Give me some ideas for <$4 per serving dinners. Getting bored of meat/starch/veg dishes. Made this tonight. Cost about $2.
Poverty Dinners
Give me some ideas for <$4 per serving dinners. Getting bored of meat/starch/veg dishes. Made this tonight. Cost about $2.
Polenta can feed you for pennies. Spaghetti could, but that'll probably go up. Lentils are classic poverty food, so is bread.
I already a eat a ton of lentils and bean dishes, I should learn some different ways of preparing them. I should try polenta, probably have it with some kind of slow cooked tomato based beef or pork entree.
I used to live off of instant mash and instant couscous. It was 20-30 pence a meal. Pretty good.
bet your bones are brittle and hollow like old bucatini
What's wrong with you people?
I was very poor. I still am
If you going to buy "polenta" don't buy anything labeled polenta unless you want to pay an idiot tax.
Just course ground cornmeal right?
you can also fry it and make toppings. maple syrup or a tomato sauce both go amazing with polenta.
How is spaghetti not considered cheap? $10 would buy enough to feed 4-6 people a meal of beef bolognese, garlic bread and cucumber/tomato/vinaigrette salad.
whats in the red and the brown goyslop?
based idea! i need to get back into making chili. its flexible, tastes great, and keeps in the freezer for weeks. when the pandemic first happened i made 2 months worth of chili and froze it. literally ate chili for dinner every night for 2 months and never got tired of it.
>making chili erryday
basically do this with other types of dishes. also try dry beans this time. put the chili on things. you can afford good rice and good bread with butter as it will stretch your meal out. mix some dry herbs into the butter and toast that bread. if you can afford cheese make cheese bread to have with your chili. tiny things like that will make your food go further and have you eating like a king. while people who spend a lot more are eating crap because it is easier.
cooking with whole foods is the absolute cheapest way to live, the healthiest, and the tastiest. just the facts. if you learn to use your oven you'll master your budget. learn to roast, make casseroles, and learn to bake breads.
You can also cook big pots of plain dry beans and freeze them in can sized portions, which is far, far cheaper than buying canned beans. Save your bones and skin and shit and put it in a freezer bag. I have separate bags for poultry, beef and pork. After a while you'll have enough to make stock.
i use a mix of red and black beans, i also change up what i eat with my chili from time to time. once i even cooked a little spaghetti and used the chilli as a sauce with some kraft parmesan or if im feeling like a fatty ill make nachos and use the chilli instead of ground beef.
chilli is the ultimate goyslop/bachelor chow if you work a few vegetables into it.
I put weird shit in spicy beef dishes like chili and "taco meat" because you can't even tell.. like canned beets.. just to get the health benefits of rarely consumed vegetables.
that's awesome anon. you really have a huge universe of options. once you get your staples down hunting for ingredients is a lot easier. just takes time to find a sale on items you want. olive oil is expensive but the big bottle will go on sale someday and can keep for a few years.
think about chili for a second. have you made a white chili before? a green chili? beef, chicken, pork? lot of options, lots of different ingredients, and all of them affordable. big hunk of bread, big bowl of stew. the hard part is definitely getting all the ideas and trying new things. you gotta plan that out ahead of time and then set up your shopping lists to look out for sales. especially for those bulk spends. once you get that going though it just gets cheaper and cheaper over time.
I get my big ass bags of rice on amazon. can't find a better deal but maybe an immigrant market would have one.
this is a good recipe from chef john: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EKw4k8hkHA&t=336s
I have sausage and chicken already in the freezer that was on sale. got the sausages on "manager special" (expiring) and the chicken was like a buck a pound at the time. just need to pick up some potatoes which are dirt cheap. maybe splurge on fresh herbs for one dollar. for me it's really about getting the most expensive items on sale in bulk then working around that. then throw it all on top of a good rice.
Is that kimchi?
What kind of grain is that?
Looks like lentils and rice
Pic rel. Depression era southern desert. Doesn't actually taste like vinegar. Just sort of a custardy pie made with flour, sugar and vinegar. Much better than it sounds.
Learning to stretch and properly season soups so that they're very watery but still flavorful. It mostly comes down to salt but certain other flavors really give soups body to their flavor.
Also, explore the grocery stores in your area, see if there are any that donate to food banks or mark down stuff that needs to go asap. You can save money before you even start buying and cooking anything.
