YSK tricks for one of the cheapest meals: beans and rice
I'm sad that this is worth mentioning. But if you are dealing with hunger amid threats to SNAP benefits, rice and beans are very cheap per meal and can be bought in bulk. Here's some tricks I've learned:
If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them. Canned beans are easier to prepare, just dump in near the end of cooking to heat them up. Dried lentils don't need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice and I find them more filling. Whole grains take longer to cook than white grains.
Frying diced onions in the pot before adding the grains and water is an easy way to kick the flavor up a notch. Use a generous amount of cooking oil (light olive oil is healthiest) for cost effective calories and help making the meal more filling.
Big carrots or celery in bulk are pretty cheap too. I like to dice carrots by partially cutting length wise into quarters, but leave the small end intact to keep the carrot together to make it easier to dice down the side. Add them to the same pot as the grains after the grains start to soften. Beets are also great; skin and cube then boil separately until soft. Change up your veggie to get a mix of vitamins
Get some bulk garlic powder, hot sauce, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.
You'll only need 1-2 pots and a cutting knife/board for veggies.
I recommend Harvard's Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition information and they have some recipes too
Edit: discussing big changes in diet with a primary care doctor or registered dietician is generally a good idea.
Probiotic supplements may help with gas.
As a bonus this sort of meal has a very small environmental footprint.
Lentils are another good legume. Look up a daal recipe for any lentil you find, and basmati rice
I’ve been making a Lebanese dish. It’s lentils mixed with rice and sautéed onions. Top it off with a dollop of sour cream.
That sounds pretty good
I’m anaphylactic to lentils and peanuts, and less allergic to other legumes too. If I ever became vegetarian or vegan I think I’d starve to death.
I’m not currently requiring budget protein (I’m still poor-ish but not as bad as some) but my bills are about to skyrocket soon (need to upsize apartment, looking at around ~$600 increase per month) so I might need to look at budget options soon.
Edit: TIL soy is a legume lol.
There are some good soy protein options too. Tofu can be cooked a bunch of different ways, and there's tempeh which is similar but different. One of the lesser knowns is TVP or textured vegetable protein, which is soy, but comes in different forms like mince or chunks (like ground beef). Its pretty cheap (especially in bulk), shelf stable and has good protein.
Soy is also a legume.
TIL lol. Thinking more deeply about that I should have guessed
Basmati is usually quite expensive, no?
TBH any white rice would work. Basmati is generally $2-3/kg or $1.50/kg if you buy a big bag. (Canadian Dollars)
How do you make the cheaper brown ones not super bitter?
Something like this. Spices, lentils, tomatoes.
Skip the olive oil. If you're buying it on a beans and rice budget, its gonna be fake olive oil anyway. Just use corn/canola/veg oil.
depending on where you live you might even be able to find cold-pressed canola (or other kinds i suppose) oil for a remarkably low cost (you just have to buy like 2l at a time), which is very flavourful and healthy.
The brand i buy is ~4€ per l, which isn't even that much more expensive than the cheapest oil available
Your basic rice jazzes up well, too. Scoop of soup stock, scoop of turmeric, scoop of cumin, can of peas, cook it all together in the instant pot or rice cooker. Soy sauce and a raw egg, whip it together.
Cooked plain rice freezes well too. I cook a big batch and use a small bowl to split it into individual portions. I wrap those in a little plastic wrap, and freeze it. ~2 mins in the microwave (reusing the wrap as a cover for the bowl) and I've got almost-as-good-as-fresh rice.
Yes, and to be clear, a huge part of the risk is that even after heated, the bacteria will die but leave behind toxins that will make you very sick. This Chubbyemu video (a doctor that makes videos covering odd, scary, or "interesting" medical cases) is about the same bacteria and the resulting death from it. While death seems to be pretty rare, it will still make you very sick.
Yeah, it's not a great idea to leave it out for hours and hours; I usually portion and freeze a half hour or so after cooking -- it's usually cooled off enough that I can handle it by then.
as a bonus you can turn a lot of the starch into resistant starch if you let it sit overnight in the fridge before freezing it, which makes it healthier!
Huh. I hadn't heard of that before. I do know that keeping it in the fridge overnight changes the texture though (which can make it better for some dishes like fried rice and worse for others). Thanks for the tip!
To each their own. Brown rice comes in 20lbs bags too. The biggest benefit in my opinion is brown rice keeps me feeling fuller longer.
totally agree on chicken broth adding that extra something
It's a bit of a misunderstanding to think white rice is only "nutritionless junkfood". As you said the fortification does make it kind of like a multivitamin in addition to providing decent macros. The main issue is the loss of fiber and other nutrients bound up with it. This can be mitigated though. If you include other high fiber foods like broccoli, legumes, and/or other vegetables in the same meal it will balance the way the rice digests a little and reduce the glycemic load. Another thing you can do is cook, then chill, then reheat the rice - this will cause resistant starches to form, which have somewhat similar properties to fiber and also are good for our gut microbiome.
Imagine living in a country with 900+ billionaires, with growing tendency, where regular people are discussing about the best ways not to starve.
Not that it's much better where I live, but damn, what the hell is wrong with this world?
The problem is less that people can't afford to eat, it's that they've been alienated from their food and don't know what to do to feed themselves without being exploited by gouging opportunists.
