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My Little Puni posted:Another thing, Potatoes are awesome. I bought a 10 lb bag and it's lasted me for 2 weeks so far. I've made hash browns, au gratin, scalloped potatoes, put them in soups, mashed potatoes. potato pancakes. POTATO PANCAKES. Shredded potato with shredded onion, some milk, eggs, flour, and fried. Delicious, cheap, and reheatable. But I would not have thought of this if I wasn't planning to make them tonight with dinner.
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Oct 25, 2011 16:41
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Odrade posted:I know lots of people have mentioned roasting a whole chicken and using all the bits. Seriously, that's the best tip of all. If you make extra vegies and gravy you can have bubble & squeak the next day, which is the food of gods. What is a bubble & squeak pie? A Terry Pratchett book told me about it, and google confirmed it was real, but what goes in it? How do you make it squeak? I am very serious. I've discovered that holiday time was a good time to buy discounted meats. We got an enormous ham for an okay price (never bought one before, didn't know what the price range was) and it lasted forever. Fried ham and eggs in the morning, ham sandwich for lunch, ham in my fried rice, rinse and repeat. We've finally used the ham bone this week, and oh my god, the bean soup was great. Also, there is too much of it and I am beaned out, so freezing it tonight is a go.
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Jan 6, 2012 17:12
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KingColliwog posted:No sure this is the right place for this question but I'll post it here anyway. If I have thin pork chops, I pound them thinner, season with salt and pepper, flour them, egg them, breadcrumb them, and fry. Some times, I cut out the bone and excess fat, flour, egg, and panko them. I try to save at least 3 to make a bowl of katsudon the next day. If the chops are thicker, brine -> pat dry. Sautee onions in a pan and lay them on a foiled roasting pan. Sear the porkchops, stick in 375F oven on top of onions til done. Eat pork chop and pork-y caramelized onions on rice.
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Jan 12, 2012 18:37
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Rurutia posted:I'm not sure why it would be cheaper. Buying bone-in chicken will always be cheaper than already deboned (as illustrated in this thread with multiple recommendations for buying a whole chicken), and then from there making a stock is just putting it on the stove with some water, with some bits and ends from your vegetables that you'd throw out anyways. This tastes 1000x better than the cubes, as in it actually tastes like chicken stock. Everyone knows this is true, but if you live in a small apartment with a small fridge and freezer, you can only freeze so many things. One must decide between bargains that must be frozen, and space hogging things like bags of stock cubes. Our freezer has pork, beef, frozen corn and spinach, and chicken parts that I broke down when whole chickens were on sale. Also, our ice rack because I am very grumpy if I don't have ice cold drinks. As a result, I cannot store more than one container of stock without the contents sliding out of the freezer. For the most part, I have powdered chicken stock for daily use. If chicken is on sale, I make a pot of chicken soup and try to freeze whatever I can fit.
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Jan 14, 2012 19:17
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silversiren posted:I have a rice cooker so anything that can be thrown in there and steamed/cooked would be the best, but I'm also looking for things to make good food that don't take a lot of time, not bland veggies with a little bit of pepper on top. I also have a lot of spices that I keep hidden, things like thyme, cumin, oregano, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, chili powder, cinnamon, cardamom, tumeric, cloves, and ginger. Sorry to read about this. I suggest getting big bottles of stock items, like soy sauce, olive oil, sesame oil, cooking wine, etc and only leave a small bottle of these visible to your parents. Keep the stocks somewhere else. Refill bottles as your parents throw things out. Steamed egg is a favorite no-frills dish in my family. 2 eggs, 1 cup of chicken broth, 2 tbsp of ground pork seasoned with salt, pepper, rice cooking wine, soy sauce, white pepper, ground ginger. Beat together, steam. Eggs are nice and cheap. Low effort veggies with a lot of taste and little prep time are strongly flavored and don't need much. Gailan can be steamed/boiled and eaten plain or with a bit of oyster sauce. I've been eating a ton of oven roasted brussel sprouts and broccoli, roasted in a toss of olive oil, salt, and pepper. $30 for a week... $2 for 12 eggs $4 for 2-3lbs of broccoli or green veg. $3 for 3 lbs of dried pasta. $5 for a bottle of olive oil. $3 for some cheapo parmesean cheese. $7 for a staple, like rice. $6 for 6 cans 24oz cans of crushed tomatoes. Maybe? it's a week of pasta and rice. I'm sure beans would work better and cheaper, but I don't eat beans often.
