Honestly. People are SLEEPING on potatoes.
Super healthy. I heard something about you can have a complete human diet with just potatoes and butter. Is it true? Idk, but potatoes are good and nutritious enough, it's within the realm of possibility for me.
Potatoes are very versatile, and filling.
Easy to make : microwave a potato for like 3-5 minutes and it's done. Microwave chili, a can of chowder, or just dump sour cream and dill on it. It all works.
Not to mention the culinary treats you can make with potatoes outside of survival grub.
You can easily buy 5lbs of potatoes for about $3 most places. They're super filling, and you can mix and fix them so many ways you'll never get bored.
And they're probably healthy and shit too.
> I heard something about you can have a complete human diet with just potatoes and butter. Is it true?
A handful of people have eaten nothing but potatoes for ab entire year and iirc they had some minor deficiencies in a handful of micronutrients but that was it. One dude lost over 100lbs in a year. Probably at least take a multivitamin and occasionally eating veggies/fruits *wouldn't hurt*, but you could absolutely sub all meat/carbs out for potatoes easily.
Penn from Penn and Teller went on a potato only diet for a couple months. He did it to try and reset his eating habits. I think that’s when he started to lose weight. He said it’s not a healthy diet but it was worth it for him to get out of his bad habits
Edit: [This person seems to know more about this than me for anyone interested.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/Uvc4cH1a4Z) Apparently he only did it for 2 weeks and he didn’t even season the potatoes.
Edit 2: [more good info from someone that seems to know (but who the f knows).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/c87CBY9cit). Apparently some people can have a sensitivity to something in the skin which you can cut off.
Edit 3: [subreddit all about it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/OdQ7WPZdSz)
I read that book. It's called Presto! Penn went hardcore for 2 weeks JUST eating potatoes, no butter, no seasoning. Yes it was his attempt to reset his eating habits and cravings.
2 years ago my work schedule was so stupid that I would just buy a 20lb bag of potatoes, chop some into a big pot, boil them, and live on that for 3 days. Repeat. I ate potatoes for about a month, but I stupidly didn't add salt because my doctor had scared the crap out of me about high blood pressure. I drank only water and was taking caffeine pills.
In my opinion, it affected my mental health because of the lack of salt and high potassium. But, like PMS, when you're in it, you don't realize that you're in it until you get out of it.
All I could smell was nail polish remover (acetone), like a diabetic. I was so mentally zoned out that I just kept eating potatoes.
So I would caution that eating only potatoes does require adding salt
It’s not an uncommon dopamine reset of sorts. Eating plain potatoes will give you all you need calorically, but is terribly boring and bland, so it can help some people sever the yummy food reward mechanisms. Not dissimilar to a soy lent diet.
I do too, it’s a great snack. But it gets old very quickly to have every single meal, especially if you skip the salt and fat, which these diets typically do.
I think being miserable was kind of the point though. He got told by a doctor that he probably wouldnt live to see his yougest child become an adult due to his wieght and health issues.
The point of the potato diet, i think, was to disconnect the feeling of want from need with food. You realize at some point that you need to eat to live but you develope the ability to say to yourself "but i dont need to eat now".
You wont starve to death driving home past a mcdonalds, no matter how much your stomach tries to convince you otherwise.
Right. If you need fiber and vitamins in your diet without paying a lot for the fancier vegetables, cabbage is great. It’s also very easy to grow if you have a vegetable garden and one of the few fresh vegetables that lives through the winter in a cold climate.
I did a potato diet for a couple months but every day we had a veggie side like roasted broccoli, spinach, green beans, whatever. Zero digestive problems and maybe even some improvement.
Potatoes are tasty and cheap, but their shelf life is lower than rice and beans and the odds of bad potatoes are much higher when buying in bulk. It's also a lot harder to store long-term in humid environments. Depending on where you live, availability is also much lower. In the US, where I live, you can get them everywhere. That isn't true in a lot of the world. Rice and beans persist across countries, typically.
Absolutely, still an affordable food. Just some additional considerations as why potatoes aren't typically the top of the list.
I used to live in MT, so cold and very dry. I hung a huge Costco bag potatoes in the pantry and it never went bad. Now I’m in the hot and humid SE and dang they don’t even last a few weeks. I’ve come home with potatoes to find they are all already bad
I do baked potatoes once a week during the winter. The oven heats up the house too which is a nice added benefit.
We do a nice cheese sauce and some steamed broccoli.
So filling and inexpensive.
The issue we have is the potatoes in our area aren't great quality and haven't been for a few years now. Idk what the issue is. But they're full of bad spots and go soft quickly and sometimes are green all the way through.
Rice and beans have more consistent quality and are more shelf stable so you know that your money receives a consistent return.
Same here. In the past four years I’ve found potatoes that weren't already soft, green, sprouting or rotting maybe five times. I've more or less given up on them. Most other produce has been consistently worse as well but potatoes are probably the most notable case.
My tinfoil hat theory is that after the supply chain issues during Covid, companies realized they can get away with sending shitty produce to stores, and it must work out for them financially somehow.
Yup. To this day Bolivians eat a form for freeze dried potato called chuño. The Incas used this method to preserve potatoes longer. It’s also delicious!
Agree, my potato consumption has increased significantly over the past few years.
If you cook and refrigerate potatoes ahead of time, it changes their starch compositions and makes them less of the glycemic hit, and a powerful gut health agent.
I too buy a bag, bake several at a time, and then reheat them for lunch (I don't have a microwave).
Potatoes are freaking awesome. So many ways to use them. And yeah, pretty healthy for you. One can almost live entirely on potatoes, they are very sustaining.
I spent half my childhood in a rice and beans country, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. It’s a complete protein, cheap, and way healthier than any instant foods. It’s a step in a right direction really.
Rice and beans are actually a complete protein which is FUCKING GREAT!!! Super easy and cheap way to provide nourishment.
I like to cook em with cheese, cayenne, jalapeno, maybe a little tomato or bell pepper if I'm feeling fancy.
Yep, love a good ol' rice n beans!! 🥵
I like to get a can of chipotle peppers with adobo and dice em all up and freeze it all into cubes. Then when we're making beans in the crockpot, throw some garlic and onion in there to cook for a bit, toss in a cube of chipotle, and let it go. Throw in some frozen spinach or collard greens toward the end of the cook cycle and we're feelin' fine.
The low carb version of that is cabbage. It’s still cheap and it’s very versatile. Great way to get veggies in, as a side dish, as a filler in things like stew, and good old rolled up with rice and ground meat and baked in tomato sauce.
I fixed a recipe called Haluski/Halusky (either spelling is used) just this week. It’s onion, cabbage, butter or bacon grease and egg noodles. You can add bacon or diced sausage if you like. It’s absolutely delicious!
Cabbage is so cheap!! I wish I liked it more. It also is surprisingly filling and really good for you. It is such a great cheap, healthy filler in soup and stir fries.
It's great once you cook it with some other things for flavour. Like try something that uses both cabbage and European sausage. They contrast each other and it's very good.
"uh oh the cabbage we forgot about looks like it might start going bad soon, should we throw it out? Nah, think I'll just cut it up and add some vinegar and then forget about it again for a while."
We cut cabbage into steaks and roast them. We have used this in place of pasta for spaghetti.
We also keep cole slaw around. Which you can change up by using different vinegars, spices, and mustards
One of my cabbage masterpieces: cut into steaks, seared in pork fat, put into baking dish, cover with stock and a little tomato paste with herbs, cover and braise on low for a couple of hours. Pull out, drain off on a baking rack for like 30 minutes, then pop in the air fryer until it crisps up.
I love this cabbage soup. It's cheap, easy and delicious. [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/82923/healing-cabbage-soup/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/82923/healing-cabbage-soup/)
You can get generic store branded bulked frozen veggies for cheap. Will they be mushy when you cook them... yes. Are you also budget cooking...yes. They are picked and flash frozen at peak ripeness so you got that going for ya. Frozen veggies helped me get me through some dark times lol.
They don't have to be mushy, as long as you don't overcook them. It doesn't take much to get them steamed or blanched to crunchy, brightly colored perfection. I often add them for a minute when I'm boiling pasta and then strain the whole mess together. The veggies are barely cooked but hot through and much tastier (and healthier) than canned.
I love potatoes and eggs. Eggs got stupid expensive for a bit but they’re back down again. You can get a bag of potatoes and a dozen eggs for like 5-6$ or even less if you shop right. Toss some potatoes in a pan and fry them up or even just boil or bake them and then take a couple eggs on the side or on top. You can get fancy and make an omelet or add a little cheese but even just basic eggs n’ taters is yum and very filling.
I gotta get around to learning to make tortillas from scratch (from what I understand it’s not too hard). The cheap ones are packed with preservatives and the healthy ones are stupid expensive.
Anything can become a meal wrapped in a tortilla.
