Being on a budget does not mean you have to sacrifice eating well. Budget cooking can be healthy and filling. Today I've outlined some key ingredients and combinations to help you plan delicious and inexpensive meals.
How you buy your ingredients matters
When it comes to budget meal planning, one thing you may have to sacrifice is instant gratification. This is not to be confused with convenience. Going into your pantry and grabbing a box dinner, throwing it together in 15 minutes, and having little to no cleanup afterwards is instant gratification.
Convenience is being able to go to the store and buy food instead of growing it or trading for it. Like many other products in the US, food is marketed to be instant and easy. But if you buy instant rice, easy mac, freezer pizzas, and canned beans, you’re paying a lot more than you have to for that extra measure of easy. With proper meal planning, you don’t need to scrounge up a 15-minute meal out of your pantry. You'll be prepared to cook the meal you planned. Here’s some suggestions on how you can save money on basic pantry items.
- Dried beans, not canned.
Canned beans are easy, but dried beans give you a higher quantity of beans for a lower price.
- No more instant rice.
Cooking rice in a pot, pressure cooker, or rice cooker only takes about 20 minutes. There’s no need for fancy packaged instant, boil-in-the-bag rice. The real deal is far cheaper and just as delicious.
3. Larger quantities of Ground beef and chicken
You can save money on ground beef by purchasing the larger tubes. Just examine the price tag and find the price per pound. When you get home, you can divide the meat into dinner portions and freeze them in resealable bags. If you need different portions for various meals, then you can even label each bag according to which meal it's for. Buy chicken when it is on sale and repackage it into portions for your freezer. Don’t bother with the bone-in, skin on, chicken if you’re only buying it to save. The huge amount of work it takes and the small meat yield are not worth it. Skinless, boneless chicken breast usually only costs 1.99/lb at Food Lion or Harris Teeter.
If you can get a higher volume of food for a lower price, than do that. It may take you a few minutes to open up a giant can of fruit and divide it into small plastic Tupperware for the kids to pack in their lunches, but by doing so, you might save $5 on your bill. If you are taking notes, take a few moments and write down some changes you can make to your grocery list to eliminate expensive instant foods.
Key Main Ingredients
If you’re planning a meal on a budget, there are a few main ingredients you can use that will dramatically reduce the overall cost of the meal. Rice, beans, pasta, and potatoes are inexpensive, yet nutritious additions to your diet. Let's talk about each one.
Rice
Incorporating more rice into your diet may not sound very interesting, but take a few weeks to explore some of the various possibilities and combinations. Rice comes in many varieties, some more cost effective than others. But most varieties of rice are affordable. Try cooking with white rice, brown rice, black, or wild rice. You will find that different rice varieties are more soft, more grainy, more flavorful, or more flavor absorbent.
Beans
Rice and beans together form a complete protein. In other words, a well balanced rice and bean dish does not need meat as a supplement. Beans are high in protein, inexpensive, and have almost limitless varieties. Black beans are my personal favorite bean for cooking almost any meal, but I also incorporate other beans such as chickpeas, lentils, and pinto beans.
Pasta
Think about your favorite pasta dish. It’s difficult to pick just one, isn’t it? Mac and cheese, spaghetti, baked lasagna, pasta salad, the list goes on. Pasta is my go-to instant dinner. For a quick meal on a busy weeknight, nothing compares.
Potatoes
Potatoes are extremely versatile. You can eat them for any meal of the day, and cook them in almost any way. They taste good with all kinds of other flavors. They help you achieve a well-balanced meal. They are usually simple to cook. What’s not to love? As a general rule, there are always potatoes in our home. They also happen to be very inexpensive.
Make some notes about your family’s favorite dishes that involve the above foods. Write down a few meals that you could cook with each.
Cooking with Spices
Spices make every meal more beautiful and interesting. They add culture and flavor to your food. If a recipe is a coloring book page, than your spices are the crayons. Spices are not expensive, and when purchased in bulk or from ethnic markets, they last a long time. Many people keep large bags of spices in their freezer for freshness. Indian cooks keep their signature curry blends in a stainless steel dish called a Tiffin, or Masala Dabba.
I’ve listed a few of my favorite spice combinations below. Take a few moments to write down spices that you like to use in your cooking. Thinking about favorite spices and how they can be used with inexpensive ingredients is an excellent way to brainstorm for dinner ideas.
Hannah’s Indian Curry blend
Turmeric
Cayenne Pepper
Cumin
Mustard Seed
Fennel
Cloves
Coriander
Bay Leaves
Ginger
Authentic Mexican Spice Blend
Cumin
Cayenne pepper
Red Pepper flakes
Chili Powder
Garlic
My favorite Italian seasoning blend
Dried Onion
Garlic Powder
Basil
Rosemary
Portion Planning
Cooking only what you need may sound like an obvious way to save money, but many families end up discarding unconsumed leftovers. To prevent this kind of waste, you’ll need to methodically begin reducing the amount of food you prepare at each meal.
Pay attention to how much is leftover. If one or two servings remain, and you know who will eat them for lunch the next day, great! But you probably don't need enough to live on for the remainder of the week. Especially with meat products, it's better to let it sit in the freezer uncooked than let it get old and go bad in the fridge.
You may want to prepare more than you need of certain items. If you plan to have rice in two meals that week, make a double batch and cut your work in half! Cooked rice will stay good in the refrigerator all week, and can be served as a side dish or mixed into a main course.
What kinds of delicious meals are you going to make with your family this week?
Coming Soon: How I Feed 2 People and a Cat on $220/Month. Subscribe to our blog by email! Enter your email in the subscription box at the top right corner of the page.
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