Cheap Recipes Cheap Meals

Cheap Recipes make Cheap Meals

Cheap recipes help you to prepare cheap meals that are tasty, nutritious and satisfying for you and your family.

Today, more than ever, we need to watch our spending. With prices rising on just about everything, we all need to make what savings we can. Your grocery budget is one area where savings can be made relatively easily simply by adjusting your normal recipes and eating plans and preparing our cheap recipes instead.

And, there’s no need to sacrifice taste, nutritional value or visual appeal either. In fact many of our cheap recipes actually represent healthier options – which is an added advantage.

By selecting cheaper ingredients for your recipes you can make instant savings. An example is when buying meat. Cheaper cuts of meat really do work just as well as the more expensive ones and some are even tastier. Try buying chicken thighs instead of breast cuts. You’ll find the meat has much more flavour and retains moisture whilst cooking.

Selecting the store’s own brand items when shopping will save a chunk of change. Very often these own label products are made by the same manufacturer as the private labelled brands and once they are incorporated into recipes it really is very hard to tell the difference.

You’ll be surprised to find that, by using cheaper brands of ingredients, you have cheap recipes that actually taste just the same as their more expensive counterparts.

If there really isn’t a less expensive version of an essential ingredient simply try using less of it to make your cheap version of a favourite recipe. A good example of this is when making a chicken casserole. Try using less chicken and more vegetables and serving with a larger helping of rice. By increasing the quantity of the vegetables and the rice you can halve the quantity of the chicken required.

All you have to do is think laterally and get creative!

With spaghetti sauce or chilli try reducing the amount of meat and adding more tomatoes and beans instead. It really is that simple.

Some of the most versatile cheap recipes are for casseroles. These are especially popular in working households or those in which everyone wants to eat at a different time. Try adding a tin of condensed soup to your casseroles to increase the flavour and the volume of the sauce, this will work well when served with additional rice or potatoes and again it allows you to reduce the amount of meat required.

Pasta, rice and noodles are mainstays of cheap recipes. They are versatile and can be served with very small quantities of the more expensive ingredients such as meat and fish.

As you experiment with cheaper ingredients and discover new ways of cooking you’ll find that the very best cheap recipes are those you devise yourself as no-one knows better than you what your family likes and dislikes. In the meantime if you are stuck for ideas do try our Shoestring Suppers Recipe book which is full of tasty, filling and nutritious cheap recipes.