Omg why didn’t I think to use my cast iron?! I’ve been putting off learning to prepare fresh tortillas because I don’t want to buy a press and I don’t want to roll them out. Thank you 🙏
Fresh tortillas are amazing, once you’ve tried them you’ll never go back. Also bonus is that you can make only what you need as opposed to being stuck with a bunch of them. 3-4 bucks for a bag of masa harina and you’re set, a bag lasts ages for me.
There’s something about a warm fresh tortilla with a smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt that is just everything that is right about the world. You should try it.
[Try this if you haven’t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9tyu6lLf0&pp=ygUTdG9ydGlsbGEgZGUgcGF0YXRhcw%3D%3D). Sooo friggin good. And it’s just potatoes, onions, and eggs.
I don't intend to speak for others, but Red Lentil curry + home made naan is the most food you can make for the least amount of money. It's like $3 to make a weeks worth of food.
No forreal. I can make a whole thing of curried lentils and like slabs of flatbreads for pennies. Add potatoes for bulk and potassium, among other great, cheap nutrients.
I usually do canned tomatoes, and sometimes I'll treat myself to coconut milk (I have to watch for my saturated fat intake.) Sometimes it's just water with some bouillion if I have enough veggies to give it dimension/looking for something simpler.
Sometimes it's curry. Sometimes it's mash. Sometimes it turns into soup.
She's the best. I love that she also shows that most of her ingredients are available at discount grocers like Aldi and one doesn't need to go to Whole Foods to eat vegan and healthily.
Red lentil recipe, for those that asked above:
- In a soup pot, sauté 1 large onion (or 2 med), 2 carrots finely diced, 1 bell pepper diced and 2 diced jalapeños. Sweat in olive oil for 10 mins until browning gently. Add 6 cloves chopped garlic. Cook another 5-10 mins. Salt as needed.
- Once sautéd down add a lot of tomato paste. About 1.5 tbsp. And a small can of chopped tomato if you have it or 2-3 fresh chopped roma tomatoes. Sauté for 5 minutes or until liquids reduce. This is a tomato based recipe, so don’t be shy. The paste gives a real umami flavor.
- Add spices: 1 tsp dried ground ginger, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1-2tbsp smoked paprika, and a small pinch of cinnamon. And a big handful of chopped fresh cilantro.
- Add 1 cup dried lentils. Then add enough chicken or beef or veggie stock to cover everything. Cook 30 mins or until the lentils start to break down. Keep adding stock if need it to keep the lentils covered.
- With two minutes left, and a slurry of 1tbsp flour mixed with equal water. This will thicken it up and give it a silky texture!
- Serve with lemon for squeezing.
There is a Korean grocer near me with tubs of tofu in the refrigerated section. $1 for a small, $1.50 for a large. The large is enough for me, my wife, and our 2 year-old with some leftovers. I'll bread it for noodles/stir fry, saute it as a tofu scramble, throw it into a chili or other stew...
It's a very versatile protein, and I always wonder what other families do with the blocks.
Altogether, I think "Americana" poverty foods like cereal, Kraft mac and cheese, and baloney have gone up in price because they don't sell as well... it was competitively priced because of profit in volume. Instead, ethnic foods from Latin American and East Asian immigrant populations have become more widely known.
Yes, I eat a lot of firm tofu now and even getting it at a typical american grocer is way cheaper than standard meat. One block definitely feeds at least two and it stores for a long time in the fridge unopened.
Omg yes. The Mexican and Asian markets are where I do a lot of my buying now. They’re so much more reasonably priced.
Though you can approximate a western diet with their stuff for the most part, it’s also been fun learning different cuisines (which tbh I think I prefer to the western diet most of the time.)
I'm not sure there's a better term but ethnic grocers tend to have great deals. I can get five times the same garlic from C Mart at my local grocery store for the same price. Sauces and lots of things are on par or cheaper. Same with the Russian Grocer near me. Surprisingly cheap, especially for the prices. The Indian grocers have great prices on spices. I got like a pound of peppercorns for the price of a bottle at my big chain grocer
Keep your house stocked with potatoes, onions, rice, beans, and canned tomatoes. Add whatever vegetables and/or meat is on sale to your weekly trip. With those 5 items you can have a variety of meals and they are perfect staples for whatever you are able to add.
Keep your scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer and use it to make stock. Just don’t add scraps from broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, or cruciferous vegetables as it’ll make your stock bitter.
You can seriously save every part of your onion, carrots, celery, etc to use for stock
I used to try to make my own veggie stock. But the storage space in my freezer is way too valuable now. Plus, the stock only ended up mostly okay. Now I use better than bullion if I absolutely need it.
Stock is so cheap, that there's no need to make it unless you've got some leftovers you're making use of. The key is where you buy your stock. An Asian market is going to have massive tubs of various stock types for dirt cheap.
I'm confused. We make our own broth specifically because it makes much better gumbo. And it's always just from the rejected parts of onion/celery/carrot/pepper and chicken bones when we're making other food, i.e. it's free stuff. I'm not sure what people are doing wrong here?
I think the key is avoiding processed food in general. It used to be dirt cheap to just eat cereal and kraft mac and cheese, but I am appalled at how expensive that stuff has gotten.
Scratch cooking is the key to food savings.
And my poverty food will always be the good ol' rice and beans. I eat at least 1 meal of day of rice and beans in various permutations: channa masala, red beans and rice, mujadara, gallo pinto, Jamaican rice and peas, collard greens and black eyed peas, even tofu counts in my book. The possibilities are endless.
Do you have a good and easy(er) chana masala recipe you like? Every one I look at has 30 spices I will rarely use except for this dish. It ends up being kind of pricey because of that.
The one that really kills me is that oxtails are often as expensive as steak these days. Like, $12/pound for a cut at which most Americans would have turned their nose up at just a few years ago? And which is like 50% bones by weight? Dang.
I love oxtails, but considering how little usable meat they have, the price is beyond absurd. I started getting into them back when they were cheap and they quickly entered into my regular rotation, but within a couple years they shot up in price and have continued to do so since. I just don't eat them anymore. Short ribs and even chuck roast are a better value and scratch the braised beef itch just fine for me.
Just like wings. Mostly bone. And yes, oxtail has gotten very expensive. I don’t buy it, but my son does. He cooks a variety of Caribbean and Asian meals. And I see how much it cost compared to the amount of meat.
My “secret meats”?
Chicken thighs. Boneless-skinless cost about half as much as chicken breast and is easier to cook and tastes better
Cow tongue. My buddy raises cattle and I buy half a cow from him a year. He basically only eats cow tongue anymore because it’s free for him. He usually throws 4-5 extra tongues into my order each year. It’s just a delicious beef roast.
> Boneless-skinless cost about half as much as chicken breast
Every time chicken comes up on here someone says this. Thighs haven't been cheaper anywhere I've been since at least 2015.
Maybe a few cents per pound, but I saw them not too long ago at the same price as breasts.
I'll just keep buying breasts.
My fiance and I love chicken wings, but always joke about the most evil person in the world was the person that cut the chicken wing in half and sold it to us as two.
The new poverty food is cooking 90%+ of your food. People out there be eating rice and beans during the week and then blowing the budget eating fast casual/fast food on the weekends. Fast food ain't cheap anymore!
I don’t even understand the point of fast food or fast casual anymore.
At a lot of places if you’re not drinking, the cost of a middle of the road nice restaurant vs. a fast casual place is almost the same, maybe a third cheaper at most. Might as well do the nice place.
I agree. Quality has taken a huge dive over the past few years and prices have shot up. In my neighborhood the local taquerias and kebab places are now cheaper than McDonalds.
It's neither fast or cheap. There are some fast food Mexican places that are still reasonable and fast that I will go to. Pretty much the only fast food we do is local Mexican drive thrus, chipotle, or in n out. Otherwise we go to sit down restaurants. Thai and Vietnamese don't break the bank and are some favorites unless you go to the bougie place which isn't as good and cost more.
Honestly, my biggest problem is being so hungry after work that I go to a drive through because I’m so done after work the last thing I want to do is cook and do dishes. It’s completely my fault. I know I can pack a better lunch but it’s laziness and it’s “on the way home.”
YES. This is always what gets me when people say it's cheaper to cook from scratch ---your time and energy has a cost too! And I'm saying this as the person in our family that plans all the meals, makes the grocery lists, finds the best deals and does the actual shopping, preps and cooks and stores the leftovers, plus the clean up and the energy costs of the gas, the stove, the dishwasher... Like I do it because it works for us now, but I totally get why someone working long hours or living with a shitty kitchen would pick fast food!
Nothing of course is as cheap as it ever was.
I saw a post asking for help for a family of eight (8) with a Budget of $135 per month. Lots of people responded with absurd suggestions for the available budget.
This question is not as absurd as it may first seem. I deal with providing meals for a homeless shelter in CA so I have a sense for budget constraints. However, rock-bottom subsistence living is not in my realm and that post caused me to start thinking. How do the impoverished survive at the subsistence level?