The elite have always been vampires living on the blood of us peons.... it feels new to us because we are living it now, but history shows its been this way a long time, and it was probably the same in prerecorded history too.... we, as humans tend to suck....
part of it is that the working class, poor to people who incorrectly think they're middle class included, basically everyone who is not ownership class (where owning things is the primary means of making them money), utterly fail to organize, and sometimes actively work against their own interests (like the "lets make a third party!" morons, the "I am morally superior for not voting" morons, and or course the actively malicious "I let the billionaires tell me that them fucking me was actually brown people's fault" morons.
I hate the use of working class that excludes front line workers who very much still work for a living. Why call it working class if it's just a fancy name for lower class instead of fully including all workers?
???
I certainly include them in my definition.
I took. > Incorrectly think they're middle class
As to assume you didn't. But clearly my assumption was wrong
What I was meaning to say is that people who are working class think that they are middle class because they aren't destitute, yet they have no significant assets, and could not survive an extreme financial event.
I just feel that politicians use middle class as a weapon where when they talk about policies benefitting the middle class they often benefit people far richer than the median but people think they mean them.
Yup. Most people think they're middle class. Not many actually are
As the saying goes, "most of the working class are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
I don't even think they think this. I think its small potatoes compared to the ones who are convinced that skin colour is like shirt colour in middle school sports, and that means they're all on one team and the ones who don't think that are traitors.
Rice is way cheaper.
it entirely depends where you live, here in sweden freshly harvested potatoes are almost literally free in the summer (i think they were sold for 1 SEK per kg last year) whereas the cheapest rice costs as much as normal pasta.
I read on the news recently that some eastern european country had such an absurd potato harvest just now that the potatoes were literally worthless, to the point that farmers were basically weeping at the prospect of finding someone to take the potatoes from them.
Not where I live.
What is this po ta toes of which you speak?
Pre-soaking lentils (and pouring the water away) makes them easier to digest, in particular it makes them bloat you less.
https://farmhouseguide.com/benefits-of-soaking-lentils/
An exception are dehulled lentils, like red lentils. They don't need pre-soaking and are quicker to cook, too. I often throw red lentils into the cooking water with my noodles or rice, just to add some protein into the meal.
You have to bring lentils to a rolling boil for 10 minutes to get rid of toxins.
Bean stew is one of the most delicious things you can cook whether you can afford more or not. Here's my recipe. Everything but the beans, onions, carrots, paprika, oil and salt is optional and mainly improves the taste profile. Works with almost any kind of bean. Can be done with dried beans too but you gotta handle softening them up first.
Bean stew/soup v4.1
Eat it with some bread or by itself. It goes well with any type of hot pepper too.
Spearmint!?
Yup, fresh or dried. If you're curious about it, just try the recipe exactly as described and it should come out as intended. I don't even taste during cooking anymore. I just do it with the right measurements and it comes right every time. It's an Eastern European dish that has countless versions.
Wow that's so interesting. I'm excited to try it, thanks for showing me some cool new ideas.
i opened a bean restaurant (to prove a point)
You've kind of made a variety of chili. All you'd really have to do to transform it, is add chili powder and cumin. Everybody thinks chili powder is what makes chili, but that only gives it the heat. Cumin is the real flavor of chili. Add both too taste, and it's delicious.
BTW, a cheap meat to add to chili is ground pork. You can usually find it in one pound rolls near the breakfast sausage. It tends to be significantly cheaper than beef, and sometimes even chicken. It's really cheap at Aldi. Add it to the beef to economically fill out the meat in your chili.
It's very similar in ingredients but the taste profile is different since there's no cumin. It's also typically of a watery, soupy consistency although there are thicker versions.
I once made a batch, and was trying to figure out why it didn't taste right. I added more chili pepper, but that wasn't it. I finally remembered that I had forgotten to add cumin. Dumped some in, and it tasted great!
I have been in multiple debates about whether chili should be thick, like a stew, or more liquid, like a soup. I maintain that the proper consistency is right in the middle, but that's hard to keep when it's simmering on the stove, thickening up.
That's interesting in that none of my chili recipes have cumin as an ingredient, so I'd say that is far from essential.
Recipe? I've been perfecting my chili game for decades, and I've never used a recipe. We don't need no stinking recipes!
If it ain't got cumin, it ain't going to taste like chili. Period.
By recipe, I don't mean some written down rigid list on ingredients and processes, I mean more in the way of each distinct type of chili. I also have perfected my various chilis over decades and only one, my white chicken chili (which barely counts as chili IMO), has cumin in it. I am sure your chili is great, but I'd almost certainly prefer mine as I consider it perfect.
As a vegan, this has been my main meal because I'm pretty lazy (usually wrapped in a tortilla with guacamole, but I also eat it plain)
The gas issues are only a problem for a few days / weeks until your gut biome adjusts !
Yes, I think it's a sign that your diet lacks fiber and your gut is now adjusting to the heightened fiber-intake.
It's the bean water that comes in the cans.
If you don't use it - you don't have the gas.
No idea what they put in it.
That is part of it, but not the complete story. I talked about the same things in a comment elsewhere here, but in a nutshell it's the combination of fiber and the oligosaccharides in beans. The latter is what leeches out into the bean juice, which is why rinsing beans can go a long way toward reducing gas.