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Mar 9, 2012 17:48
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silversiren posted:This is a list I can definetly do. in retrospect, I'd swap some stuff out for a $1 loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, but it was a fast thought thing. Also, dino has a great list on the first page of this thread. Good luck, shop the sales.
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Mar 9, 2012 19:45
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GrAviTy84 posted:Now the whole On the different note, eating things that taste good will likely make you happier. There was a year when I lived (cheaply) off canned tuna on lettuce, spaghetti, tofu, fishballs, and bean noodles, and it was one of the most distressing years of my life. Eating good food makes me feel happy. Not necessarily the cooking part, since cleaning does not make me happy. It's just nice to come home, whip up a fast delicious meal, and sit down and eat it know it tastes better than take out and it was much cheaper. Even better if I can con the boyfriend into doing the dishes. On the other hand, cooking for yourself ruins you for eating out. Why the hell would I order chicken picatta or marsala when I know I can make it better and cheaper? etc, etc. I disagree about the soda, but only if it is something you don't drink often. If a can of soda is a pick me up every now and then, get them on sale (12 cans for $2.50) and drink it when you feel like you need it. I love soda, but I only drink a bottle/can/cup when I've had a bad day.
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Mar 16, 2012 16:33
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thing because you're going through poo poo. I get that. For me, I love to cook because it takes my mind off of my other problems, it is stress relieving. Not trying to be a therapist or anything, but there have been many people in dire straits that turned to food and it turned out to be something they became quite passionate about and eventually very successful with, maybe you should give it a shot before you say that you're too depressed to do anything.
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CzarChasm posted:I agree that cooking for yourself will show you just how bad (and overpriced) most restaurant food really is. Not just restaurant food, but also premade anythings from the market. I can't buy instant biscuits anymore because of how off putting I find them now, and an instant pie crust I bought when I was tired made a chicken pot pie unpalatable. I'm planning to premake crusts and biscuits and the like, and freeze them. GabrielAisling posted:My boyfriend's food groups consist of chicken nuggets and other meats, pizza, ketchup, fried potatoes and beer. He'll eat onions if I hide them in hamburger, but will use all sorts of tricks to get out of eating/trying vegetables. Mostly he'll cover his plate in meat and bread and then claim he's full when I point out he hasn't eaten his corn (which he claims to like and I can get in abundance because my grandfather has no sense of scale when planting corn). Essentially I need to hide vegetables in his meat to make the meat last longer and make him eat something that might keep him alive past 30 and keep my food budget below bank-breaking. Your boyfriend is being a child. I am sorry. You could cook things vegetables in the sauces and portion it out to him. Curry, perhaps, if you cook the onions into the sauce. Mushroom sauces on meats are great too. My boyfriend will only eat spinach if I put it in calzone or quiche. Usually, I make a calzone with spinach in the ricotta, mozarella, parm mixture and put sausage balls and artichoke hearts in. Quiche, it's bacon of course, with spinach and caramellized onion in the custard. Meatloaf is great for putting in some onion, carrots, chives. oh, try roasting things veggies in olive oil, salt, and pepper. It's amazing how people change their minds about veggies once it's cooked with olive oil and garlic.
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Mar 16, 2012 22:27
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MuffinShark posted:
WHAT. You can get 2-5 manila mangoes for $1?! Please tell use where you live.
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Apr 13, 2012 18:56
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Walk Away posted:I would love to replace my tupperware with some awesome pyrex. However, every time I open the cabinet, all of the tupperware spills out in a avalanche. Doing that with glass wouldn't be so great. I hate my small kitchen. I use Glasslock, which I believe is a Korean brand for glassware storage. It can be found in Asian markets, Marshalls, Amazon, etc etc. I would check them out in Marshalls to see if they work for you. They are not cheap, but they are extremely useful for storing reheating. I also use the smaller ones to pack reheatable lunches, since I don't trust plastic in the microwave and because Glasslock has 4 snap locks on the lid, so I don't worry about the lid falling off in my bag. They don't stack well at all, but I still love using them.