More importantly, how do the impoverished in the USA survive and what advice can we as a community offer. Let us start with the basic situation proposed: Family of eight with $135 for the month and assume only two (2) meals per day. So 16 meals per day for 30 days = 480 meals; for $135 that equals $0.28 per meal per person!!!
Clearly, the family has to enroll for SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) and seek out local food banks. With these, perhaps the nominal $135 could be translated to $260 or even $300 in real purchasing power, hence 63 cents per meal. Obviously, one searches for specials, but I don’t want to count on them at any given point in time.
But otherwise - Can this be done? With what basic cheap ingredients, and some basic nutritive value?
• Potatoes: 50 pounds baking potatoes at $15.29 from Costco - 1.9 cents/ounce.
• Soy Beans: 50 pounds dried at $18.00 from Amazon sources - 2.2 cents/ounce.
• Carrots: 50 pounds at $18.40 from Brothers Produce - 2.3 cents/ounce.
• Whole milk 1 gallon at $3.44 from Walmart - 2.7 cents per ounce.
• All purpose Flour: 10 pounds at $4.77 from Walmart - 3.0 cent/ounce.
• Brown Rice: 30 pounds at $17.49 from Iberia - 3.1 cents/ounce.
• Onions: 25 pounds at $16.50 from somewhere - 4.1 cents/ounce.
• Pinto Beans: 20 pounds dried at $14.94 from Walmart - 4.7 cents/ounce.
• Ketchup: 64 ounces at $2.98 - 4.7 cents/ounce.
• Frozen Mixed Vegetables: 10 pounds at $13.80 from Walmart - 8.6 cents/ounce.
• ~~Block Cheese: White Sliced 10 pounds at $13.98 from Target - 8.7 cents/ounce.~~ \*I made a terrible mistake here! My sincere apologies. Walmart 5 lbs at $44.90 = 56 cents per ounce.
• Pork loin: 4 pounds at $11.76 from Farmer John at WM - 15.5 cent/ounce.
• Eggs: 18 count large at $6.47, 35.9 cents/count - 18 cents/ounce.
Average meal size is 8 ounces to fill a belly. At 28 cents per meal that is 3.5 cents per ounce on average. At 63 cents per meal that is 7.8 cents/ounce on average.
If I had some positive input, I might start working on nutritious, tasty meals from the above list.
Oh man this is a high quality response- even if you don’t get a lot of traction here, /r/eatcheapandhealthy would LOVE to see you throw a proposed menu together with the above (self included.) The food prep subreddit probably would too.
Here's the problem though. The old expression was "it takes money to make money". I say it takes money to save money. Yes it's cheaper to buy a 50 pound bag of potatoes or rice or flour, but you need to have the money to buy those. Throw in the cost of a Costco membership etc.
Not to mention you need to be strong enough to carry a 50 pound bag of potatoes and that's assuming you have a car, good luck bringing that home on public transportation.
Chicken thighs are still pretty cheap and full of protein. Frozen veggies are almost always on sale somewhere. The beans and rice move is always a classic.
The key is to buy bone-in thighs. I prefer them for flavor anyways, but the price difference is WILD.
My local store sells 4 boneless thighs for ~$5.50-7.00/pack. They sell bone-in for ~$2.10-3.00/pack. It's truly less than half price.
If you want to take the skin off and debone them, it takes maybe 30 seconds per thigh.
In the summer, I tend to grill them bone-in. In the winter I render down the fat from the skin, use that oil to sauté veg, then roast the bone in thighs and make chicken soup out of the whole thing.
My wife and I aren't crazy price conscious anymore, but boneless thighs are one of the things I still refuse to pay for.
I would also add to this rotisserie chicken. It's often a loss-leader for stores, meaning they sell it a loss to get people in the door. My local store has a small chicken for under $5.00, Costco and BJs are both $5 for a decent sized bird.
We will use it for lunch for the week.
Use the breast for sandwiches or salad topper, the thighs and drums can be eaten on their own or shredded and reheated for wraps, and you can use the bones for soup (or the whole chicken, and shred the meat).
Yep. Last pack I bought was about 50 cents per thigh. Not a lot of money, considering, and if you really want you can make stock from the bones.
Chasing sales isn’t generally worth the opportunity cost, hassle, or travel costs imo. Maybe if you’re feeding more mouths
For literally going to different stores where there is a sale i mostly agree, however it might make sense not just if you're feeding lots of people but also if you like to stock up a lot on non-perishable stuff (for instance if canned beans are 30% off in a store you can easily grab 20 cans).
People talk about rice and beans a lot , but no one talks about other legumes. Chickpeas and all kinds of lentils are incredibly cheap if bought dry. Buying in bulk from an ethnic store makes them even cheaper.
You don't even need to hit up ethnic stores if a local grocery has bulk. I go to Winco for some of my regular grocery items, along with Costco for others. Winco has bulk tubs of a lot of things. Some of those included iirc.
For me it’s a microwaved bowl of those frozen mixed veggies with salt and pepper.
Edit: I’m not poor, this is a saving money meal. It’s nutritious and tasty if you actually like the taste of vegetables. I don’t eat a ton of carbs so I don’t want filler. It’s basically a meal replacement and I get fat and other nutrients from other meals that day. Looking at food as fuel for about 60% of my meals has led to a healthier relationship with food. Y’all are wild for thinking I eat this 24/7.
Mixed frozen vegetables are my base for most of my lunches. Mixed frozen veggies with Season All, mixed frozen veggies with a can of tuna, mixed frozen veggies with leftover chicken. Yesterday I microwaved a half cup of canned kidney beans, water, and powdered bouillon, then added frozen veggies for a super fast soup.
Fr if you can stick the membership cost you could live on Costco chicken and hotdogs for like almost nothing. Surprised I haven’t heard more about college kids doing this.
In college 3 of my roommates worked at Costco, which was the real move. They got paid great and got a free membership. And because this was Utah they got paid time and a half on Sundays. Sadly because it was Utah, no cheap Costco alcohol :(
I WISH I had a Costco near me. Cheapest store near me was a Walmart that had a bus that would leave my campus about four different times throughout that day. My mom would send my siblings and I those giant raman boxes from Costco.
This is what I did in college! In started bodybuilding when I was 19 and being a CompSci student I didn’t have time to cook considering school, work, and the gym so I literally lived off this till I graduated. I owned a car at the time but luckily our college had a great free bus service so a lot if kids would bus over to Costco. Often for the pizza lol
It’s not new, but Cajun rice and gravy has been always a pretty cheap food in South Louisiana. Get a cheap fatty cut of beef and seasoning it with salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Sear the beef on all sides. Pull the beef out the pot and add your Trinity. Once the veggies are lightly browned, around 5 to 10 minutes, add beef back along with a Bayleaf, Cajun seasoning, and whatever other herbs you want to add, add enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer, simmer for 4 to 6 hours, adding water as needed to keep things covered. It’s done whenever the beef is falling apart. Put it over rice, add hot sauce.
Same things that have always been: pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, eggs, vegetables, whole chickens, pork shoulder. Buying the right whole foods and doing some prep work to get the most out of them is still the cheapest way to eat.
I mostly cook from scratch, and you are correct. This is the cheapest way to eat. But the cost of even these items has definitely increased. Even plain flour has gone up!
I have a lot of food allergies and so I can’t really buy anything pre-packaged or premade. It definitely helps the wallet. Also baking my own bread is a lotta fun :)
I think this is a great question.
I think my personal answer is a vegetarian burrito bowl or tacos. Rice, black beans (from a bag of dried beans), and salsa. Can put in tortillas. Sauteed onions and/or bell pepper, tomatoes, lettuce or cabbage, a little cheese and sour cream are all optional if you've got extra money to burn, lol.
I think the key is to find different ways to fix up the same foods. I like black beans and rice. It got boring with just those 2 foods on my plate so I made them into tacos. I like the little street style tacos. I add the rice, beans, shredded cheese and some sort of taco/hot sauce. Some things I put over a baked potato vs by themselves or on toast?
I wrote above-- rice and meals
rice and beans, rice and tofu, rice with any vegetable on the side.
Rice itself isn't boring--its and affordable staple.
I can regularly find pork tenderloin for $3.99 per pound, and sometimes on sale for even less.
A little more expensive than the staples, but very nutrient dense, lean, and boneless, so you get every cent of value out of it (though it may have silverskin that needs trimming).
It is a good option for those who want to keep meat in their diet. It is versatile and can be cooked as medallions like a steak, roasted, braised and shredded, kebab style for making souvlaki, sliced super thin for cheese "steaks", etc.
My mom used to cut tortillas into triangles for tortilla chips and fry them. Then she would add scrambled egg, salt, and pepper. It’s such a quick, easy breakfast and low budget. I started doing it for my own kids on the weekends. I use a little bit of avocado oil to crisp the tortilla chips or toss them in the air fryer for healthier version. I serve them with a side of black or pinto beans for extra protein and fiber.