But for the fiber there is no getting around the need to just eat it everyday to get the microbiome adjusted to it. Where people go wrong is eating a ton of high fiber foods all at once and getting miserable with a ton of gas. It's better to add those foods more gradually to get used to them.
honestly if eating a bunch of fibre all of a sudden only causes gas, consider yourself lucky..
I recently started adding chia seeds to my food (turns out it can be a perfectly affordable all-natural fibre supplement, lots of protein too actually) and it basically delayed my bowel movements by a day or two..
Not so fun during, but very.. cleansing..
Yeah, no. I cooked my own beans from dry and I was still overly gassy for a bit.
Also, if this sounds too boring to anyone - do not underestimate the power of keeping a bunch of fun hot sauces around. They don’t have to be too spicy, but something similarly vinegar based will have a decent shelf life and be pretty cheap per serving.
I’m not just eating pantry staples again, I’m enjoying a smoky chipotle bean stew on top of some fragrant mango-lime-habanero rice.
Something chili based is fantastic. I'll use just chili powder if needed but something like a siracha is fantastic with so much stuff.
As someone who isn't into chili spice, i can also recommend using extra stock and drizzling on some sort of acid (lemon juice is my fave) when you serve it
White rice is pretty much pre-diabetic junk food that's been stripped of most of its fibre and nutrients. I'd recommend always replacing with something like the above, or my favorite, steel-cut oats.
When cooking from dried, some baking soda in the heating process can greatly speed things up. The use of a potato masher here and there can also speed up the softening of the beans, and makes it easier to tell how far along they are.
Don't forget MSG, which boosts up the savory / umami taste. It's cheap, you don't need a lot, and there is no such thing as an MSG allergy. (altho very occasionally people can have sensitivity)
If we're talking about cheap meals steel-cut oats have almost excluded themselves these days. I used to be able to buy organic SCO in bulk for about $1.45/lbs. These days I can't find any SCO for less than $3.50/lbs and that conventional, not organic.
Where are you getting cheap SCO these days?
Nowhere. It's always been fairly pricey, at least for me.
So to summarise-- that was just me stating my personal pref, not recommending them to anyone as 'cheap meal food.' That said, it's possible that rolled oats are a better, cheap alt to rice. They tend to turn out too mushy for me, but may indeed retain much of their fibre and nutrients...
Everything is more expensive now. Still though, $3.50/lb of dried oats is a good amount of food. Sure, there are cheaper options, but if you skip one fast food meal or something then you could buy 2-3 lbs, which is quite a lot when you add water. Not exactly "struggle meal" perfection, but still frugal.
If you prefer white rice to brown but actually want some nutrients I highly recommend trying out basmati rice - it's relatively easy and inexpensive to get in bulk and I almost never eat any other type of rice anymore
Well... once I switched to SCO, I stopped eating rice and never looked back. It's all-around healthier than any type of rice, last I checked. Plus, I greatly prefer the flavor, no offense intended.
Basmati does have quite a pleasant aroma, in any case!
Do you mix SCO with beans? Or in a curry?
It works great any time you might think of having rice, either as a side or in a meal.
I would say this, tho-- it can get a bit slimy (like oatmeal), so you might want to rinse it after cooking.
My kids call me "bean lady" for my love of beans. They are a perfect food.
Red beans and rice (red beans cooked with small chopped veg, long grain white rice)
Pinto beans on brown rice, with tahini.
Pinto beans on brown rice, with chili paste.
Pinto beans refried with breakfast.
Lentil dal with coconut milk and spinach (or lately with Hong Tsoi because it grows here, spinach is too fussy. )
Garbanzo bean soup with potatoes and chorizo.
Ful mudamas with pita and feta cheese and scallions
Channa masala so spicy, with chopped onion and mixed pickle, on white basmati
Red lentils and greens on sourdough toast. East with knife and fork.
Brothy enormous white beans cooked in veg broth but with a Parmesan rind or a bone.
I really truly love beans.
Frozen peas are great for that too. Goes with a lot of different dishes. just throw in a handful, or make a side-dish.
Rice and beans together make a full protein, so eat them together.
Rice takes up arsenic when it grows, if you eat a lot it can add up. It's mostly in the bran which is in brown rice and is removed for white rice. Rinse many times before cooking and you can either boil in lots of excess water and drain (like you do with pasta) or parboil it. https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/how-to-reduce-arsenic-in-rice
https://sheffield.ac.uk/sustainable-food/news/new-way-cooking-rice-removes-arsenic-and-retains-mineral-nutrients-study-shows
I just want to add:
If you are in NYC - check out the Chinese and Mexican grocery stores!!! Usually a ton of foot traffic keeps the vegetables fresh. I do most of my vegetable shopping at one particular Chinese store which I find to be the best - [except for the onions (why are the onions so bad - do chinese people not eat yellow onions?)] - and it's fun to try new vegetables!
Also, strange, and I'm not sure what to make of it - fish in the Chinese grocery stores costs 1/2 of what it at white-people ones.
Not American myself, but my father lived in NYC and his friend (also from our country) said that in NYC if you want fresh food, the Mexicans got your back. I'm not even sure if he meant grocery stores or restaurants, but it seems to corroborate your story.
what kind of fish is it and where is it caught? Because these days overfishing is an enormous issue and you really really really want to make sure to only buy sustainable fish, lest we completely destroy the populations.
My go to rice recipe: spanish rice
Add some refried beans and a protein or cheese, kids will clean their plate.