Is that a busted up cabbage roll?
all prices in leafbucks:
1 lb chicken thighs: $5
1 green pepper: $2
head of broccoli: $2
Box of couscous: $8
Chicken and veggies enough for two meals, couscous enough for many meals. Unfortunately if you're poor it's hard to get variety/new flavours, but not impossible. also check out the discount food apps, in leafland we have "TooGoodToGo" which lets you get super discounted, about to expire stuff
damn bro chicken looks good, how u make that
I just threw a chicken thigh in the toaster oven for like 20 minutes at ~400F. Dry it with a paper towel beforehand for crispy skin. I think I used garlic powder, paprika and a shakea cayenne.
an ol' shakea shakea?
Liver is pretty dang cheap if you got a good place, plus it's really healthy fer ya
Yeah I got frozen liver at shartmart for like $2.20 a pound the other day. Still not as good a deal as the like $1.70 chicken legs or thighs per pound.
Beef liver? I sometimes eat fried chicken liver, but I'm white trash and grew up on fried liver and gizzards. Chicken liver is a lot cheaper. I think most people use it for bait.
Yeah it's beef liver that I got. Never tried chicken liver, but I would, as well as the hearts.
Beef liver is tastier and more nutritious, I can only eat chicken liver if it's coated in flour and deep fried.
Chicken liver is usually cheaper
>Chicken and beans, chicken and beans
>Best looking dinner that I ever seen
Eat a few spoonfuls of peanut butter, wash it down with milk.
How about cheap deserts? I make rice pudding or vinegar pie once or twice a month.
What the FRICK is vinegar pie
Depends on how far you are willing to go and how much time you want to spend, honestly.
If you can be arsed, you can usually go fishing for 30 USD for the season with daily bag limits, which is more than enough. We regularly stock a deep freezer with Rainbow Trout and the occasional Bass, and people at Costco pay 14 USD+/pound for that, but you can literally get the fishing equipment for free/trade on Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist, or even your local library, which will kit you out completely with fishing, and power bait costs nothing. Boom. High quality protein.
Food banks are where it is at as well. You should see the shit coming out of them, you can definitely make a weekly/twice a week circuit if you work at it, and much of it is fresh veggies or higher end grocery items that are "about to expire" because they can't sell by Best Buy date. If you are not making any money every one of them will hand you a box/bag. Some are literally no questions asked, so you'd see motherfrickers in Lexus sedans coming in and scooping deals. It's first come first serve, so frick morality.
Also, dumpster diving/begging, but people aren't keen on that, but you can always look sad and ashamed and some pink haired SJW will give you 100 USD in fancy bread or Whole Foods cast offs.
Foraging for berries and other things is also good, there's usually clubs and shit in cities that can teach you the way.
The idea that people should even struggle in the United States with food security is laughable. We're the country that slaughtered a million or so pigs because there wasn't labor to process them.
https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/14018-number-of-hogs-euthanized-due-to-covid-19-impacts-still-unknown
And the country that dumped potatoes for much the same reason. We waste like fools.
>1 lb gr beef
>1 lb gr turkey
>some worcestershire sauce, and tony's creole seasoning
>1 red onion
>1 white onion
>2 cans ranch style beans
>2 bell peppers
>1-3 serrano peppers
>1 beer
>pan fry the peppers together, it makes deadly nerve gas so be careful
>put those in a pot with the beans and the beer on low heat
>pan fry the meat together, stirring well so it comes out really fine, dump a bunch of tony's and worcestershire in as you do
>that goes in the pot
>chop the onions up real chunky and chuck them in cold
>stir
>eat with saltines and shredded cheese
IDK what this is but I make it all the time it costs fricking nothing, makes a week of food and I have had nothing but rave reviews when ppl tried it.
oh wait I also add like 4 or 5 tomatoes chopped up chunky, those go in cold too
Sounds good. Thanks for posting an actual recipe. What are ranch style beans?
They're just a brand of baked beans that's common in Texas grocery stores, idk how you'd compare them to your local brands, but I'm gonna assume you'd find them over seasoned as frick
I don't know, I'd probably like them. Guessing they're like Texas chili, but with beans in place of meat. I'm going to try them next time I go shopping.
Probably not at all similar, but these motherfrickers are the best canned baked beans out there. I feel like an idiot paying $3 for a can of baked beans, though. I should come up with a copycat version.
>Guessing they're like Texas chili, but with beans in place of meat.
Yeah that's a good comparison, beans seasoned like they're meat.