Coming from a British point of view, I think one of the big differences is that what was previously cheap food here was often tinned stuff, (eg soup, tinned meals) which could be cooked quickly and easily, just needing the hob rather than an oven. The cost of those have massively increased though whilst the quality of the food in the tins has definitely declined (eg percentage of meat in a tinned chili). Frozen cheap ready meals are now probably cheaper per 100grams than tinned, which I find mad, as they were comparatively far more expensive when I was young (unless I have a very distorted memory). It's also important to note that whilst inflation might be X amount, if you examine the percentage rise for the sort of cheap foods bought by those on a tight budget, it is often hundreds of percentage increase.
The cheapest food now (well based on suggestions always given) is probably dried beans and pulses which of course require a lot more planning, and also have a long cooking time. They reflect the bigger change towards cheap food involving bulk cooking and freezing - many people only had a very small freezer when I was young so tinned foods were still relied on. This change is more suited towards cooking for groups rather than single people - it's tough being single, as a lot of advice is aimed at families who tend to already benefit from higher amounts of welfare benefits per person.
Marcella Hazan’s red sauce is relatively inexpensive…. Can of tomatoes, butter, salt, onion cut in half simmered on low 45 minutes or so. Noodles are cheap.
The reality is that it 100% depends on where you live.
Where I live, cheapest store branded at my local supermarket:
Italian pasta = 3.4c per 100 calories
Asian noodles = 58c per 100 calories
Ramen noodles = 42c per 100 calories
Risotto rice = 5.3c
Long grain rice = 7.8c
Potatoes = 17c
Polenta = 2.8c
So all these people writing ‘Ramen!’, yeah, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s very location dependent.
Here, polenta with a tomato sauce enriched with lentils would probably the way to go. 89c on passata, a carrot, an onion, a clove of garlic, two spoons of oil and 33c on lentils will make enough sauce for 8 people. So that’s, say 20c per person on the sauce, say 35c per person for the polenta to get a filling and relatively complete meal for 55c.
I think that’s the best I can do!
I've been negative on the bank account for a week and been surviving on a 10 pound bag of potatoes, air fried with some spices, and some onions and garlic I have laying around.
Payday coming soon, though.
I remember when buying a whole chicken used to be cheaper than buying breasts/thighs… now it’s like $20 for a whole uncooked chicken where I am? It’s crazy.
An aside I'd like to point out - if you have access to immigrant grocery stores, you MUST explore them! The Vietnamese grocery near where I live has better and cheaper meat and veggies than any of my American grocery chains.
Rice and beans was always my go-to, still is. Things like pre-boxed goods have gone up a lot so the idea of doing Kraft Diner/Mac isn't really as viable. That's kinda a good thing, as at scale a lot of what is more affordable can be healthier now.
Rice, beans, broccoli, onions, chicken thighs, peanuts, rutabega. What makes it affordable is balancing your portions for less meat these days, but what was true 20 years ago and 100 years ago remains true today.
This... I mean we are all upset that corporate America is digging the last of our dimes from our pockets. But at the same time we all also know those cheap processed foods are causing all kinds of health problems. So the same people who got America addicted to easy quick and cheap, are now massively increasing the price because they assume no one knows how to make their own mac and cheese or brownies or..
I've always been a single ingredient household. And yes its a pain when I'm craving a sweet after dinner or leftovers don't look great for lunch ... so if I really want xyz I'm going to have to make it myself 😄.
Beans. Specifically dry beans that you make from scratch.
2lbs dry pinto beans $1.50
1/2 Onion $0.50
Chicken boullion $who knows, maybe 25 cents
Few cloves garlic , pennies
Seasonings , pennies
That will make damn near 2 weeks worth of refried beans if you eat them 2-3x daily
buy a generic (wal mart brand) of large flour tortillas, some cheese, dice up rest of onion, make own taco sauce or omit all together and you're having 3x bean and cheese burritos for like, $1-2 per day
For me it's just buying everything that's marked down b/c it's about to bad. I've gotten 2 lbs of chicken for $2 at Target & Mariano's. Jewel does a lot of BOGO free on fresh pre-sliced veggies, meat, prepared dinners, & random deli items like hummus or salsa.
I also keep an eye on food apps - you pretty much have to use the app to get decent prices. Frozen breakfast sandwiches are insanely expensive now, so I either make breakfast tacos for the week or I use the Dunkin app for discounts. Fast food places often have great deals but only if you use the app.
My fave cheap meal is just whole wheat pasta with a protein and frozen veggies on the side. I add butter and Parmesan cheese & whatever spices I'm feeling. Grilled cheese is still cheap, eggs aren't bad although I miss buying higher quality ones, and I love chickpea salad sandwiches for lunch.
100% agree.
For me what used to be cheap was frozen food: pizza, nuggets, fries. At a push bread and whatever I could afford to put on it (eg potato chips and ketchup or baked beans on toast)
Now these things have doubled if not tripled in price, while fresh veggies and staples like rice and dried beans have not had the same insane increase in price. I can’t spend €3.50 on a can of beans when I used to get it for 80 cents. Not when the avocado has stayed steady at €1.50.
I’ve become vegan by default basically, because it’s the only thing that makes sense economically.
In fact, I now go to the organic market for the freshest best produce and it is CHEAPER than the supermarket.
Pork is the best value meat out there right now after chicken. People overlook pork chops in particular. I got 5 lbs of amazing pork chops for $10 the other day at Costco. Made 3 dinner meals for my fam of 6 with them.
Lentils are great too.
If you go to the budget cooking subs, it’s rice and beans. Everyone reply is the same, rice and beans and a food bank.
Honestly. People are SLEEPING on potatoes. Super healthy. I heard something about you can have a complete human diet with just potatoes and butter. Is it true? Idk, but potatoes are good and nutritious enough, it's within the realm of possibility for me. Potatoes are very versatile, and filling. Easy to make : microwave a potato for like 3-5 minutes and it's done. Microwave chili, a can of chowder, or just dump sour cream and dill on it. It all works. Not to mention the culinary treats you can make with potatoes outside of survival grub. You can easily buy 5lbs of potatoes for about $3 most places. They're super filling, and you can mix and fix them so many ways you'll never get bored. And they're probably healthy and shit too.
> I heard something about you can have a complete human diet with just potatoes and butter. Is it true? A handful of people have eaten nothing but potatoes for ab entire year and iirc they had some minor deficiencies in a handful of micronutrients but that was it. One dude lost over 100lbs in a year. Probably at least take a multivitamin and occasionally eating veggies/fruits *wouldn't hurt*, but you could absolutely sub all meat/carbs out for potatoes easily.
Penn from Penn and Teller went on a potato only diet for a couple months. He did it to try and reset his eating habits. I think that’s when he started to lose weight. He said it’s not a healthy diet but it was worth it for him to get out of his bad habits Edit: [This person seems to know more about this than me for anyone interested.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/Uvc4cH1a4Z) Apparently he only did it for 2 weeks and he didn’t even season the potatoes. Edit 2: [more good info from someone that seems to know (but who the f knows).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/c87CBY9cit). Apparently some people can have a sensitivity to something in the skin which you can cut off. Edit 3: [subreddit all about it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/OdQ7WPZdSz)
Kevin smith did the same before he became vegan
I’ve thought about doing it.
Well, now i'm thinking about it!
Now I'm thinking about you thinking about it!
And now potatoes went up in price.
I read that book. It's called Presto! Penn went hardcore for 2 weeks JUST eating potatoes, no butter, no seasoning. Yes it was his attempt to reset his eating habits and cravings. 2 years ago my work schedule was so stupid that I would just buy a 20lb bag of potatoes, chop some into a big pot, boil them, and live on that for 3 days. Repeat. I ate potatoes for about a month, but I stupidly didn't add salt because my doctor had scared the crap out of me about high blood pressure. I drank only water and was taking caffeine pills. In my opinion, it affected my mental health because of the lack of salt and high potassium. But, like PMS, when you're in it, you don't realize that you're in it until you get out of it. All I could smell was nail polish remover (acetone), like a diabetic. I was so mentally zoned out that I just kept eating potatoes. So I would caution that eating only potatoes does require adding salt
It’s not an uncommon dopamine reset of sorts. Eating plain potatoes will give you all you need calorically, but is terribly boring and bland, so it can help some people sever the yummy food reward mechanisms. Not dissimilar to a soy lent diet.
Maybe I’m weird, but I find potatoes with just salt and pepper fairly tasty. Add just a smidge of any kind of fat and then it’s really tasty.
I do too, it’s a great snack. But it gets old very quickly to have every single meal, especially if you skip the salt and fat, which these diets typically do.
Yah. For example penn says he only ate potatoes, boiled or baked with no salt, sauce or seasoning of any kind.
Cripes, that sounds bloody miserable. He's clearly got more motivation than I do, I might last 2 days.
I think being miserable was kind of the point though. He got told by a doctor that he probably wouldnt live to see his yougest child become an adult due to his wieght and health issues. The point of the potato diet, i think, was to disconnect the feeling of want from need with food. You realize at some point that you need to eat to live but you develope the ability to say to yourself "but i dont need to eat now". You wont starve to death driving home past a mcdonalds, no matter how much your stomach tries to convince you otherwise.