Beans are protien
It's the return of depression meals, 1930s style
Unlike my dumbass family back then I'm not afraid of spicing my rice and beans like people with melanin
I can’t imagine spices were exactly cheap. When you’re at the point of making water pie I’m gunna guess that spices are an easy enough thing to let go of.
I'm not talking spices from around the globe or some shit. I'm talking jalapenos, serranos, chipotles...
Ya know, cheap staple crops from my region of the world that grow like weeds and add flavor for cheap.
Ok, with as little intended rudeness as possible: Spicing is a weird word, and usualy for clarity anything to do with heat would be “spicing” or “making spicy”.
And yea those are definitely not too expensive at all. I really enjoy using spiciness as a way to add a a lot of depth basically for free. Everything is better with some red pepper flakes.
Frankly I disagree, chili powder and paprika are spices commonly sold as spices and are just dried then crushed chilies. It's just a preservation method and in Asia chilies are preserved in chili oils so not technically a spice but is used for flavor like a spice.
Really the only problem here is that the language we are using is so fucking bad at describing flavor and cooking.
I mean, a little yes but if you’re specifically talking hot peppers, and you said that you were, then the bulk of what they bring to the table is heat. Flavour for sure a little, but I wouldn’t consider them spices.
I can agree that the language is a little vague. Like at what point does ginger become a spice and not a normal ingredient? Only when it’s dried and powdered?
I'm sorry but if you think chilies only add a little flavor there's no point continuing this. Have a good one.
Can anyone recommend an economical and tasty gruel brand?
Some notes about gas: It's primarily caused by a combination of fiber, and in the case of beans, by the oligosaccharides. The fiber can be handled by gradually increasing intake of high fiber foods. The more you get used to eating them, the less bloated you should feel, and it generally goes down to a normal level of gas that most people experience.
For the oligosaccharides, soaking and rinsing the dry beans does help remove a lot of it. Rinsing canned beans also helps. Taking Beano (or an equivalent) can help too. There are also claims of various spices being able to help as well.
It's also important to note that different types of legumes can cause more bloating, or less. Experiment with different kinds to find what works for you.
If you're willing/able to make the effort, sprouting and even fermenting will significantly help with bloating as well.
As a last resort or easy reprieve, opting for low fiber plant foods like white rice and tofu won't hurt in the short term, though whole foods should generally be preferred because natural sources of fiber of hugely beneficial.
On an unrelated note, I have always hated soaking beans, which is why the Instant Pot has been one of the single greatest cooking inventions I have ever used. Supposedly the pressure cooking also breaks down the oligosaccharides and reduces bloating. I just love it because I can toss in a bunch of beans and oat groats, and have enough of that stuff cooked to easily and quickly prepare meals every day for a week with each batch.
Exactly why I bought mine. Any pressure cooker will do. Beans (red, pinto, or black) 1 : 2 with water for 40 minutes, followed by natural release. I use roughly a pint of dried beans (1lb bag, then topped up out of a mixed-beans bag), to get 9 large servings.
I also do quinoa in the same cooker 1 : 5/4 with water (or sub up to half the water with stock) for 0 minutes (just bring up to high pressure), followed by natural release. I use 3 cups dry to make 9 servings.
Depending on your spice budget, you might feel like you are getting more by applying right before eating. But, if you want the spice flavors to permeate the beans, it's best to add them to the pot and warm them just a bit with the saute setting before adding the beans (or quinoa/rice/grains) and water.
If you eat meat, miscut ham is also a good addition to the beans before cooking -- they will share lipids and flavors.
I use nooch as a topping for mine, to try to keep it vegan, but what I really like is a Mexican shredded cheese blend.
it should also be noted that you need fibre for healthy digestion, so you really should just power through the flatulence as much as you can. Avoiding fibre because it makes you gassy is like avoiding water because you don't like getting wet lips.
leave it to lemmy users to disparage the primary staple of 3.5 billion people. "Pre-diabetic junk food" lmao sure ok
It truly is the way too many enthusiasts on any topic think.
Like they can't fathom the idea that other people are focused on other things despite this being 100% the reason humans were able to create what we have.
If humans all focused on the exact same things, we'd have a very narrow scope and much less innovation.
It's why its so hard to find good advice.
You go to a cooking subreddit, and they'd have you thinking that unless you knew every artisinal craftsman shop in your area (your local butcher, your local baker etc etc), you must not know food, and that you need 400 dollar pans to get utility out of your cookware when literally just a common stainless steel set would do you just fine, and even if you had to replace it 20 times, it still wouldnt be the cost of the more expensive one.
People live in their own bubbles and expect that everyone else not only could but should meet them where they are in their bubble, rather than realizing that guess what, food is just to eat for most people, not some passion they want to dedicate multiple hours a day to.
I understand your point because often in a lot of hobbies, when you are a newbie, people can be very condescending to you. But I still think that it's abnormal the number of people that know nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society. I am pretty sure there would be wayyy more people enjoying cooking if they could take their time doing it.
It is not essential to become a cooking enthusiast to eat.
You can be perfectly healthy eating nothing be pre prepared meals and frozen vegetables.
You can be perfectly healthy with a few family staples in a 3 set cookware set.
You can be perfectly ok drinking soylent your whole life.
People on these forums are often enthusiasts as described. They go overboard assuming everyone else must be like them, and this is often an excuse they use for their condescension as if there aren't vastly different levels between eating because you need to for continued living and whatever the fuck they're at.
