I’m always looking for new ways to save time/$ when cooking, so that’s what this is about.
My most thrifty tip is that I rarely cook ground beef in oil then remove the excess anymore. I start leaner beef in a little water and then let the fat come out. No paper towel needed to suck up the excess. Although, often, I will just use a little less beef (I buy cheap/semi-fatty stuff) so I don’t have to take any excess out.
Has cut my “cooking oil” budget quite a bit.
I hate things where you put something in just to remove most of it!
Ditto on the oil for ground beef! Also anytime I use ground beef I usually use 1/3-1/2 black beans.
I think homemade bread is as thrifty as it comes! I just calculated how much it costs to make a loaf of sourdough and it’s $0.63/loaf of flour.
Cooking in season produce, it’s always cheaper and tastier!
Making a big pot of rice and beans most weeks that we build our meals from. The sauce and veg can change this meal into 1000 different things.
Buying some things in bulk is a huge savings especially if you have a Costco (maple syrup, vanilla, nuts, coffee, oats, etc).
Stocking up when there is a sale and knowing which prices of things make sense.
I try to make our own pouches for the kiddos. The base recipe of yogurt and apple sauce is really easy.
If you don’t want to make bread- finding a bread outlet will dramatically reduce your cost for bread. I get the fancy organic loaves of seeded sandwich bread (think Dave’s killer bread) for like $2/loaf.
Farm share or produce hookup if available. There is a produce spot by me that has massive boxes of produce for $30 (small) or $35 (large).
Those are the things from the top of my head! I am curious what others think too!
I agree with you about the bread and cooking in season and bulk! Costco doesn’t work here, it’s 1 hour + away and I can find most everything closer or in a place we go more often, or in that direction.
My ground beef comes from a coop just over the state border, 2 hours away. Doesn’t sound easier, does it? Except it’s in a town with a gallery where DH and I both volunteer, a bookstore that’s taking a lot of my books, etc. It’s a town we go to 1-2x a month anyway. The “local” Costco is an hour+ in the opposite direction, towards the local “big city,” which we hardly ever go to anymore.
Annoying as it is, meal planning has helped me take advantage of the buy one get one sales and plan for leftovers.
Oven roasted chicken - leftover chicken can go in wraps, chicken fried rice, or a pasta dish.
We recently discovered leftover pulled pork (or pulled chicken) can go over baked potatoes for BBQ loaded baked potatoes.
Ropa vieja will go into quesadillas (possibly more than once, but in that case I stash the extra in the freezer to use up a month or so later)
It helps me portion out the meat better so it stretches across multiple meals. Otherwise in my mind I’d buy more meat to be sure we’re covered for all those meals.
Yep. I will say that one of the best tips I learned is that we won’t eat something more than 3x in a row, no matter what, it just sits. So, the first time I make meat or rice or… I make it really plainly, so we don’t get burned out.
every time we go to costco, we get at least one rotisserie chicken. my husband always says if you don’t you’re just giving money away
i like yogurt and granola for breakfast. we buy the big tubs of indian yogurt at costco which i believe are $6 for 32 oz. i mix in a teaspoon or two of jam, usually also from costco. and i make my own granola which is 1/2 oats (so cheap) and the other half whatever mix-ins (usually pecans, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and coconut). i make 8 cups at a time which lasts me at least 2 weeks. and i don’t have to cheap out on ingredients and i can make it exactly as sweet * salty as i like!
here’s the recipe i started with if anyone is interested! i up the oats to 4 cups and i skip the sugar — the maple syrup makes it the perfect amount of sweetness for me.
At least half of our meals are super cheap, so they bring down the average - pasta and tomato sauce, dhal and rice, potatoes and rice, oatmeal, toast and eggs/tuna/whatever, tacos on corn tortillas.
I hate wanting a thing at the grocery store and not being able to get it, so I just get it and then make the rest work.
I’ve been making egg bites for breakfast pretty consistently for months, and I’ve finally started pre-shredding all the cheese and then freezing it. It keeps it from molding, there’s less prep time for the next batch, and any texture issues are obliterated in the blender step.
+1 to making your own granola. Now store bought granola seems really dry and un-crunchy to me.
I make my own granola, sometimes. I figured out the price at the time was about $10/lb and I could buy it, for about $10/lb, so why make work for myself?
I like oats, pecans, dried cranberries with maple butter. Unfortunately, I like it so much I will just eat it by the handful. My waistline and heart think. shouldn’t eat so much of it, so I rarely make it.
Last Christmas, gave the 3 neighbors a quart of “Christmas” granola: oats, pecans, slivered almonds, cranberries, sunflower seeds, peanuts, unsweetened coconut, etc. with my maple butter. People loved it. It was NOT cheap. I heard that one couple the wife took the jar to work so her husband wouldn’t eat it all!
that sounds yummy! i don’t make mine very fancy, so it doesn’t make me want to eat it all at once but yeah if i put like a bunch of chocolate chips and dried cherries in there, it could be a different story.
Cooking beans from dry instead of canned (although canned beans can be pretty cheap too)!
Gardening our own onions and garlic. Almost zero effort and we don’t have to buy those all year.
This month I have been super cost conscious and have been looking at the tradeoffs I make at the grocery store. I don’t usually go straight for the store generic brand; I also consider whether it’s organic, local, or packaged in not-plastic, and those things tend to win out for me. But this month I was like, well, the generic is literally half the price in some instances. So if money is truly tight, I can save a lot by buying the generic brand.
Elsewhere on the forum recently there was a great outpouring of praise for pre-diced frozen onions.
Yea, I saw the onion thing. I’ve been known to cut my own with a food processor, then sauté them and put them in a quart jar in the fridge and use them from there. Almost everything I cook starts (or used to) with sautéed onions…
I do lots of the things I have already seen mentioned. But another thing I do is to chop up vegetables (peppers, celery, onions, tomatoes ) that are fresh and crisp or are getting bad spots and then freezing them for soups/ stews/ casseroles. Less food waste and less money waste.
I have a granola (Once upon a Chef) I like that is dangerously delicious, I can easily double the amount of nuts and there is still plenty of coating for everything. I haven’t made it for several months, but it is delicious.
but yeah if i put like a bunch of chocolate chips and dried cherries in there, it could be a different story.