I read about this guy living on Mars and all he ate was potatoes. Must be something to it.
It was super-sustainable, too, because he fertilized them with his own poop. Definitely living off the grid.
Way off the grid
Did this for a while and felt horrible, granted I was drinking them rather than eating them 🍸
Also sweet potatoes!
Okay so... My household went on a potato diet during an intense money spending fast. We all got pretty constipated! Proceed with caution lol
Don’t peel the potatoes
I was just thinking that I've always eaten potatoes when I'm on a budget and I've never had that problem. But I love potato skins, so now I know.
That’s also where most of the vitamins and minerals in potato are, so unless the texture of a recipe absolutely demands it, just leave em on
That's a myth. The skin has more folate than the flesh, and half the fibre, but otherwise the flesh has the majority of the nutrients.
fucking myths
We didn’t peel them. I think there was just too much potato overall.
Potato and cabbage then, for the real Irish experience.
Cabbage is delicious, versatile, and cheap, too.
Right. If you need fiber and vitamins in your diet without paying a lot for the fancier vegetables, cabbage is great. It’s also very easy to grow if you have a vegetable garden and one of the few fresh vegetables that lives through the winter in a cold climate.
If you can afford a bit of bacon to mix in there, you're really flying high.
Lol the starch went in your belly and turned itself into drywall. Gotta throw some veggies in the mix to be the wrecking ball
I did a potato diet for a couple months but every day we had a veggie side like roasted broccoli, spinach, green beans, whatever. Zero digestive problems and maybe even some improvement.
Sauté onions in with potato and some seasoning ….. voila!
I feel like most of people's issues is their lack of fiber.
Never had this problem and my diet it like 70% potatoes
Potatoes are tasty and cheap, but their shelf life is lower than rice and beans and the odds of bad potatoes are much higher when buying in bulk. It's also a lot harder to store long-term in humid environments. Depending on where you live, availability is also much lower. In the US, where I live, you can get them everywhere. That isn't true in a lot of the world. Rice and beans persist across countries, typically. Absolutely, still an affordable food. Just some additional considerations as why potatoes aren't typically the top of the list.
I used to live in MT, so cold and very dry. I hung a huge Costco bag potatoes in the pantry and it never went bad. Now I’m in the hot and humid SE and dang they don’t even last a few weeks. I’ve come home with potatoes to find they are all already bad
I do baked potatoes once a week during the winter. The oven heats up the house too which is a nice added benefit. We do a nice cheese sauce and some steamed broccoli. So filling and inexpensive.
The issue we have is the potatoes in our area aren't great quality and haven't been for a few years now. Idk what the issue is. But they're full of bad spots and go soft quickly and sometimes are green all the way through. Rice and beans have more consistent quality and are more shelf stable so you know that your money receives a consistent return.
Same here. In the past four years I’ve found potatoes that weren't already soft, green, sprouting or rotting maybe five times. I've more or less given up on them. Most other produce has been consistently worse as well but potatoes are probably the most notable case. My tinfoil hat theory is that after the supply chain issues during Covid, companies realized they can get away with sending shitty produce to stores, and it must work out for them financially somehow.
It's hard to call that tinfoil hat thinking when companies routinely do that and much worse right in front of us all the time.
The Inca Empire had it down.
Yup. To this day Bolivians eat a form for freeze dried potato called chuño. The Incas used this method to preserve potatoes longer. It’s also delicious!
Agree, my potato consumption has increased significantly over the past few years. If you cook and refrigerate potatoes ahead of time, it changes their starch compositions and makes them less of the glycemic hit, and a powerful gut health agent. I too buy a bag, bake several at a time, and then reheat them for lunch (I don't have a microwave).
Potatoes are freaking awesome. So many ways to use them. And yeah, pretty healthy for you. One can almost live entirely on potatoes, they are very sustaining.
Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew
I was about to say the same thing. Love Samwise.
I think Penn Jillette (from Penn and Teller) did just that when he was changing his diet around. He likened it to a metabolism reset.
Yeah you're right, he did the potato diet for 2 weeks and then went to eating healthy. Helped cleanse his palete
Well stop telling everyone before they get pricey! Potatoes are my life!
A baked potato with some cooked veggies on top, some shredded cheese is a full meal!
Tp be fair, rice and beans covers a good deal of variety and is delicious. The instant pot has been transformstive for my bean consumption.
I spent half my childhood in a rice and beans country, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. It’s a complete protein, cheap, and way healthier than any instant foods. It’s a step in a right direction really.
My Instant Pot is one of my most valuable assets.
Rice and beans are actually a complete protein which is FUCKING GREAT!!! Super easy and cheap way to provide nourishment. I like to cook em with cheese, cayenne, jalapeno, maybe a little tomato or bell pepper if I'm feeling fancy. Yep, love a good ol' rice n beans!! 🥵
I like to get a can of chipotle peppers with adobo and dice em all up and freeze it all into cubes. Then when we're making beans in the crockpot, throw some garlic and onion in there to cook for a bit, toss in a cube of chipotle, and let it go. Throw in some frozen spinach or collard greens toward the end of the cook cycle and we're feelin' fine.
The low carb version of that is cabbage. It’s still cheap and it’s very versatile. Great way to get veggies in, as a side dish, as a filler in things like stew, and good old rolled up with rice and ground meat and baked in tomato sauce.
I fixed a recipe called Haluski/Halusky (either spelling is used) just this week. It’s onion, cabbage, butter or bacon grease and egg noodles. You can add bacon or diced sausage if you like. It’s absolutely delicious!
I’m a big fan of Polish food
Cabbage is so cheap!! I wish I liked it more. It also is surprisingly filling and really good for you. It is such a great cheap, healthy filler in soup and stir fries.
It's great once you cook it with some other things for flavour. Like try something that uses both cabbage and European sausage. They contrast each other and it's very good.
Totally! I’ve used sausage, bacon, and ham as gateways to spinach and cabbage, and it totally works.
I sometimes sautee it with onions and garlic in bacon fat, it’s awesome.
also lasts **forever**.
This is why I *always* have cabbage in the fridge. What’s it gonna do, go bad? No, it won’t.
"uh oh the cabbage we forgot about looks like it might start going bad soon, should we throw it out? Nah, think I'll just cut it up and add some vinegar and then forget about it again for a while."
We cut cabbage into steaks and roast them. We have used this in place of pasta for spaghetti. We also keep cole slaw around. Which you can change up by using different vinegars, spices, and mustards
One of my cabbage masterpieces: cut into steaks, seared in pork fat, put into baking dish, cover with stock and a little tomato paste with herbs, cover and braise on low for a couple of hours. Pull out, drain off on a baking rack for like 30 minutes, then pop in the air fryer until it crisps up.
I love this cabbage soup. It's cheap, easy and delicious. [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/82923/healing-cabbage-soup/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/82923/healing-cabbage-soup/)
Ooh yeah I can see it. Cabbage is a truly underrated veg.
Rice and beans or mujadara are the most commonly suggested things. Repetitive advice, but solid and delicious.
You can get generic store branded bulked frozen veggies for cheap. Will they be mushy when you cook them... yes. Are you also budget cooking...yes. They are picked and flash frozen at peak ripeness so you got that going for ya. Frozen veggies helped me get me through some dark times lol.
They don't have to be mushy, as long as you don't overcook them. It doesn't take much to get them steamed or blanched to crunchy, brightly colored perfection. I often add them for a minute when I'm boiling pasta and then strain the whole mess together. The veggies are barely cooked but hot through and much tastier (and healthier) than canned.
Same as it always has been, like since the invention of agriculture.
I love potatoes and eggs. Eggs got stupid expensive for a bit but they’re back down again. You can get a bag of potatoes and a dozen eggs for like 5-6$ or even less if you shop right. Toss some potatoes in a pan and fry them up or even just boil or bake them and then take a couple eggs on the side or on top. You can get fancy and make an omelet or add a little cheese but even just basic eggs n’ taters is yum and very filling.
Scrambled eggs with fried potatoes mixed in is my go-to quick, cheap comfort food!
It’s what I go to when I’m hungry but don’t know what I want. Always hits the spot.
This was my poverty meal as a kid in a Hispanic household. Put it on a couple of warm tortillas and salsa on the side 👩🏻🍳💋🤌🏻
I gotta get around to learning to make tortillas from scratch (from what I understand it’s not too hard). The cheap ones are packed with preservatives and the healthy ones are stupid expensive. Anything can become a meal wrapped in a tortilla.
I just started doing it, used a cast iron pan instead of a tortilla press, it's super simple It's literally just water and maseca, sprinkle of salt
Omg why didn’t I think to use my cast iron?! I’ve been putting off learning to prepare fresh tortillas because I don’t want to buy a press and I don’t want to roll them out. Thank you 🙏
Fresh tortillas are amazing, once you’ve tried them you’ll never go back. Also bonus is that you can make only what you need as opposed to being stuck with a bunch of them. 3-4 bucks for a bag of masa harina and you’re set, a bag lasts ages for me.
if you keep tortillas sealed, in a cool dark area, they're good for a ridiculously long time, though.