Nah. I think plenty of people simply do not enjoy cooking and thats perfectly fine. If I had less obligations and more time, I wouldn't waste it learning to cook to the level they have. I have very little interest in cooking. Maybe occasionally Ill try a fancier recipe but I'm never going to season a pan, learn how to make Croquembouche or add beef wellington as a staple in the things that I eat.
If I had more time, Id be putting that into my hobbies. Id be making more things, going more places, not wasting my time slaving over a kitchen counter.
I fully respect that this is a completely subjective perspective. Obviously for some, they might read "waste" and feel incensed and that language, but that language is simply accurate for me. I don't expect it to be accurate for everyone.
I have lazily been buying the same bag of high fiber mixed vegetables for monthes because it has the mixture of things I need dietarily and I mix that with frozen meals that have reasonable mixes, and through in some simple cooked meals as well (I mean simple too, like scrambled eggs on toast or vegetable soup or meat with gravy on rice).
To me the time would absolutely be a luxury, but cooking is not what I'd like to spend it on. To me, given we still have limited life spans, it would still be a waste of that span.
You're right, and I've learned to ignore most advice I read from enthusiasts. I bought a cast iron pan 20 years ago for $15 and I still use it to cook almost everything, including eggs.
I did splurge and buy a nice dutch oven to make baking bread easier, but it's not necessary.
Multiple times now I've been mocked relentlessly for PC building advice or opinions on software development I had that became commonplace within 3 years, like when I said noSQL databases were overrated as hell but they had their uses. Made enemies on both sides lol... And now that's the common opinion.
I'm not a chef but I work in IT. The problem there is IT people on average are horrible at communicating and empathy.
Just get a full La Cruiset set for a wedding gift and you are golden. /S
Taco seasoning goes great in beans too.
Taco seasoning and chili seasoning are very close to the same thing.
Cumin is the defining flavor of Chili.
4 to 5 tablespoons, yes please
Yeah, I tend to go pretty heavy. I once went to shake in a bunch, and the top fell off, and about a quarter cup fell in! I scooped out as much as I could, but it was still pretty heavily dosed.
It still tasted great! Strong cumin flavor, but still yummy. I ate all of it.
Taco seasoning goes great in most things, just maybe a bit less of it so you don't immediately associate it with tacos.
If you can get a hold of some chipotle chili pepper, adding a little bit to the beans is a great way to get some smokiness and depth of flavor too. It's really strong so one container lasts basically forever
Been on lemmy like two years, and this is the first post I'm gonna actually save for later cuz damn this is just useful and nice information to have, thank you so much for sharing!
You inspired me to do the same!
You're welcome!
Also a very underrated flavoring that's unjustly stigmatized because of racism is MSG. You can get really big bags of them for super cheap, and it's an easy way to make any meal taste savory.
MSG is my secret weapon for making my cooking better than his mother's.
MSG has been a godsend in the kitchen for us. It just makes everything taste better!
It stands for Magical Savory Goodness
You get it! My wife and I use the term "the sacred MeSsaGe"
To reduce gas with beans:
Also remember that as your body gets used to it, the gas is reduced.
This will cost an extra few dollars but still totally worth it..add curry sauce! Aldi has butter chicken, korma, and tikka masala sauce for abt 5 bucks a jar and it is really good with rice and beans.
If you’ve got some spices, as suggested above, you can basically make your own. Add a tin of tomatoes, some tomato puree, and maybe have a slightly wider selection of spices (sumac, mace, cardamom, cloves, for example) and you can have a wide variety of curry flavours without having to spend the extra on pre-made sauces.
True but some people have more limits on time/energy so thi would be helpful for some :)
I got a tray of rotisserie chicken leg quarters (maybe 8 of them) for $5 at Costco!!!
We should have a post of cheap foods!
Leanne Brown - Eat Well on $4 / Day
https://archive.org/details/GoodAndCheap/mode/1up
This is a free PDF version of a book she developed while working on her Masters Degree in Food Studies. She still offers it as a free download on her site but I believe you need to subscribe to her online newsletter (also free) to access it.
1kg dry beans soaked and 150g of most types of curry paste makes for a great meal. I'm currently eating red lentils and vindaloo paste with cabbage cooked in with it.
Soak lentils overnight, then rinse and whisk to clean them off before use.
Rice, oil, little tomato paste or *sauce, pinch of sugar, whatever spices you have -> mexican rice
Large skillet of cooked rice, 1 scrambled egg, salt. Stir egg in to rice over heat and mix until cooked. Eggs and rice. Decent flavor, super filling, reheats well.
Rice, soaked black or soaked red beans, Filé powder, chilli powder, salt. cook like it's just rice. red/black beans and rice, heartly flavor, super filling.
1 single sausage patty cooked and chopped super fine, file powder, skillet of cooked rice, salt - > dirty rice.
1 serving of cheap uncooked spaghetti broken into 1/2 inch pieces, 3C uncooked rice, 2 tlbs of high heat oil, stir until pasta browns a bit, water barely to cover, stir in salt, dry italian herbs, butter if you have it, tight lid. stir occasionally, DIY Rice-A-Roni.
Throw a single uncooked chicken wing in a large pot of uncooked rice and water, cook normally. it will flavor the rice and you can still eat the wing or tear the meat off into the pot.
