Thursday, May 31, 2018

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.

No comments: