Easy (relatively) chowder with random veg, protein and cheese
The only specific ingredients are onions, garlic, spices, heavy cream and at least some cheddar.
Before starting salt all of your veg. This is so they are INTERNALLY seasoned, otherwise you’ll have salty soup and bland veg.
Saute your onions (with any other hardy vegetables) and butter can be used if feeling indulgent. Salt as you saute
Once slightly tender add and cook a couple tablespoons of flour (depends on quantity of soup and desired thickness)
Add whatever stock or bullion on hand (I use home made with bones and veg scraps). You could also use plain water if really starving and desperate though.
Once the soup is boiling add a ton of (salted) minced garlic, FRESH CRACKED black pepper, rosemary, thyme, smoked paprika and a couple pinches of mustard powder. These can be fresh or dry, but I do like fresh garlic and fresh cracked pepper (many of the flavors and compounds are highly volatile and will literally float away if stored post cracking). Also be generous with your spices, makes it way tastier.
Add your veg. It can really be anything from broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, mushrooms zucchini, celery, cabbage (not too much), bell peppers, etc. experiment and go nuts.
When pot is hot again add your protein, nothing specific. I’ve used ham, pork, ground beef, ground turkey, deli meat that was gonna go bad, breakfast sausages, Italian sausages, chicken breast and thighs and even tilapia. Make sure to salt them for 15 mins before adding.
When your proteins are not raw and almost cooked add heavy cream (if you don’t have much you can also add some milk, you can also freeze milk, let it melt and drip into a container, when halfway melted remove the frozen milk and whatever is collected is highly concentrated because all of the fats in the milk melt much faster than water)
When soup is reduced to desired amount turn off the heat and let it cool to a light simmer. Add your cheese and stir thoroughly. If soup is too hot your cheese will cook and clump up in nasty globs and will not thicken your soup either.
That sounds delicious! Thank you
If you are forced to consuming mostly cheap packaged goods like Hamburger Helper and the like, add the secret spice blend to make it actually have some flavor:
Salt*, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and MSG.
*Check the sodium levels already in the packaged food first; if it’s already high, you can ignore adding more.
These spices are cheap and make everything so much better. Even non-savory stuff sometimes benefits.
Cabbages, dried beans/peas/lentils, and collards. Learn to cook these “poor foods” in ways you like - they are cheap and plentiful and amenable to lots of different methods (cabbage, especially). Extend/bulk all the above with rice, farro, polenta, tortillas, or a solid southern cornbread recipe (not sweet and more cornmeal than flour).
I do both collards and beans in an instant pot (not together, though), which cuts down on mess and time. One of my favorite things to do with cabbage is make Kim chi or sauerkraut. Kraut is easier (and a little cheaper, it’s just cabbage, salt, and time) and opens up a realm of easy Euro-ish meals (kraut, lentils/potatoes, and sausages, for example, is highly economical, tasty, and filling).
Dr Pepper and Cold Brew make a fantastic mixed drink; it tastes similar to spiced rum with no alcohol.
Get a rice cooker with a steam tray. Make a cup of rice, with frozen veggies in the tray. Spice the rice if you want (a little cumin with pepper slices makes excellent fajitas).
When I was in college I put rice in everything because it disgusted my flatmates. I could cook a meal and repel mooches at the same time.
Soak dried Porcini or Shiitake mushroom in a bowl of warm water for about 20 min (can boil the mushrooms if fresh). The mushrooms then can be used as an ingredient to a variety of recipes but more importantly, the bowl of water is now an umami bomb, and can be used as a broth or seasoning to add a ton of flavor to a bunch of dishes (pasta sauce, soup, stir-fry…)
Porcini in particular has an earthly, nutty taste and can be used to create complex sauces with a “beefy” taste.
You can get powdered porcini. That won’t require the soak.
Crock Pot, skinless chicken thighs, bottled sauce of your choice, frozen veggies of your choice, cook until chicken is done.
Chicken thighs are the cheapest chicken meat and changing up the flavor of sauce and blend of veggies makes it feel like completely different meals.
Serve over rice or pasta, depending on which kind of sauce you used.
One thing I’ve realised after many years of trying to eat cheap and healthy is that not all cheap and healthy food advice applies in every region - you really need local advice to make the best choices possible.
For example, I’ve often read the advice to eat rice to stay cheap, but where I live, potatoes usually come out to be cheaper, especially just after harvesting. Potatoes are also arguably a better choice from a health perspective.
Otur när man gillar ris
Meth, i save money food for more than a week
I mean, you’re not wrong. Between not eating and having zero compulsion to drink, I saved a ton of money when I was a functional tweaker. Quitting meth turned me into a fat alcoholic.
oatmeal + milk + cabbage + carrots + cheap protein of choice + seasoning
Meal planning carefully to take advantage of sales, buy in bulk when possible, and eliminate food waste. I have my meals planned out through the end of January and I do this every month. The money I spend on groceries has halved since I started using this approach.
As weird as it sounds, paying for a meal delivery service has really cut down our cost for food. We used to be poor planners, so would just go to the store and buy staples without having actual meals planned out in advance. More often than not, nothing really looked good or we wouldn’t have all the ingredients to make a meal, so we’d order out.
For the price of ordering out once a week, we now have ingredients for 3 or 4 meals delivered to the house every week. Then it takes the guess work out of planning, because it narrows down our options to what we had delivered.
Sure, it’s more expensive than doing the planning ourselves and going to the store to buy the ingredients. But it sure does save us a lot of money overall, since we now eat out less than once a week, instead of multiple times per week.
Ain’t nothing wrong with those meal kit services. They’re reasonably priced and great for taking the planning out of the equation. I tend to sign up for them for a week at a time when life throws me a curveball.