Good post. Will try it out.
Also, for what it's worth, hot sauce also makes you feel way more full/less hungry. If you need an addition.
If there's science for this you have I'd love to see it. I'm the exact opposite. Some good hot sauce on beans and rice and I eat twice as much it's so good.
Core memory triggered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWhHJXgxgc
We put 45 minutes on the electric pressure cooker and get the smoothest beans.
That's how I start my refried beans. After pressure cooker add oil (lots...), salt, and a little vinegar. Sauteed onions, cumin, chili powder also good.
I think it's way better than any vegetarian refried beans that you get in a can. Probably because they have more salt and oil...
Exactly!
Also especially if you have a big family or friends go to the restaurant supply store. Last summer they had 50lbs bags of potatoes for $10. Lots of produce like that for cheap in bulk.
Also you can buy the exact same stuff your favorite restaurants heat up in the oven from there, far cheaper and with a different label.
a relatively cheap NON-VEGE way to add protein to this base is pork butt/shoulder (same thing) cooked slow all day, either slow cooker or oven at 250F. Its a cheaper cut of meat and one of them is enough to add protein to like 6 servings or rice+beans. Also, bone-in skin-on chicken thighs are great and less expensive- if you render some of the chicken fat out in your cooking vessel before cooking the rice and beans it is a big flavor boost.
fuck the rice, nice mixed bean salad with olive oil, some salt and pepper, that shit will fill you and make you fart like crazy.
That's fine in the short term. Whole grains have essential amino acids that beans lack
well i don't only eat that so of course im not eating beans 24/7
so add rice and then you arrive back to the post :)
This is untrue. Virtually all plants have all essential amino acids. The only difference is that the main plant-based sources of proteins that people rely on - legumes and grains - have relatively lower levels of one or another amino acid than some other sources. But no studies have found those differences to have any negative impact on people's health, or even their ability to gain muscle, whether they combine proteins or not.
Here's an interview with Christopher Gardner - a specialist who goes into detail on this topic.
What we really need is for people to worry more about where they're getting their fiber, than protein.
Edit: although it should be noted that it is still good to eat both grains and beans for other reasons. Diversity of foods is important for the gut microbiome for a start.
If you want to stretch out your ground beef use 1/4 lb of medium instead of lean and use TVP to fill in the rest. The TVP will absorb the fat and flavour, is quite a bit cheaper than ground beef and is shelf stable. TVP also has more protein than ground beef.
What is TVP?
Textured Vegetable Protein. It's basically soy that's been processed in a way that results in a granular product that's mostly protein, and has a somewhat similar texture to ground meats.
Personally I prefer Soy Curls because those are made from whole beans and still have their fiber, but tvp can be a great choice for people with especially high protein needs like strength trainers.
I've wanted to try that but couldn't find it at the grocery stores I've tried.
In my experience, they're usually kept in the same section as baking goods. You know that shelf that usually just has a bunch of Bob's Red Mill products? If your grocery store carries tvp, it's probably there.
No, but I don't really spend much time in the baking stuff so if that's where it was I'd have missed it. I'll check it out. Thanks.
Textured Vegetable Protein (Wikipedia link)
Best sloppy joes I ever had were mostly TVP. It is really great at absorbing the lipids from the meat AND spices.
Don't "skin" beets with a vegetable peeler. Blanch them and slide them out of their skins. It sounds like more work, but it's so much less work.
Pro-tip: If you have an Instant Pot, you throw the beets in there and pressure cook them for 20 minutes. Slow release and then let them cool a bit. The peels come right off and they are cooked perfectly. No need for any spices at all.
Great if you want steamed beets. You can just blanch them if you want them roasted.
I eat this almost daily and I'm not ashamed to say it.
If you have an instant pot or pressure cooker to cook rice, I find that adding a small handful of cumin seeds (specifically, not the powder) into the rice adds a huge amount of flavor to plain rice compared to the effort involved in doing so.
I just want to note that you should make sure to verify that rice is actually cheap where you live, before going with it.
This post seems aimed quite specifically at american audiences (without actually stating such), but up here in the frozen wasteland of scandinavia rice is actually not that cheap at all, quite expensive even unless you go with literally the absolute cheapest brands available.
If you live in europe i'd wager potatoes are the actual ideal cheap carb, especially during harvest time when the market is flooded with such an absurd amount of potatoes that the price tanks and might even literally reach 0. Another option to look at is as you say, barley or other whole grains.
Frozen peas are also a nice alternative to beans (though obviously less appealing as the main protein), which can simply be tossed into the food while warm or a bowl of them can be put in a microwave oven at full blast for a minute to get fully thawed.
Beans aren't cheap where I live either (southern Germany).
i'm a lot more okay with the blanket recommendation of beans, because it's almost certainly the cheapest meat "substitute" and makes very good stew.
Home-made seitan is presumably the cheapest option basically no matter where you are, but that also takes a lot of work..
Red beans and rice didn't miss her!
Any suggestions for relatively inexpensive breakfasts, or do people also eat beans/rice? Right now I've been eating overnight oats, but they aren't filling at all and taste terrible (and a lot of recipes have ingredients that oxidize weirdly overnight that I've tried eliminating). Tofu scramble takes a long time to prep, there's not enough freezer space between my roommates and I for meal prep, and my apartment has tons of shitty restrictions they've gone after me for, so can't use a second freezer or instant pot. I've been eating beans/vegetables + rice + salsa for dinner though and that works well and is always filling (maybe I should switch to brown rice from what I'm reading in this thread).