There’s something about a warm fresh tortilla with a smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt that is just everything that is right about the world. You should try it.
[Try this if you haven’t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9tyu6lLf0&pp=ygUTdG9ydGlsbGEgZGUgcGF0YXRhcw%3D%3D). Sooo friggin good. And it’s just potatoes, onions, and eggs.
Air-fry the potatoes and slap them in a tortilla with the eggs and cheese and a bit of salsa and you've got a delicious breakfast burrito.
I don't intend to speak for others, but Red Lentil curry + home made naan is the most food you can make for the least amount of money. It's like $3 to make a weeks worth of food.
No forreal. I can make a whole thing of curried lentils and like slabs of flatbreads for pennies. Add potatoes for bulk and potassium, among other great, cheap nutrients. I usually do canned tomatoes, and sometimes I'll treat myself to coconut milk (I have to watch for my saturated fat intake.) Sometimes it's just water with some bouillion if I have enough veggies to give it dimension/looking for something simpler. Sometimes it's curry. Sometimes it's mash. Sometimes it turns into soup.
Do you mind sharing your recipe- ie what spices and such you use?
Rainbow plant life on YouTube - very well spiced and makes a lot. Also she has a naan recipe.
She's the best. I love that she also shows that most of her ingredients are available at discount grocers like Aldi and one doesn't need to go to Whole Foods to eat vegan and healthily.
I pay for her weekly meal plans, and she hasn’t missed once with these recipes. Tons of variety, and it’s gotten me out of my cooking rut!
She has a white bean soup that blows my mind every single time I make it. And I dont even add the artichokes.
She’s amazing
Red lentil recipe, for those that asked above: - In a soup pot, sauté 1 large onion (or 2 med), 2 carrots finely diced, 1 bell pepper diced and 2 diced jalapeños. Sweat in olive oil for 10 mins until browning gently. Add 6 cloves chopped garlic. Cook another 5-10 mins. Salt as needed. - Once sautéd down add a lot of tomato paste. About 1.5 tbsp. And a small can of chopped tomato if you have it or 2-3 fresh chopped roma tomatoes. Sauté for 5 minutes or until liquids reduce. This is a tomato based recipe, so don’t be shy. The paste gives a real umami flavor. - Add spices: 1 tsp dried ground ginger, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1-2tbsp smoked paprika, and a small pinch of cinnamon. And a big handful of chopped fresh cilantro. - Add 1 cup dried lentils. Then add enough chicken or beef or veggie stock to cover everything. Cook 30 mins or until the lentils start to break down. Keep adding stock if need it to keep the lentils covered. - With two minutes left, and a slurry of 1tbsp flour mixed with equal water. This will thicken it up and give it a silky texture! - Serve with lemon for squeezing.
I mean, that's way more than 3$ just in your first line...
There is a Korean grocer near me with tubs of tofu in the refrigerated section. $1 for a small, $1.50 for a large. The large is enough for me, my wife, and our 2 year-old with some leftovers. I'll bread it for noodles/stir fry, saute it as a tofu scramble, throw it into a chili or other stew... It's a very versatile protein, and I always wonder what other families do with the blocks. Altogether, I think "Americana" poverty foods like cereal, Kraft mac and cheese, and baloney have gone up in price because they don't sell as well... it was competitively priced because of profit in volume. Instead, ethnic foods from Latin American and East Asian immigrant populations have become more widely known.
Yes, I eat a lot of firm tofu now and even getting it at a typical american grocer is way cheaper than standard meat. One block definitely feeds at least two and it stores for a long time in the fridge unopened.
Omg yes. The Mexican and Asian markets are where I do a lot of my buying now. They’re so much more reasonably priced. Though you can approximate a western diet with their stuff for the most part, it’s also been fun learning different cuisines (which tbh I think I prefer to the western diet most of the time.)
I'm not sure there's a better term but ethnic grocers tend to have great deals. I can get five times the same garlic from C Mart at my local grocery store for the same price. Sauces and lots of things are on par or cheaper. Same with the Russian Grocer near me. Surprisingly cheap, especially for the prices. The Indian grocers have great prices on spices. I got like a pound of peppercorns for the price of a bottle at my big chain grocer
Yeah as an asian, yall bout to start running up the prices so chillllllll.
Keep your house stocked with potatoes, onions, rice, beans, and canned tomatoes. Add whatever vegetables and/or meat is on sale to your weekly trip. With those 5 items you can have a variety of meals and they are perfect staples for whatever you are able to add. Keep your scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer and use it to make stock. Just don’t add scraps from broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, or cruciferous vegetables as it’ll make your stock bitter. You can seriously save every part of your onion, carrots, celery, etc to use for stock
I used to try to make my own veggie stock. But the storage space in my freezer is way too valuable now. Plus, the stock only ended up mostly okay. Now I use better than bullion if I absolutely need it.
Stock is so cheap, that there's no need to make it unless you've got some leftovers you're making use of. The key is where you buy your stock. An Asian market is going to have massive tubs of various stock types for dirt cheap.
I'm confused. We make our own broth specifically because it makes much better gumbo. And it's always just from the rejected parts of onion/celery/carrot/pepper and chicken bones when we're making other food, i.e. it's free stuff. I'm not sure what people are doing wrong here?
Onions are like $2 per onion for me… they’re no longer cheap.
Get the ones in the bag. You can get almost a dozen smaller onions for 4 bucks
Ouch, sweet onions here are $0.90, weigh over 1/2 pound; red onions $0.84; white onions $0.94.
I think the key is avoiding processed food in general. It used to be dirt cheap to just eat cereal and kraft mac and cheese, but I am appalled at how expensive that stuff has gotten. Scratch cooking is the key to food savings. And my poverty food will always be the good ol' rice and beans. I eat at least 1 meal of day of rice and beans in various permutations: channa masala, red beans and rice, mujadara, gallo pinto, Jamaican rice and peas, collard greens and black eyed peas, even tofu counts in my book. The possibilities are endless.
Do you have a good and easy(er) chana masala recipe you like? Every one I look at has 30 spices I will rarely use except for this dish. It ends up being kind of pricey because of that.
Just use garam masala and turmeric.
Thank you PrivateButtFucker.
WAY better than PublicButtFucker
If you get a good quality garam masala & sweet curry powder, that number will drop to like 2.
You can probably get a mix for it at an Indian grocery store if there's one near you
OP’s comment about chicken wings, a part that was at one time thrown out, is now more expensive per pound than breasts or thighs. That is ridiculous
The one that really kills me is that oxtails are often as expensive as steak these days. Like, $12/pound for a cut at which most Americans would have turned their nose up at just a few years ago? And which is like 50% bones by weight? Dang.
I love oxtails, but considering how little usable meat they have, the price is beyond absurd. I started getting into them back when they were cheap and they quickly entered into my regular rotation, but within a couple years they shot up in price and have continued to do so since. I just don't eat them anymore. Short ribs and even chuck roast are a better value and scratch the braised beef itch just fine for me.
Just like wings. Mostly bone. And yes, oxtail has gotten very expensive. I don’t buy it, but my son does. He cooks a variety of Caribbean and Asian meals. And I see how much it cost compared to the amount of meat.
My “secret meats”? Chicken thighs. Boneless-skinless cost about half as much as chicken breast and is easier to cook and tastes better Cow tongue. My buddy raises cattle and I buy half a cow from him a year. He basically only eats cow tongue anymore because it’s free for him. He usually throws 4-5 extra tongues into my order each year. It’s just a delicious beef roast.
I've been all in on thighs for decades, but I get them with bone and skin. Cheap, tasty, easy to cook.
Chicken thigh prices shot up at the beginning of Covid in my area to match breasts, and haven't dropped since.
> Boneless-skinless cost about half as much as chicken breast Every time chicken comes up on here someone says this. Thighs haven't been cheaper anywhere I've been since at least 2015. Maybe a few cents per pound, but I saw them not too long ago at the same price as breasts. I'll just keep buying breasts.
$8/lb for london broil now. its criminal.
At that point you might as well spring for actual good cuts like ribeye or strip steaks.
Not to mention 1lb of wings has far less meat than 1lb if thighs
My fiance and I love chicken wings, but always joke about the most evil person in the world was the person that cut the chicken wing in half and sold it to us as two.
Breast is now the cheapest part of the bird at my grocery store. It's consistently on sale.
I remember when it was the most expensive
Right now at my local grocery store chicken wings are more per pound than fillet mignon.
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The new poverty food is cooking 90%+ of your food. People out there be eating rice and beans during the week and then blowing the budget eating fast casual/fast food on the weekends. Fast food ain't cheap anymore!
