What are some easy meals I can make for cheap?

What are some easy meals I can make for cheap?  I answered this question on Quora and decided to share it here because there are many useful links in them.

There are many easy meals that you can make cheap if you use less ingredients in the dish. I managed to find many such recipes and saved them on Pinterest.

Recipes - 3 ingredients or less

What is the point of making it cheap but there are leftovers to throw away? So, throw away less food by using leftovers from last dish or learn to cook just enough or learn to do “planned-overs”, that is, cooking in excess so that your can create another dish with them.


"Cooking for One or Two" by Food and Nutrition Specialist, Julie Garden-Robinson, Ph.D., LRD provides a guideline on how to reduce the ingredients in your recipe if you are cooking smaller portions. You will find many tips on using your leftovers at Frugal Leftover Cooking Ideas.

You should also try to figure out ways to use less utensils to cook. If you watch cooking programmes by chefs like Michael Smith on TV, you can pick up useful tips from him. He used vegetables, such as, carrots, potatoes and onions to replace the rack you need for roasting. By placing your meat on top of the vegetables you do not have an oily rack to clean up. Doesn’t that make cooking your meal cost saving too since you are using less water and time for cleaning? You can even clean up the sauce off your pans by using leftover rice or bread.

If you are working in that direction to make your meals cheaper, buy multi-functional cooking wares because useful wares can save you time and money. Learn more cooking techniques that will require you to use less gadgets in you kitchen.

Find ways to use less energy to cook. I use a large soup pot, and place a smaller metal pot inside to cook my rice and another to boil soup. On top of the pot, I can also place a plate of fish or chicken or minced pork to steam. Food keep warm in the steamer so that you do not have to reheat them.



If I use the rice cooker to cook or a pot to boil my soup, I will try to include a dish that requires steaming.



Use leftover leftover sauces and cooking oil in your new dish!



Plan meals for the week so that you can buy your ingredients in bulk which make them cheaper. Stock less perishable food and save by buying what is seasonal where you are.

If you like Chinese cooking, here are some recipes for cheap meals I created for my family. I did some of them in slides so that my children can learn to cook too.

Salad out of Leftovers
Perk It Up Dishes
Food Makeover

Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce


Fast food? Can't beat them? Join them!


And if, like I do, you have picky eater at home to feed, make your dish tastier with this magic sauce.


How cheap can you get if you are able to find ways to make use of food scraps to cook? Check out the food scraps used in making this Vegetable Broth.

When I was young my family used to collect a bag of cake scraps from a confectionery nearby. These are cut offs from the sides of baked flat cake layers. I discovered that if you crumbled the cake and mix it up with frosting, you can make Popsicle like these.

 I think you should not have any problem selling them if you want to. You can learn how to make it at Homemade Cake Pops - Sallys Baking Addiction. If you want more recipes using cake scraps just google “cake scraps”. By doing that I found 15 Incredible Uses for Leftover Cake.

How To Stir Fry Vegetable

When you use vegetables with thick stems like broccoli and cauliflower, it is suggested that you blanched them first before cooking but you can also stir fry them first before adding leafy greens. I like this post on Quora by Chef Mark Blaxall on how you can prepare and cut broccoli or cauliflower into florets for your dish.  

Here are steps on how to stir fry vegetables.



Here is how you can stir-fry vegetable with shrimps and yellow bean sauce.



Type of root vegetables that need to be stir fried first in before adding leafy greens.



You can read more useful tips on stir frying vegetables at Taste of Asian Food or watch some videos on “Vegetable Preparation” by Chef Robert Nassar from Dinner Done.

Healthy Pancakes 4 Ways

Saw this "Healthy Pancakes 4 Ways" on Facebook and decided to create a meal card for all four recipes.


As I am working on a project to clear used enveloped and unused exercise books, I use Calibri font size 8 as I want it printed out on A5 paper in landscape format to put in envelopes which will work as a folder.



If you would like to make your own, you can find the recipes on Tasty.

Source:
Banana Pancakes
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Blueberry Pancakes
Dark Chocolate Pancakes

Recipe Print Out Size

My children enjoy eating French toast.  I usually make them when I have access bread to clear.

I do not want my children to be intimidated by the number of ingredients in a recipe so, I prepare it in table form by indicating how they are used in each step.  That way, they will be put off to learn to cook the dish with 6 or more ingredients.



I got inspired by a fan of Foodnetwork Channel, "Good Eats", who use this format to record recipes he collected.

I created the table on an A5 size paper and will print it out in landscape format.  The font I used is Calibri size 8.  That means that even if I fold the envelope size I used in half, I should not have any problem storing them inside neatly.


On the folder, I wonder what symbols I can use to indicate what the meal is for.  That is if this recipe is to be cooked for breakfast or for lunch or for dinner.

I will also create folders with the days indicated so that if they plan to cook for a week, they can slip the recipe into the folder of the day they would like to cook the dish.  When they need to shop for ingredients, they can just take out the weekly folders.

Working on Recipes Folders

I am working on a project to create recipe folders for my children to learn to cook.

How do I make it easy for my children to locate the recipe they are looking for? 

I can use colour codes like this which I can indicate on the envelope.



A 162x229mm envelope is large enough to hold A5 paper.  So, this is the size I need to print my recipes on if I want to fit them inside one neatly.

Looking at this envelope sizes, maybe it is a good idea to consider using DL format which is of  size 110x220mm.  Maybe, I should work on the recipes first before I decide what size folders I should create. 

What can you do with envelopes and exercise books?

What do you do with all those envelopes you received your bills in?  I like to keep the ones in size 16x23cm that I received with my phone bills.  I use them as dividers in my office files.

Some envelopes of this size open up at the wider end and they are some that opens up on the shorter end.



The idea is to make them into Accordion Folder.

I am also trying to find ways to clear all the pages from exercise books that my children no longer use. 

I am thinking of using them to print recipes that my children will find useful so that they will learn to cook on their own.  They can use the envelopes as folders to store the recipes in.  The folders will allow them to segregate the recipes for ease of locating them when required.  They can also store shopping list they create for the recipes and any tips they discover along the way to make cooking the dish easy.

So, how will this re-use of abandoned envelopes and papers project turn out?  Just watch out for the next posting.

What is the best way to keep containers?

If you leave the covers of the containers on, they will take up space in your kitchen cabinet.

It is best to remove the covers and stack one container inside another, with the larger ones at the bottom as shown here.



Stack the covers separately.  I like to separate the squares ones from the rectangle covers so that it will be easier for me to locate the cover I need for each container.