Six Tips For Cooking On A Budget, And One Question
All these Hunger Challenge discussions reminded me of writing about budget cooking when the recession first hit. I gathered a handful of tips then that have proven pretty timeless. I use them all -- except for one that still eludes me. Care to weigh in with advice and tips of your own?
1. Don't be afraid to substitute or eliminate: If you're not comfortable knowing when you could, say, use the buttermilk in your fridge for a recipe instead of buying a new container of sour cream, here's a great resource. I would not think you could eliminate a spice as distinctive as saffron from a recipe, but -- go figure -- this "affordable princely feast" of lamb stew made a fantastic company dish even without it.
2. Take lessons from restaurants, whose narrow profit margins make them experts in the "Waste Not, Want Not" school. Chefs know how to use every last scrap. (I collected some chef tips here).
3. Eat seasonally. Sometimes I hear this dismissed as the sort of fancy elitist thing that's no good for real people.Huh? Why wouldn't you want to stock up on blueberries when they're cheap, freezing a bunch to eat throughout the year, or canning them so that you won't need to buy jam for months? Who wouldn't rather buy asparagus when it's dirt cheap, instead of $7/pound?
4. Buy in the bulk bins: They aren't cheaper every time, but they almost always mean serious bargains. Spice bottles can be refilled for pennies (or, at least, dimes and quarters). Rice, pasta, beans, flour, cereal, grains, nuts, dried fruits, and even teas and snack foods are usually spectacularly cheap compared with their packaged counterparts.
5. DIY when you can. I save a surprising amount of money every year by growing my own herbs. Baking bread is not only fun and cheap, but some recipes take a lot less time and skill than you might expect. Check out Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day for fast, simple keys to success.
6. Think out of the box: Be open to recipes from cultures that rely on cheaper staples and only sparingly use meat. If you have access to a wide variety of markets, and the time to go, take advantage of it. The ingredients I need to make these feast-worthy Malaysian dishes, for instance, are expensive at my local Kroger store, but cheap at a nearby Asian market.
7. Plan ahead: Honestly, this is the one that gives me the most trouble. I know it's important to, as one commenter said on Tracy's posts, plan meals around inexpensive or on-sale proteins. I know it makes more sense to create a meal from what's already in the pantry than to go out shopping for new ingredients all the time. But, for whatever reason, I have trouble doing it. (I'd blame the new baby and the older children, but I wasn't much better pre-kids). I've improved some with the help of "Time for Dinner", which provides three days worth of recipes based on one anchor dish. I make double batches of recipes that lend themselves to it and freeze the extras, and I make do-ahead recipes like my favorite pizza dough so that I'm a step ahead. How else can I do better?
-- Rebekah Denn
Mike Anderson on March 27, 2011 at 12:07 PM
"Plan ahead" doesn't have to be a detailed set of menus for the next month, carefully crafted and consulted before any shopping list is written. Lots of dinners generate leftovers that set you up for the next meal. For example, we've just had a nice Sunday dinner of broiled chicken breast. I broiled all three that came in the package, and we--as usual--ate two of them. The other breast will be thinly sliced tomorrow, along an odd tomato and the last sliver of a long-suffering red onion, as filling for waffle-iron quesadillas. Once you develop your own set of one-two and one-two-three combos, hints 2 and 7 seem to happen all the time.
Another variation on Hint 2 is to use the restaurant trick of introducing new recipes that use the same ingredients as your current menu. This makes it much easier to discover opportunities to sneak in leftovers or make substitutions.
Christina on March 27, 2011 at 12:20 PM
Tip #6 is very overlooked. I shop at the Indian store for spices, rice and tea. The prices are a fraction of what I pay at the grocery store or even Walmart. Plus the quality is incredible. The Tea I purchase is about as authentic as you can get and is 1/10th the spice from the Mall Tea store.
I also go Asian market for fish and meat. Great butcher and even better prices.
Steve S on March 27, 2011 at 12:50 PM
I don't have a Typekey, or pad thingy, so I hope I can still post here.
1. Don't overlook the day old-rack at your local bakeries.
2. Don't overlook sales, or the value of coupons.
3. Plan your meals with the leftovers in mind, and how you might put them to use for subsequent meals.
4. Don't go shopping when you're hungry, because everything looks irresistibly yummy.
5. Staples, like beans, rice, or potatoes, can be mixed in with a surprising number of dishes, or served as sides. And they're cheap.
6. Look for coops in your area, (I buy potatoes in fifty pound sacks, and the price fluctuates between seven, and 13 dollars. 25 pound sacks of apples, (in season), five dollars). The potatoes are not those big half pound russets you're used to, they're smaller, but they cook, and taste exactly the same. Ditto for the apples.
7. Grow what you can, and learn to can the surplus, and/or swap with your neighbors for their surplus veggies.
b bridges on March 27, 2011 at 01:14 PM
How about this, When you say "cook" that means take real ingredients and prepare them for a meal, not open a box and mix it with a can and combine that with a bag. That will save people tons but a lot are so used to shortcuts that they've forgotten that you can actually make spaghetti sauce from tomatoes and don't need that jar of pasta sauce.
It's tastier, cheaper and healthier.
Katherine on March 27, 2011 at 01:26 PM
I wanted to comment on the Artesian bread. I've been making the basic bread and it is very versatile, it can be made into bagels, English muffins, pizza just about anything just by changing the techniques to handle the dough.
Katherine
HelenRW on March 27, 2011 at 02:23 PM
The single most overlooked food budget strategy is eating less. Particularly in the animal fat department. Saves shopping and cleanup time too.
NC Mountain Girl on March 27, 2011 at 02:59 PM
I agree with the Christina about ethnic markets. Asian market have cheap rice, tea and tofu.
Here's two more tips on scraps.
1) Save the trimmings from shitake and portabello mushrooms. While the stems are too tough to eat they will flavor a great mushroom stock that can be frozen in an ice cube tray and then bagged, A cube will enrich a sauce or deglaze a pan.
2_ Freeze the tough end of asparagus stalks. When you have enough, thaw and puree them for use in asparagus cheese muffins.
arglebargle on March 28, 2011 at 01:01 AM
A simple one if you garden:
Grow a bunch of basil from seeds. Use it fresh in the summer, and when it is about to get cold, cut it all down and make pesto. Freeze the pesto in ice cube trays. You will be amazed at how many simple staple meals become delicious and fresh tasting.
ErikZ on March 28, 2011 at 01:15 PM
How in the world would I know what is in season?
I go to the Grocery story and everything is there.
Arbeej12 on October 18, 2011 at 04:10 AM
http://www.potentiamed.com