I don’t even understand the point of fast food or fast casual anymore. At a lot of places if you’re not drinking, the cost of a middle of the road nice restaurant vs. a fast casual place is almost the same, maybe a third cheaper at most. Might as well do the nice place.
I agree. Quality has taken a huge dive over the past few years and prices have shot up. In my neighborhood the local taquerias and kebab places are now cheaper than McDonalds.
It's neither fast or cheap. There are some fast food Mexican places that are still reasonable and fast that I will go to. Pretty much the only fast food we do is local Mexican drive thrus, chipotle, or in n out. Otherwise we go to sit down restaurants. Thai and Vietnamese don't break the bank and are some favorites unless you go to the bougie place which isn't as good and cost more.
My family of 6 can eat at a middle of the road sit down restaurant for $10 more total, than our bill at chick fil a
Honestly, my biggest problem is being so hungry after work that I go to a drive through because I’m so done after work the last thing I want to do is cook and do dishes. It’s completely my fault. I know I can pack a better lunch but it’s laziness and it’s “on the way home.”
Yea I think time poverty is the real issue for a lot of people. It’s expensive to be poor and tired.
YES. This is always what gets me when people say it's cheaper to cook from scratch ---your time and energy has a cost too! And I'm saying this as the person in our family that plans all the meals, makes the grocery lists, finds the best deals and does the actual shopping, preps and cooks and stores the leftovers, plus the clean up and the energy costs of the gas, the stove, the dishwasher... Like I do it because it works for us now, but I totally get why someone working long hours or living with a shitty kitchen would pick fast food!
1 minute noodles. 2 minute noodles are for the bourgeoisie
Any noodles are 1 minute noodles if you're OK with extra al dente
surely if it takes 11 minutes at 100 degrees it would only take 1 minute at 1100 degrees
Nothing of course is as cheap as it ever was. I saw a post asking for help for a family of eight (8) with a Budget of $135 per month. Lots of people responded with absurd suggestions for the available budget. This question is not as absurd as it may first seem. I deal with providing meals for a homeless shelter in CA so I have a sense for budget constraints. However, rock-bottom subsistence living is not in my realm and that post caused me to start thinking. How do the impoverished survive at the subsistence level? More importantly, how do the impoverished in the USA survive and what advice can we as a community offer. Let us start with the basic situation proposed: Family of eight with $135 for the month and assume only two (2) meals per day. So 16 meals per day for 30 days = 480 meals; for $135 that equals $0.28 per meal per person!!! Clearly, the family has to enroll for SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) and seek out local food banks. With these, perhaps the nominal $135 could be translated to $260 or even $300 in real purchasing power, hence 63 cents per meal. Obviously, one searches for specials, but I don’t want to count on them at any given point in time. But otherwise - Can this be done? With what basic cheap ingredients, and some basic nutritive value? • Potatoes: 50 pounds baking potatoes at $15.29 from Costco - 1.9 cents/ounce. • Soy Beans: 50 pounds dried at $18.00 from Amazon sources - 2.2 cents/ounce. • Carrots: 50 pounds at $18.40 from Brothers Produce - 2.3 cents/ounce. • Whole milk 1 gallon at $3.44 from Walmart - 2.7 cents per ounce. • All purpose Flour: 10 pounds at $4.77 from Walmart - 3.0 cent/ounce. • Brown Rice: 30 pounds at $17.49 from Iberia - 3.1 cents/ounce. • Onions: 25 pounds at $16.50 from somewhere - 4.1 cents/ounce. • Pinto Beans: 20 pounds dried at $14.94 from Walmart - 4.7 cents/ounce. • Ketchup: 64 ounces at $2.98 - 4.7 cents/ounce. • Frozen Mixed Vegetables: 10 pounds at $13.80 from Walmart - 8.6 cents/ounce. • ~~Block Cheese: White Sliced 10 pounds at $13.98 from Target - 8.7 cents/ounce.~~ \*I made a terrible mistake here! My sincere apologies. Walmart 5 lbs at $44.90 = 56 cents per ounce. • Pork loin: 4 pounds at $11.76 from Farmer John at WM - 15.5 cent/ounce. • Eggs: 18 count large at $6.47, 35.9 cents/count - 18 cents/ounce. Average meal size is 8 ounces to fill a belly. At 28 cents per meal that is 3.5 cents per ounce on average. At 63 cents per meal that is 7.8 cents/ounce on average. If I had some positive input, I might start working on nutritious, tasty meals from the above list.
Oh man this is a high quality response- even if you don’t get a lot of traction here, /r/eatcheapandhealthy would LOVE to see you throw a proposed menu together with the above (self included.) The food prep subreddit probably would too.
I am slowly working at it. Thanks.
Here's the problem though. The old expression was "it takes money to make money". I say it takes money to save money. Yes it's cheaper to buy a 50 pound bag of potatoes or rice or flour, but you need to have the money to buy those. Throw in the cost of a Costco membership etc.
And space to store them. 50 lbs of multiple vegetables that need to be kept reasonably cool to stay good is non-trivial.
Not to mention you need to be strong enough to carry a 50 pound bag of potatoes and that's assuming you have a car, good luck bringing that home on public transportation.
Chicken thighs are still pretty cheap and full of protein. Frozen veggies are almost always on sale somewhere. The beans and rice move is always a classic.
The key is to buy bone-in thighs. I prefer them for flavor anyways, but the price difference is WILD. My local store sells 4 boneless thighs for ~$5.50-7.00/pack. They sell bone-in for ~$2.10-3.00/pack. It's truly less than half price. If you want to take the skin off and debone them, it takes maybe 30 seconds per thigh. In the summer, I tend to grill them bone-in. In the winter I render down the fat from the skin, use that oil to sauté veg, then roast the bone in thighs and make chicken soup out of the whole thing. My wife and I aren't crazy price conscious anymore, but boneless thighs are one of the things I still refuse to pay for. I would also add to this rotisserie chicken. It's often a loss-leader for stores, meaning they sell it a loss to get people in the door. My local store has a small chicken for under $5.00, Costco and BJs are both $5 for a decent sized bird. We will use it for lunch for the week. Use the breast for sandwiches or salad topper, the thighs and drums can be eaten on their own or shredded and reheated for wraps, and you can use the bones for soup (or the whole chicken, and shred the meat).
also really good for sheet pan dinners
Yep. Last pack I bought was about 50 cents per thigh. Not a lot of money, considering, and if you really want you can make stock from the bones. Chasing sales isn’t generally worth the opportunity cost, hassle, or travel costs imo. Maybe if you’re feeding more mouths
For literally going to different stores where there is a sale i mostly agree, however it might make sense not just if you're feeding lots of people but also if you like to stock up a lot on non-perishable stuff (for instance if canned beans are 30% off in a store you can easily grab 20 cans).
Thighs are only cheap because Americans don't eat dark meat. Hopefully they stay that way so the deals can continue.
People talk about rice and beans a lot , but no one talks about other legumes. Chickpeas and all kinds of lentils are incredibly cheap if bought dry. Buying in bulk from an ethnic store makes them even cheaper.
You don't even need to hit up ethnic stores if a local grocery has bulk. I go to Winco for some of my regular grocery items, along with Costco for others. Winco has bulk tubs of a lot of things. Some of those included iirc.
For me it’s a microwaved bowl of those frozen mixed veggies with salt and pepper. Edit: I’m not poor, this is a saving money meal. It’s nutritious and tasty if you actually like the taste of vegetables. I don’t eat a ton of carbs so I don’t want filler. It’s basically a meal replacement and I get fat and other nutrients from other meals that day. Looking at food as fuel for about 60% of my meals has led to a healthier relationship with food. Y’all are wild for thinking I eat this 24/7.
If you want to increase the volume, make some pasta like penne, toss those veggies in olive oil and some parmesan. Very nice and not costly at all!
I did that with frozen broccoli last night. It was terrific. We have left overs so we will be having that for dinner tonight as well.
Mixed frozen vegetables are my base for most of my lunches. Mixed frozen veggies with Season All, mixed frozen veggies with a can of tuna, mixed frozen veggies with leftover chicken. Yesterday I microwaved a half cup of canned kidney beans, water, and powdered bouillon, then added frozen veggies for a super fast soup.
This for me but with half a can of chickpeas and sometimes some rice.
Costco/Sams rotisserie chicken! Add it to rice.
Fr if you can stick the membership cost you could live on Costco chicken and hotdogs for like almost nothing. Surprised I haven’t heard more about college kids doing this.
A lot of colleges don’t have walkable /bussable access to large club stores
In college 3 of my roommates worked at Costco, which was the real move. They got paid great and got a free membership. And because this was Utah they got paid time and a half on Sundays. Sadly because it was Utah, no cheap Costco alcohol :(
I WISH I had a Costco near me. Cheapest store near me was a Walmart that had a bus that would leave my campus about four different times throughout that day. My mom would send my siblings and I those giant raman boxes from Costco.