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May 17, 2012 17:03
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Springly posted:Given the tiny amount of actual rice involved I think it's probably really healthy too, and it makes you feel full. Uh. My experiences with zok/porridge/congee all go like this: eat a bowl or 2, feel super full, then starving 1-2 hours later after all the water runs through my system. Not saying it's not delicious or cheap, but it's not filling for long! Also, I'm suddenly curious about why someone wouldn't eat eggs.
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Jul 3, 2012 16:13
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Saint Darwin posted:Yeh uh, 2 green peppers for 50 cents beats any sale around here, so I too want to know where you live. Your cilantro is 1/4th the price at Asian markets. I feel like I should start OCDing and tracking as well. Is it possible to start a thread or something, detailing where goons shop and prices thereabouts? I still don't have the greatest idea of where I should be shopping for cheapness and goodness in Massachusetts and do most of my shopping at Costco, Roche Bros, and the local Kam man whose vegetables can be really questionable looking. My notes for MA are as follows: COSTCO: $.99/lb chicken reliably, but they come in packs of 2. Pork tenderloins are often $1-something a lb, close to a really good sale price. Butter is $1.99/lb, and comes in 4lb packs. 1 quart of cream here costs the same as a pint of cream in a normal market. I don't feel like the bulk veggies are worth the price as a sale at the market makes the price lower than Costco. Potatoes and onions are not bad, and a bag of garlic is $3.15 for >15 heads and tastes stronger/better than garlic from the Asian markets. Question is, can you eat it fast enough before it sprouts? Any soft fruit from here must be eaten quickly. I buy rice here. I'm learning how to cook beans, so I will start checking bean prices too. KAMMAN: Quincy has cheap vegetables, but the quality can dip drastically and the stockers cannot be bothered to restock all the time. You need to look at those bags of bean sprouts, because sometimes they are already brown and wilted inside. Some of the meats are okay, and Kamman can be counted on to have some sort of tofu on sale each week. I'm always attempting to find fresh noodles here, but I think the Asian grannies always beat me to the punch. There is a HUGE aisle of Korean products with grains and whatnot (potato starch noodles, yay, not as cheap as bean thread noodles, boo). Some day, I will try a dish and cook with some of those. note: Quincy Kamman has nagaimo root. Expensive, sometimes on sale, and easily grated down and frozen for okonomiyaki use, yum yum. Dorchester is smaller, but has some stuff that is nicer. I picked up a box of manilla mangoes last year for $10, and the week after it was $12. We had to eat them fast since they were getting overripe, but it was worth it. Still didn't taste a good as ones I could get in California and obviously cost a lot more. Any food purchased there had to be eaten quickly, because their turnaround blows and the stuff is on the counter longer. It may be different now that it is a year old. I would not buy meat here, as any meat I got here made me ill. Roche Bros is okay with consistent quality, and best watched for sales. Shaws is not so great, but also watch for sales. I love the $.99 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes for tomato sauce. Whole Foods is such a rip off, but I think the bulk granola is cheaper than getting it from a normal market. I don't go out of my way to go here. Trader Joe's has dried pasta that has a decent texture and it is always $.99/lb, versus $1.10 at the market unless it's on sale. Also great for picking up cheap wines for drinking/cooking, and I think the buttermilk is cheaper here than at other markets. I wish they still carried Plugra. I used to get huge blocks of Plugra for $1.50/lb. I need to go to Haymarket some time. Make my boyfriend wake up early and go, especially since I want to try making jam this year.
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Mar 14, 2013 16:44
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Saint Darwin posted:If you want to start and maintain an OP I would contribute! I'm not sure there is much interest, and I am inexperienced on using these forums, or any forums. I will admit I joined to look at puppy pictures and look for food ideas. GrAviTy84 posted:I think if people really wanted to make the most of the knowledgebase in this thread they should post their local grocer's weekly circulars and ask for tips and recipes for whatever is in them and maybe plan meals around sale items. ^ this.