Hope you enjoy anon, my bachelor chow has served me well
omelet sandwich, lots of variations and they are fun and easy to cook fairly quick and you can adjust how many eggs you used based on how hungry you feel.
if you want something easier you could do fried eggs on toast with some sort vegetable or bean based side dish or maybe a few spoons of heated canned chili or mushroom soup.
Every time I try to cook lentils I get an instant pot recipe but they don't taste good.
Need some kind of pork fat, or any fatty meat, really.. Fry up some bacon first in the pot, then proceed as normal. For the pic I posted earlier, I literally just threw a bone in, skin-on chicken thigh in a pot and cooked it in a little oil until the skin was browned as frick and stuck to the bottom of the pan. Then I added vegetables and bacon fat that I saved to saute the veg. The idea isn't to cook the meat, but to just sear the frick out of it to create some fond on the pan. It'll still be raw on the inside, but it finishes cooking in the water as you bring it to a boil and simmer. When the lentils are almost done you just pull out the chicken, let it cool for a couple minutes on a plate and remove the bones/joint cartilage and possibly the skin, shred or chop it up and add it back into the pot.
Also, when I go shopping I buy a bag of carrots and a bag of celery, wash and break them down. I make some carrot sticks and celery sticks I put in a Tupperware of water in the fridge, and the majority gets diced up with an onion for mirepoix that I just freeze in a different Tupperware and pull out handfuls as needed for soups and stews and such. I do the same with onions and bell peppers for omelettes and rice dishes.
Picrel- Ham bouillon is also good for that sort of thing. It's vegetarian and is basically just msg and ham flavoring. Makes lentils delicious. I basically won't eat any lentils or beans unless I have bacon, salt pork, hammocks or skin on chicken thighs or drumsticks.
made a big thing of minestrone for like $18 AUD - got about 6 - 8 meals out of it
Get good rice and then everything on top of rice. Large batches of stews to stretch out cheap proteins. It isn't cheap at first but after you build a spice collection Indian dishes are amazing. I make large batches of keema matar (spiced beef with peas) and stretch it out with potatoes, garbanzo beans, and carrots. Can feed myself for a week and then stretch that out further with rice and fried eggs. Get herbs/spices in bulk (like the huge mccormick shakers) and on sale when you can.
Work with flour. Make pancakes and add in some ingredients. I get big bags of flax, hemp seed, and hemp protein. Then I mix in berries and wala healthy protein pancakes. Again a little pricey to collect the ingredients but they stretch out super far once you have them and make a big difference in the meal. Then I can get fresh fruit when on sale and make a billion pancakes for dirt cheap. Also buy butter on sale, it keeps well. When I was trying to budget I started with the basics then built up the extra ingredients in big bulk purchases. It took time but you can do it if you just list out what you want but can't afford right away then shop for them over time.
Break down your shopping into protein (pb, eggs, meats, fish), carbs (pasta, bread, flour), veg, herbs/spices, and grocery (soap etc). Then bookmark the ad pages of every store within range. Every week pop open the ads and see what the sales are. Over time you will get a sense of the real price of foods and what is a deal to spend on.
Some tips:
>Buy in bulk at the lowest price then shop for smaller amounts as you go
>find the discount aisles in each store you visit, they all have at least one area
>Immigrant markets are your FRIEND. Find where they are and get their ads.
>You can buy some food and toiletries online cheaper, and at higher quality (e.g., bulk bags of good rice, paper, etc)
>If you have the room freeze your on-sale protein and get your veg fresh
>Potatoes, onions, and carrots sell dirt cheap in bulk bags. Learn to cook with these.
>Rice is a staple and there are a thousand ways to eat it
>Learn recipes that stretch out proteins with vegetables, rice, and pastas
>oatmeal and oatmeal accessories
>search for deals on herbs and spices like a thirsty simp and over a long period of time you will build a formidable spice collection
>Buddy up with the deli and butcher personnel and they will hook you up
Is beef tongue cheap? Beef tongue tacos with corn tortillas, onions, cilantro and lime are fricking god tier but I can't afford $2 per taco.
It's $4 per lb grass fed at my local farmer's market so if you can find it in a grocery it would probably be cheaper.
>$2 per taco.
Your local taqueria will match those prices, maybe $0.50 more.
Your cheapest option for tacos/tostadas is to braise some chicken thighs or pork shoulder. You can get those down to like $0.50 per taco.