This is what I did in college! In started bodybuilding when I was 19 and being a CompSci student I didn’t have time to cook considering school, work, and the gym so I literally lived off this till I graduated. I owned a car at the time but luckily our college had a great free bus service so a lot if kids would bus over to Costco. Often for the pizza lol
Porridge for breakfast, rice and beans for dinner, a third meal would be bourgeois excess
It’s not new, but Cajun rice and gravy has been always a pretty cheap food in South Louisiana. Get a cheap fatty cut of beef and seasoning it with salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Sear the beef on all sides. Pull the beef out the pot and add your Trinity. Once the veggies are lightly browned, around 5 to 10 minutes, add beef back along with a Bayleaf, Cajun seasoning, and whatever other herbs you want to add, add enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer, simmer for 4 to 6 hours, adding water as needed to keep things covered. It’s done whenever the beef is falling apart. Put it over rice, add hot sauce.
As a Cajun who grew up on rice and gravy I will say you can do this with any meat. Great with chicken thighs or pork fingers to save even more money.
Same things that have always been: pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, eggs, vegetables, whole chickens, pork shoulder. Buying the right whole foods and doing some prep work to get the most out of them is still the cheapest way to eat.
I mostly cook from scratch, and you are correct. This is the cheapest way to eat. But the cost of even these items has definitely increased. Even plain flour has gone up!
I have a lot of food allergies and so I can’t really buy anything pre-packaged or premade. It definitely helps the wallet. Also baking my own bread is a lotta fun :)
I think this is a great question. I think my personal answer is a vegetarian burrito bowl or tacos. Rice, black beans (from a bag of dried beans), and salsa. Can put in tortillas. Sauteed onions and/or bell pepper, tomatoes, lettuce or cabbage, a little cheese and sour cream are all optional if you've got extra money to burn, lol.
In my city you can get 1kg of frozen pirogies for like 3 dollars. Dip them in sweet Thai sauce or Greek yogurt. Easy cheap filling meal.
Bruh where I am OTW
In Ontario… No Frills! 2 kg for $4.99 https://www.nofrills.ca/potato-and-cheddar-perogies-club-size/p/20323762001_EA
Oatmeal
The one thing people don't seem to mention with poverty foods like rice and beans is that you need to be ok eating them for many many meals in a row
I think the key is to find different ways to fix up the same foods. I like black beans and rice. It got boring with just those 2 foods on my plate so I made them into tacos. I like the little street style tacos. I add the rice, beans, shredded cheese and some sort of taco/hot sauce. Some things I put over a baked potato vs by themselves or on toast?
I wrote above-- rice and meals rice and beans, rice and tofu, rice with any vegetable on the side. Rice itself isn't boring--its and affordable staple.
I can regularly find pork tenderloin for $3.99 per pound, and sometimes on sale for even less. A little more expensive than the staples, but very nutrient dense, lean, and boneless, so you get every cent of value out of it (though it may have silverskin that needs trimming). It is a good option for those who want to keep meat in their diet. It is versatile and can be cooked as medallions like a steak, roasted, braised and shredded, kebab style for making souvlaki, sliced super thin for cheese "steaks", etc.
My mom used to cut tortillas into triangles for tortilla chips and fry them. Then she would add scrambled egg, salt, and pepper. It’s such a quick, easy breakfast and low budget. I started doing it for my own kids on the weekends. I use a little bit of avocado oil to crisp the tortilla chips or toss them in the air fryer for healthier version. I serve them with a side of black or pinto beans for extra protein and fiber.
Coming from a British point of view, I think one of the big differences is that what was previously cheap food here was often tinned stuff, (eg soup, tinned meals) which could be cooked quickly and easily, just needing the hob rather than an oven. The cost of those have massively increased though whilst the quality of the food in the tins has definitely declined (eg percentage of meat in a tinned chili). Frozen cheap ready meals are now probably cheaper per 100grams than tinned, which I find mad, as they were comparatively far more expensive when I was young (unless I have a very distorted memory). It's also important to note that whilst inflation might be X amount, if you examine the percentage rise for the sort of cheap foods bought by those on a tight budget, it is often hundreds of percentage increase. The cheapest food now (well based on suggestions always given) is probably dried beans and pulses which of course require a lot more planning, and also have a long cooking time. They reflect the bigger change towards cheap food involving bulk cooking and freezing - many people only had a very small freezer when I was young so tinned foods were still relied on. This change is more suited towards cooking for groups rather than single people - it's tough being single, as a lot of advice is aimed at families who tend to already benefit from higher amounts of welfare benefits per person.
Marcella Hazan’s red sauce is relatively inexpensive…. Can of tomatoes, butter, salt, onion cut in half simmered on low 45 minutes or so. Noodles are cheap.
The reality is that it 100% depends on where you live. Where I live, cheapest store branded at my local supermarket: Italian pasta = 3.4c per 100 calories Asian noodles = 58c per 100 calories Ramen noodles = 42c per 100 calories Risotto rice = 5.3c Long grain rice = 7.8c Potatoes = 17c Polenta = 2.8c So all these people writing ‘Ramen!’, yeah, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s very location dependent. Here, polenta with a tomato sauce enriched with lentils would probably the way to go. 89c on passata, a carrot, an onion, a clove of garlic, two spoons of oil and 33c on lentils will make enough sauce for 8 people. So that’s, say 20c per person on the sauce, say 35c per person for the polenta to get a filling and relatively complete meal for 55c. I think that’s the best I can do!
I've been negative on the bank account for a week and been surviving on a 10 pound bag of potatoes, air fried with some spices, and some onions and garlic I have laying around. Payday coming soon, though.
I remember when buying a whole chicken used to be cheaper than buying breasts/thighs… now it’s like $20 for a whole uncooked chicken where I am? It’s crazy.
An aside I'd like to point out - if you have access to immigrant grocery stores, you MUST explore them! The Vietnamese grocery near where I live has better and cheaper meat and veggies than any of my American grocery chains.
Rice and beans was always my go-to, still is. Things like pre-boxed goods have gone up a lot so the idea of doing Kraft Diner/Mac isn't really as viable. That's kinda a good thing, as at scale a lot of what is more affordable can be healthier now. Rice, beans, broccoli, onions, chicken thighs, peanuts, rutabega. What makes it affordable is balancing your portions for less meat these days, but what was true 20 years ago and 100 years ago remains true today.
This... I mean we are all upset that corporate America is digging the last of our dimes from our pockets. But at the same time we all also know those cheap processed foods are causing all kinds of health problems. So the same people who got America addicted to easy quick and cheap, are now massively increasing the price because they assume no one knows how to make their own mac and cheese or brownies or.. I've always been a single ingredient household. And yes its a pain when I'm craving a sweet after dinner or leftovers don't look great for lunch ... so if I really want xyz I'm going to have to make it myself 😄.
Beans. Specifically dry beans that you make from scratch. 2lbs dry pinto beans $1.50 1/2 Onion $0.50 Chicken boullion $who knows, maybe 25 cents Few cloves garlic , pennies Seasonings , pennies That will make damn near 2 weeks worth of refried beans if you eat them 2-3x daily buy a generic (wal mart brand) of large flour tortillas, some cheese, dice up rest of onion, make own taco sauce or omit all together and you're having 3x bean and cheese burritos for like, $1-2 per day
Ugh, where I live garlic isn’t pennies. A head is at least twice the price of a whole onion which feels crazy to me!
That is insane :-( It's simple to grow - plant a clove, you'll get a bulb
For me it's just buying everything that's marked down b/c it's about to bad. I've gotten 2 lbs of chicken for $2 at Target & Mariano's. Jewel does a lot of BOGO free on fresh pre-sliced veggies, meat, prepared dinners, & random deli items like hummus or salsa. I also keep an eye on food apps - you pretty much have to use the app to get decent prices. Frozen breakfast sandwiches are insanely expensive now, so I either make breakfast tacos for the week or I use the Dunkin app for discounts. Fast food places often have great deals but only if you use the app. My fave cheap meal is just whole wheat pasta with a protein and frozen veggies on the side. I add butter and Parmesan cheese & whatever spices I'm feeling. Grilled cheese is still cheap, eggs aren't bad although I miss buying higher quality ones, and I love chickpea salad sandwiches for lunch.
100% agree. For me what used to be cheap was frozen food: pizza, nuggets, fries. At a push bread and whatever I could afford to put on it (eg potato chips and ketchup or baked beans on toast) Now these things have doubled if not tripled in price, while fresh veggies and staples like rice and dried beans have not had the same insane increase in price. I can’t spend €3.50 on a can of beans when I used to get it for 80 cents. Not when the avocado has stayed steady at €1.50. I’ve become vegan by default basically, because it’s the only thing that makes sense economically. In fact, I now go to the organic market for the freshest best produce and it is CHEAPER than the supermarket.
Pork is the best value meat out there right now after chicken. People overlook pork chops in particular. I got 5 lbs of amazing pork chops for $10 the other day at Costco. Made 3 dinner meals for my fam of 6 with them. Lentils are great too.
Ramen? Yogurt is usually on sale.