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Mar 19, 2013 15:52
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Saint Darwin posted:If it sucks, it'll be closed. I can't contribute my latest shopping trip until after work but I do remember 4 green peppers for $5. started the thread. I'm having mild panics about it. It's "piggy went to the market". Post your cheap finds in both here and there please! And hey, I will do my quick and cheap pork chop recipe to keep this vaguely on topic. When I find a pork tenderloin for $1.99/lb, I buy it and cut it into chops and maybe a small roast if I am planning on guests. It will be about $20 for the whole tenderloin and you will get about 18 porkchops out of it. There are 2 things I make most often with these chops: Katsudon and just plain old porkchop with onions. Both of these involve simmered onions, which I love. for the porkchop with onions, first preheat the oven to 375F. Then slice onions (about 1.5 onion per person), dice 1-2 gloves of garlic, and then salt and pepper the porkchops. Heat a bit of oil on the pan and put the pork chops the pan. Sear them well, flip and sear again. Take them off and put the onions and garlic on. Stir the brown bits up with any of the juices from the veggies and cook the veggies til translucent. Add some chicken broth (or sherry then chicken broth) and deglaze if still needed, put the chops in the liquid, and stick them in the oven til done. It's all brown colored, but super delicious. If my porkchops are thin, I don't put them in the oven. I love onions, so I'm glad they are cheap!
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Mar 21, 2013 16:31
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M42 posted:I freeze them in x-cup increments in ziploc containers, then take em out once they're frozen and stack them in gallon freezer bags like bricks. Opening my freezer is like opening the crates in Kelly's Heroes. This is so much better than what I do. I want to do this, thanks for posting it. I use clean takeout containers from pho, awkward to work around in the freezer.
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Mar 22, 2013 14:26
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So, if you live near a Roche Bros, now is a great time to shop for baking ingredients. LINK Land of Lakes butter, which I am told is the best butter for consistent baking, is on sale for a whopping $1.99/lb! Flours are also on sale, both the Gold Medal and King Arthur flours, although I am not sure how good of a sale it is. Sugars are on sale too, sweetened condensed milk, and flaked coconut. Goddammit, I could have used these last week when I made a german chocolate cake. I'd make a bunch of pie crusts and freeze them for quiches, pot pies, pasties, etc and that is actually my plan tomorrow. There's also pasta for $1/lb, and the spiral cut hams are $1.49/lb omg. I love ham, ham sandwiches, ham quiche, and I love ham bones for soup. Hurrah for Easter ham sales. And pork tenderloin is on sale on Sunday for $1.77/lb, unf. Sales get me so riled up. I don't see much else I'd use, but I am open to suggestions. Seafood is too expensive for me right now, but $4.99/lb of shrimp (Friday only) seems pretty good, and I am not sure about the beef roasts. squigadoo fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 16:57
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loki k zen posted:Do they sell oxtail in the states? Yes. It's about $5/lb. Lowest I've seen where I am is $3/lb.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:29
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neogeo0823 posted:I'm really hating how the recipes megathread finally fell off the board. Anyone have any good and cheap recipes that use ground turkey? We have 2lbs of it from the food pantry, and our bank accounts are at $0 for the next 2 days. late to this party, but if you stock soy sauce and ginger/ginger powder, I'd make a ground turkey soboro with about 0.5 lbs (for 2 people), and eat it on rice. Normally, I'd use mirin in it, but a little extra sugar and some cooking wine will do fine too.
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Sep 24, 2013 16:05
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GabrielAisling posted:How can I go about planning cheap meals for six while keeping dietary restrictions in mind? We have one diabetic and an onion allergy/intolerance, so it gets pretty tricky to make things everyone can eat. Have you tried making several dishes to be served at once? I'm not sure if it's an Asian thing or not, but my family usually serves 2-4 dishes per meal, so it's simple to keep at least one thing palatable for everyone. For example, I have done mapa dofu, steamed egg, steamed pork ribs, and a random veggie. 3 dishes for my grandmother who cannot take spice anymore, 2 for a family member that dislikes steamed egg and pork ribs, 3 for someone that doesn't like the black beans I will smear on the pork ribs, etc. The easiest thing for me is to make several dishes that can be made in advance and reheat, or make a ton of things that can be steamed at the same time in a steamer: egg, fish, dumplings, chicken, etc. You could also do something like build your own taco/burrito, roll up, etc.
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Nov 13, 2013 16:01
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