This is something I do once a month. I'll braise a couple pounds of chicken and make tostadas throughout the week. Some days I'll add bbq sauce when reheating the chicken, other days teriyaki and kimchi. Chicken Tacos are a great blank canvas for a bunch of fusion cuisine.
Bitch, get the frick out of here with your chicken tacos.
I cook refried beans at least once a week.
I bought 20 pounds of chicken for $11 today.
this is the way. get good quality zip locks. you'll be glad you did.
Based
Baked potato with scrambled eggs.
>1 lb ground beef - $5
>2 cans of black or kidney beans - $2-$3
>2 cans of diced tomatoes - $2-$3
>1 onion - $0.30
>4-5 cloves of garlic - $0.50
>green bell pepper - $0.75
>total: $10-12
4 servings of chili for $2.5-$3 each
non-organic and non-grassfed isn't food
So get grassfed and organic. I buy grassfed organic ground beef for $6.30/lb, not much different.
1 pound of frozen shrimp is on sale this weekend for $5 at my grocers. Shrimp linguini is pasta, parsley, butter, garlic, lemon, parmesan, and a few shrimps. I have all of that except the lemon in my pantry most of the time. That's about $2-3 a serving at 4 servings if you even use all the shrimp and a pound of pasta, dried parsley, fresh garlic. Fresh parsley can be pretty cheap.
get a sandwich press
you can even use fake american cheese on them. use a slice of cheese, some creamed corn, some onion slices, little bit of margarine and thick bread. I make three at a time so it's filling. it's 6 slices thick bread, 1 can of corn and half an onion and 3 fake cheese. cheap as hell and tastes delicious.
also you really can't go wrong with pasta and pasta sauce.
Make sure you buy your base (rice, beans, bread ect) in bulk.
Breakfast:
>get a piece of bread and pull the middle out, put it on an oiled pan, toast one side, then flip and crack an egg into the middle. If you have two it's probably .50c
Lunch: I like to either have all the ingredients prepared before hand so I can quickly cook or just spend an afternoon making it in bulk.
>dice and marinate 2lbs of chicken with a lime and pineapple juice, salt, pepper, cumin and a diced jalapeno and leave in fridge for a couple days. If you have mexican hot sauce, add that too. ($12)
>cook 3-4 cups of rice and beans in the morning ($1?). Leave covered
>put the meat and marinade in a pan and simmer, occasionally adding a bit of water until it comes apart. Allow the liquid to reduce but not until it's dry. This usually takes ~half hour.
>dice 2 onions, 2 jalapenos, 3-4 tomatoes and a good sized handful of cilantro, mix and put in fridge ($5)
>cut up half a head of lettuce and fridge ($1)
>shred cheese (optional) ($2)
>line up the ingredients and have tin foil ready
>heat tortillas briefly on a pan, then add a scoop/handful of everything. Roll and wrap in tin foil. Roll until you have ~6-8 big burritos.
>freeze half.
Each burrito will cost between 2-3 bucks and should be super filling and fairly healthy.
>1lb of fake crap or shrimp, nori, green onions, peppers and a handful of avacados if they are in season and cost ~.50 a pop. ($15)
>make sushi rice, add rice vinegar (regular vinegar will work ok too) ($1)
>cut down crab and add a cupish of mayo. Boil and dice shrimp
>cut veggies for handroll
>make handrolls and then freeze whatever you don't eat in cling wrap.
You can probably make ~10-15 handrolls each costing ~$1 and tasty af.
Learn how to forage and go pick some fruit homie.
Black beans and rice, mix in mayo and your favourite hot sauce and you have cheap meal that fills ya.
rely on tastiness over texture
I've been 'MEAT' prepping rather than meal prepping where I just cook up a load of heavily seasoned tasty af beef or turkey meatballs and keep them in the freezer and making stews/chilis/etc and adding them to as the meat instead of making it with meat
most veg is still cheap af even with 'flation and price barely even factors with spices/seasonings that give them their flavour
as for carbs, well I don't really eat them myself other than a slice of bread, but none of the common staples have ever been expensive anyway
jmo
can't immediately quantify the cost-value here rn but I know its a fraction of $4
>Only eating the cheapest ground meats
Enjoy your rectal cancer and various other ailments
so what else in your cartoon-tier 'dropping list of items' is also surely going to give me those delightful things also?
going to bet pretty much everything
lol.. I eat ground beef as often as the average person. Making 100% of your meat consumption ground industrial farmer meat is going to be bad for your health in the long term and that's backed by years of research, but do what ya want partner
Chicken and veg sheet pan
4 pack of chicken thighs salted ahead of time.
