAY easier than bread.
Also Bannock or Indian fry bread. Internet recipes abound... But they are all pretty much the same.
Easy to wrap around a stick and cook over a fire, or flattened and thrown in a cast iron pan to fry.
Very versatile. Indian tacos or bushcraft pizza, or stuffed with cheese or folded over and filled with whatever ingredient..
Even for breakfast - fry up hash browns, fry up an egg, and fry up some flatbread - Lay the hash browns down on the flat bread, lay the eggs on top of the hashbrowns. throw on some picante sauce.
all of the above... Staple food, easy and delicious... and costs pennies
You won't believe how good fresh tortillas are. You'll wonder why you've been paying for the crap at the store.
berdie:
Beans. Pintos, navy, butter beans, black beans... With a pan of cornbread.
It will keep ya goin' on the cheap.
roamer_1:
--- Quote from: berdie on March 28, 2024, 09:26:06 pm ---Beans. Pintos, navy, butter beans, black beans... With a pan of cornbread.
It will keep ya goin' on the cheap.
--- End quote ---
More than keep you going... Many, many times I have set down to red beans and rice with a burger or sausage patty busted in, and some corn bread on the side or laid under the rest.
I would take that over any $50 plate in any restaurant.
But yeah - Learn to cook beans. I know it ain't so in Texas, but dang near anywhere else, beans make chili. And if you are looking to stretch a buck, anything you can make in a big pot is gonna go far.
Before the current inflation, my chili cost about 12 bucks, took about a half hour of prep (and a while on the bubble)and would feed me for a week.
I mean ALL week. So many things to do with a good chili. Chili fries, chili over potatoes, a chili omlette... Lay down texas toast, rip a couple big hot dogs down the middle and lay them down on the toast, cover em with chili and cheese, and a garnish of onion and parsley. SO GOOD!
So when do we get to casseroles?
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