What was/is your favorite CHEAP recipe?

I made mine for the first time in years the other day: Vegetarian Red Beans and Rice.

For about $7 in ingredient's it made 5 big meals.

1 pound of small redbeans ($1.25)
1 green bell Pepper (.50 cents)
1 large onion (.75 cents)
3 celery stalks (.99 cents)
6 cups water
4 Tbps Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning (had it around, but can be bought at dollar store for $1.25 or a generic "Cajun seasoning" can too/)
Salt, Pepper, Paprika (1 Tbsp)
Hot sauce (had it around, but can be bought at dollar store for $1.25)
2 cups of dry Rice (from dollar store for $1.25 for 32 ounces)
Note:If you have bay leaves laying around throw a few in too.

Soak beans overnight and rinse. Add water into beans. In separate pot sauté the veggies. Add veggies to beans. All all seasonings except salt. Cook for 2.5 hours. Add salt. Cook for another 15 minutes. Serve on rice.

or spaghetti of course but mine is butter noodles.

egg noodles or any pasta will do but my fave is the egg noodles. Salt, peppa, garlic powder.. butter and a splash of olive oil.

this was our struggle meal when the Steel Mills closed. Get fancy and add tuna to it. Moms used to hook it up.

if you get a little paper in your pocket level up and get the cheap roast beef tips and gravy.

she adds parmesan cheese. she prefers it over any kind of sauced noodles usually.

Tomato chicken buillon
Chicken
Can of mixed veggies
white rice

I ain't gonna do the math but it can't be more than $3 bucks a serving

grew up very poor. mom used to come up with all kinds of stuff.

one of our go to's was to to make like 8 packs of ramen, then add stew meat (beef). she'd season it up (don't ask me, you'd have to ask her) and we'd eat off it for 3 or 4 days until the noodles lost any sort of consistency.

we used to eat hot dogs with a corn tortilla. for some reason it really worked. not something ill do now but when i was a kid? was legit one of my favorite things to eat lol

Actually didn't know this was a struggle meal until later on in life, lol. Honestly wasn't (read: isn't) that bad and hella cheap. Probably not the healthiest though.

seafood ramen with smoked oysters,canned crab/baby shrimp...

add some green onions and you almost forget you struggling.

I can get a bag or two of cheap green (collards, turnip, mustard) from Grocery warehouse.

Find a decent sized but cheap cut of meat
1 onion
1 clove garlic
broth and / or 'soul food' seasoning

You'll eat good off of that for a week depending on how big you make it.

plus, it ain't half bad for you either.

I suppose you could do the same with Kale, but why choose Kale if you can have greens?

None of these meal for a week will be great, but in terms of nutrition / per serving price. This is a good entry, IMO.

my brothers mom (long story) used to make it with a cut of pork and man listen..

No pork, but lots of garlic and black pepper.

The only beans you don't have to soak,

but yeah.. a great fall meal, especially with some cornbread

-cook spaghetti noodles al dente
-sauté olive oil and garlic
-whip eggs like your making scrambled eggs
-add cooked pasta to oil, add eggs, Parmesan cheese, and parsley if you like, mix

I was able to get by on that several times

If i had a strip or two of bacon and an onion, and/or garlic, even better, especially if I had beans. Or small shell noodles and a tomato based broth,

Also, white beans and ham (or any meat) is an easy pairing. Ham works particularly well, as does any pork really.

A dirt cheap pork steak with a little onion, garlic, salt & pepper, use the drippings for a broth to cook the beans in, dice the meat with any veggies you have (carrot and bell pepper pair well) and you have a decent soup.

Basically, it’s all about keeping a handful of staples on deck

-onion, garlic, bell pepper
-onion/garlic powder, salt, pepper, any other spices
-beans/rice/pasta/potatoes
-some condiment (Tapatio FTW!!!)
-ideally some cut of meat

Any combo of that and you’ll be straight, without feeling like it’s a struggle meal

A *mean* ass breakfast is breakfast sausage, rice, and an egg or two, especially if you have a little green onion in there. If you have corn tortillas and hot sauce too????