A few potatoes, 3 carrots, and 1 or 2 large onions cut into smallish chunks.
Put the vegetables on the parchment lined sheet
Coat them with melted butter and season with salt, pepper and rosemary
Make room for the chicken thighs on the pan and brush with butter
Put everything together in the oven at 375 for 55 minutes.
Instead of buying whole tomatoes or tomato sauces, I just use tomato paste to make a tomato broth for flavor
ive got canned tomatoes and some onion and various spices and seasoning, can i make a liquidy (read: not chunky) tomato sauce without cooking? ive got a bigass emulsion mixer im itching to use
>can I make pasta sauce without cooking
Why are you on a cooking board
I hate poor people so much it's unreal
That's okay, we poor people also hate poor people.
You deserve to be as impoverished as your soul.
If you don't mind eggs for dinner maybe shakshuka?
10 years ago this'd be funny but it is a little worrisome how many people are having trouble paying their bills despite working a job.
>10 years ago this'd be funny but it is a little worrisome how many people are having trouble paying their bills despite working a job.
racist.
Yes but I fail to see how you could tell that from my post
Because you are not thinking about equity or you would understand this is a transitionary phase necessary to bring economic justice to marginalized communities.
lmao should have known you meant that you jokester
It is kind of depressing though. And no end in sight right now.
Not from the US but the attempt to mitigate backlash over prices of basic goods and gas and shit is just bizarre.
We're in for some dark times, I'd best buy some more dried lentils and rice.
Canned beans in sauce are great, but they're also great with rice. Which makes it easy to split a can into three meals.
Coconut flour based baked goods, you’ll need less of the flour and all of them are DENSE.
Simon and Garfunkel Chicken and Dumplings
1 lb chicken
dried parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (herb blend)
red pepper flake
black pepper (partially ground if you have it)
1 onyon chopped
3 cloves of garlic whole
4-5 small taters or approximate amount of taters chopped
bag of those little carrots or peel and quarter up carrots
1 tbsp oil of choosing
1/2 stick of butter
2 cans of condensed cream of chicken (or some chickeny liquid, or bullion if you got that)
1 can white beans rinsed well
a small can of those easy bake oven biscuits
sear chicken in oil of choosing until browned, remove
drop in butter and sauté onyons, red pepper flake, and black peppercorn (or just pepper) until nicely sweated
add in a dash of the herb blend and stir in the garlic cloves
sautee for another two minutes
throw in the veggies
add cream of chicken and 3 cans full of water
throw in beans
1 tbsp of each of herb blend (or as much as you can afford, be generous)
stir very well
add in chicken and submerge in mixture
take the oven biscuits and quarter them, then roll into a ball, and submerge. if a full can use half or it is too many.
season with salt and pepper
set pressure cooker to "chicken" (20 mins) or stew for 45 minutes (until done)
when done remove chicken and shred it, then put it back in
let cool and marry for a good while (30 mins if you can wait)
serve with toasty bread because carbs and carbs with butter and potatoes and cream of chicken with more chicken is filling as frick. the starch from the beans will make your stomach explode with fullness.
>Simon and Garfunkel
>Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Oh, you!
it's a pretty good recipe if you don't know how to make your own dumplings or are lazy. I am both.
Canned biscuit dough does make some pretty good dumplings. My white trash mother made something similar, I suppose we'd call your version more of a Northern style, whereas the one she made was Southern style, like those Sweet Sue canned chicken and dumplings.
>Boil whole chicken in a pot of water
>Remove bird, let cool
>Remove all the meat from the carcass
>Add carcass and skin back to pot and simmer for a while
>Strain the broth you've made, spoon off a little fat
>Bring back to a simmer
>Add your shredded chicken
>Pinch off small dumpling sized pieces of dough from the canned biscuit tube
>Roll said pieces in flour and drop into pot
>Cook until dumplings are done
Very plain, I think she only used salt and pepper.. and honestly I don't even think she made stock like I described, pretty sure she just boiled a chicken in salted water and then added the meat and dumplings back into it. Both types are really fricking good, cheap comfort foods.
I always remember that herb blend as scarborough fair. Tastes good on and in mild food like pork, poultry, wheat-stuff, rice, etc.