For your oats, do you not add a bit of salt, some sugar and or some condensed sweetened milk?
But also, toast and some spread of any kind is pretty efficient. Like peanut butter with the amounts you can get can be pretty cheap.
I'm trying 1/8 tsp salt, 1 tsp maple syrup, and 1/2 tsp vanilla, and it doesn't really help. Although oat milk instead of soy milk improves the taste a little (especially after Costco got rid of the sweetened soy milk version). Using frozen bananas/blueberries turns it into brown gunk when it's ready to eat. Toast + toppings is probably a good idea.
I do basically the same as you but probably more maple syrup 😂 Or I make it with chocolate milk...
Sometimes I add freeze dried berries. They don't turn into brown gunk overnight.
What really helps it feel filling is 1 tablespoon of chia seeds.
Here's some ideas:
To decrease gas from dried beans: while soaking change the water once (roughly one hour in) or boil them 2-5 minutes before the soaking and throw the boiling water. This second method also shortens the soaking to only an hour if I remember correctly.
We also do the sauté onions (which is just onions cooked slooooowly). They caramelise and become sweet, add some generic chicken seasoning to them (I use a salt/paprika mix from the general store), tinned baked beans in tomato sauce, rice, and that's all. Spice it up with some jar jalapeños and its a damn fine meal for nearly no prep or cost.
Celery is good for an additive for flavoring, but has near zero nutrition as it has such a low caloric amount. Chewing on celery burns more calories than intake.
That’s why you put peanut butter on it
Celery has vitamins which is helpful
Vaush?
lentils in particular can be mixed with rice and cooked up right in a rice cooker. easiest meal to make.
A quick point to add. Adding fat to your meal makes it more filling and for longer. The worst fats are trans fats, second worse are polyunsaturated fats, and mono seem to be fairly good along with most saturated fats. In terms of cost some of the vegetable fats are much cheaper but they often have trans fats which are essentially toxic and they also go rancid very easily.
Saturated fats are generally solid at room temperature and don't absolutely need to be refrigerated on cool to moderate weather days. If you would sweat the butter would too, so put it in the fridge.
If you add a small amount of mince to your beans it will stretch really far and add tonnes of flavour and protein without breaking the bank. Cheaper mince comes with more fat but if you are making beans you want that, so get the cheaper mince, lean is not helpful.
Beans on rice freezes well for weeks. Beans without rice is good for months frozen. Beans with rice and any cheese or sour cream is not OK frozen. Beans with cheese microwaves well, but add sour cream after heating.
To make it more satisfying you can add a little bit of some chilli sauce. Hotter sauces go further, but the best is fermented sauces. The cheapest chilli sauces are full of sugar and water, so they just sweeten and dilute rather than flavour your dish.
If your beans tastes sour add a small amount of sugar, stir for a minute, and test again. Sugar fixes the sourness quite well.
For extra flavour a stock cube can be added. I would recommend beef stock for beans, but it will work with chicken or fish too. Most stocks are now vegan because they re synthetic, but they add a lot of flavour and are perfectly fine to eat.
The best option if you can manage it is to learn how to make a beef broth from bones. You boil the bones for hours, around 8 or so should do, and the bones will start to soften and become translucent. At this point all the nutritional goodness of the bones is in the broth. You can then use this as a base for making stew, beans, soup, etc, or you can reduce it by open top heating it and letting the steam leave. This will make a strong stock you can use to add flavour and nutrition to other meals for the cost of some energy and cheap bones.
A slow cooker can make cooking all of this much easier and safer. Electric slow cookers are able to be set up in the morning and have dinner most of the way ready by dinner time. The slow steady heat is great for bones and for softening meat and the easy of use is just fantastic.
Thanks for contributing. Some of your content on fat is not supported by evidence. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are the healthiest fats, and saturated fats increase risks of heart disease.
Here's a great article from the Nutrition Source discussing these concerns head on. TL;DR
Casserole's and tuna sandwiches
Yes, vegan food is wayy cheaper (and healthier too). It's one hell of a life hack
Let me guess.
checks their history
Seems like a troll account to make vegans sound bad
If I wasn't already, I am now.
Not you hahaha
The person you were responding to.
IT'S TOO LATE
For saying it's cheap and healthy? Man these vegans really suck
Gallo Pinto
Wish I could but I can't stand neither beans nor rice. Gotta have meat and green veggies in my meal.
That means that I only like chili without beans. At Asian restaurants I always ask for no rice and substitute noodles. The only beans I can tolerate are refried. So at Mexican restaurants I ask for no rice and double beans.
While we're at it, I don't like potatoes, either. I'll eat them, but I won't go out my way to order them, unless the alternative side dish selection is no better.
Edit: FWIW I'll eat it all if I'm hungry, but none of these things would be my first choice.
My parents would say you just haven't been hungry enough. Their parents lived through the great depression. I wouldn't know, but I hear people are having to make food/medicine trade offs, which seems more dire than flavor/texture preference tradeoffs.
That said, I don't know a protein source that's as available and cheap as beans, but you might try insects if cheap is the priority or poultry if availability is your priority.