I made it for my nephews and they tore that shit up! lol

I been going hawaiian for my cheap ass breakfastes lately. Ever try loco momo

Hamburget steak with pan gravy over white rice with an egg. Per serving can't cost more than a buck or 2 and it's good as hell.

It's often cheaper than a raw chicken (grocery stores teand to use these as loss leaders.

Chop it up and put in rice with red salsa

Chop it up and put it over some leafy greans

Add some hominey or lentils with some cream of (whatever) and you got a good and filling caserole.

You'll get about 4 - 6 servings out of that and again, pretty good on per serving price.

its hard to pass over a rotisserie chicken that is glistening in that lil bag with the window.

My mother in law lives with us and cooks, and she still make these every other week for a dinner.

As she says "when you was raised on shit, you hanker for it."

we didnt use white gravy tho..

was usually a cheap cut of beef that you had to cook for hours to get it tender

but that shit was heaven. Now I want to make it.

and what funny is most of the struggle meals I acted like I loathed.. were really fucking good. When I make it for my kids they LOVE these meals too.

the shingle is what you put in on. some people use bread like you. usually we put it on mashed potatoes just cuz it's a little more filling.

i usually add some garlic powder, onion powder, tabasco and worchestershire sauce and tear it up, lol.

or turkey..

doesn’t matter.

Mashed potatoes with gravy is awesome.

Im gonna make some soon.

I just can't, lol.

At any rate

I did like it as a kid, and I made my own version:

-Ground beef/pork breakfast sausage blend
-diced onion/garlic
-ground peppercorns, salt, dash of onion/garlic powder
-beef stock
-flour

obviously not some huge departure.
But the breakfast sausage and peppercorns go a long way toward imparting a different layer of flavor.

Usually it's that over a Yukon Gold whip (prefer whip to mash) with some finely diced green onions on top and a biscuit on the side. But the gravy has to be heavy.

It's crack

with a hard boiled egg or two mixed in, and maybe some little cherry tomatoes mixed in too.

Shit works.

you can even get two kinds of onions if you want to, add some garlic and other seasonings and you got a nice meal (but man you'd better not plan on being around a lot of people unless you drink TONS of water to kill the smell form your pores if you eat a lot of it)

bread, butter it up.. mix cinnamon and sugar up in a jar and sprinkle on bread and then put it in the broiler for like 2 minutes.. more like 5 growing up with the old ass gas oven flames that you slid the shelf under at the bottom.

my kids love this.. so simply and easy to make.

Some fish from the deli for a little more protein (or tofu, for the vegans).

Ramen sucks.

Edit: For the potatoes and onions, I'll cut up 1:2 onions:potatoes and simmer these on low in a big pan with some oil until the onions are clear and the potatoes are soft, then I scoop a helping out and brown these in (usually) another pan on medium. Season/salt to taste.

Fries are really easy to make. I use a tiny pot and fry small batches so I don't have to use that much oil.


Figured out that good carbs are inexpensive, it's the good protein that'll cost you.

6-pack of bone in thicken thighs is like $6 or $7. Skin on. Get a few potatoes and some broccoli/onions on a cookie sheet or in a pyrex.

Season the chicken and Crisp the chicken skin facedown in a skillet in oil. Chop veggies and lay them in the pyrex/cookie sheet. Lay the chicken skin-up on top of the veggies, with a bunch of rosemary or thyme and salt/pepper in the pyrex/cookie sheet. Let that go for like 30 minutes, then at the very end take the chicken off and run the broiler on High to crisp the veggies.

It's a hearty meal that feeds the whole family, doesn't take a ton of prep, and it costs like $12.

throw them together and throw some hot sauce on it

Steamable bag of vegetable.

i was all set.

At my lowest broke point I'd buy vegetable oil and potatoes and make fires in a giant pot for a week until all the oil was gone.

Sometimes I could afford ketchup.

So unhealthy.