You can buy a large bag of frozen vegetable blend and steam it fairly simply. You can either steam single serving and keep the rest frozen OR steam the whole bag in bulk, and refrigerate for up to a week, reheating single servings as you need them.
Best of luck.
Is it a textural thing? I wish very much that I liked mushrooms, as they seem like such a good alternative to meat, but I cant stand the texture of them. Makes me gag.
Mostly I just don't like the taste, but I guess I don't like the texture of beans and many potato preparations either, now that I think about it.
Okay. I was going to suggest making louisiana style red beans and rice from scratch. you can throw in chicken, or sausage, or whatever meat you want really and it will still taste amazing but it is definitely gonna have the soft rice/bean texture. you could add more broth and make it into more of a soup too.
It might taste better if you cook it from scratch yourself and add a ton of spices/flavors or something. I used to think rice/potatoes sucked also, but adding a lot more flavors (like salsa) improved it a lot.
Sure, but they are more like side dishes.
Nah, grains and legumes are the macronutrient basis for civilization.
They sure are. But I prefer them after been run through a cow.
You said, in a thread about eating inexpensively, and to a vegan. Here's a reminder that you can stop being part of the problem right now if you want, and time is running out.
I'm saying you can add some curry to the rice or some ground beef to the beans for a nice chili con carne, which isn't that much more expensive but makes for a much tastier dish.
I'm sorry, I didn't know. You guys usually let me now beforehand.
Personally I can never get past this line. Malnutrition perhaps, but nobody in the world's richest, fattest country - where the fattest people are the poorest ones - is dealing with "hunger". I wish we could just abstain from manipulative Orwellian language.
PS: sure, downvote away to dispel your cognitive dissonance, but that won't magic away the correlation between poverty and literal obesity in the world's richest country
PPS: to be clear, "hungry" is either a useless or a manipulative word. Anyone can be "hungry", no matter how well-fed they are, so in that sense it's a useless term. In the other sense, meaning calorie-starved, it's obviously wrong, since the poorest US states (Mississippi et al) are also the fattest. Sorry, but nobody here is thinking straight. The issue is one of nutrition and food security, not hunger.
I didn't learn these tricks because I was experiencing obesity...
Try volunteering at your local food bank some time, they certainly need the help right now
Let them eat cake?
Believe it or not, there are other countries than the US on the internet.
Also (and I suspect an even more difficult concept to grasp) even within the US there are people with barely enough money to eat anything, let alone junk food.
Look at the data - 47 million people in the US face food insecurity. Do you think these people are trapsing down to the food bank only when they fancy a change from McDonald's?
It's good to be sceptical when you hear stuff that surprises you, but do a bit of research before dismissing it.
It doesn't "surprise" me, it's a common talking point. I've been to America, including the poorer bits. I know the statistics about obesity and social class - do you?
Of course, and it's a common trend around the developed world.
What's important to realise, though is that there are huge swathes of people who are poorer than that. People who need to choose between eating and heating. People who go without just so their kids can eat.
The obese poor people are not the ones who are starving (obviously). They're not the ones in abject poverty.
I was one of them when I was a kid. There were many times the only food I got was the free lunch provided at school, and I helped my mother scavenge dumpsters behind grocery stores for food. I'm fat now because it's the most shelf-stable and accessible calorie reserve available, and with the looming cuts, I'm glad it's there for me. This guy doesn't know jack about shit.
How can there be "huge swathes" of Americans who are "poorer than" the Americans who are so poor that they can only afford junk food and thus explain America's obesity statistics. This whole talking point makes no sense.
How are you not getting it?
You're right in claiming there is a link between obesity and poverty. However the difference in obesity rates between the upper quintile and lower quintile is still less than 10%.
Obesity is a problem across every single wealth bracket.
There is a problematically high number of people in America who are both poor and obese. But there are about twice as many people in poverty who are not obese.
Obese means fat, not just overweight. The fact that there are twice as many non-obese among the poor does not make them thin! Unless it's that people get fatter and fatter as they get poorer, until they get really poor and they suddenly they become skeletal, is that what we're claiming? This whole talking point makes no sense and you seem rational enough to be able to admit that.
I focussed on the obesity statistics because that is what you were talking about.
OK, let's flip this.
According to you, people with no money are not only buying junk food, but buying it in quantities to become overweight and obese.
People with no money are buying large quantities of food.
Is that what you're claiming? Is that how the world works in your head?
I'm saying that people with no money have no money to buy food. You're saying that people with no money somehow also have enough money to buy large quantities of unhealthy food.
At this point I can only assume that you're just arguing bad faith, because there isn't anything complicated to understand here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_insecurity_and_hunger_in_the_United_States
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security
Yes, that was my point. The word "hunger" is being conflated with food insecurity. We all know what "hunger" means, and it is not the same thing as malnutrition or food insecurity. I don't care if it's been redefined by NGOs to make a (valid) point more punchy, it's not the same thing. It's manipulative Orwellian use of language. That's all I have to say here.
tell me you didn't click either link without telling me you didn't click either link 🤷
Tell me that you haven't read 1984. "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength", and today "obesity is hunger", apparently.
I have in fact read Nineteen Eighty-Four; as an aside, I highly recommend reading Isaac Asimov's review of it as well as some other things you might be surprised to learn about the author.
Anyway, FYI:
Obesity and hunger often go hand in hand
What Is the Hunger-Obesity Paradox?
etc etc 🙄
Source?