What meals do you cook when very low on money?

i think that it helps to always have some rice cooked and waiting to bump up the calorie count to almost any meal.

Rice, potatoes, beans, and lentils are all solid low cost choices.
- A friend had a recipie for a dinner he ate almost every night in college. One can of beans. One can of diced tomatoes. Put in microwave. Spice to taste. He called it "beans and tomatos".
- Yup. Buy dry beans and dry rice -- none of that precooked stuff. Buy fresh potatoes tho. If you can afford it, I'd also get a bag of onions, maybe carrots, and some spices that do NOT contain salt. You can also buy salt, but it is way cheaper per-gram to get salt and other spices on their own. Note that brown rice has more vitamin content than white rice (thiamine deficiency), but most white rice is enriched to compensate.
- I have to admit that I do not do beans nearly as much as I should. I think it is because canned beans are not nearly the deal money-wise as dried beans are ... and I am not good at letting beans soak without forgetting them and ruining them.
- I mix lentils and rice with sautéed onions and I have a meal for a couple days. Add a dollop of sour cream.

When I was literal piss-broke, there was a college campus near me with an open food court. Couldn't afford the actual shops selling food there, but in that food court was a condiments station that randomly had one of those electric hot water dispensers for making tea, and styrofoam cups. It also had ketchup packets, saltine crackers, and pepper.

Turns out you can make a pretty passable tomato soup with ketchup and hot water. Bit of pepper and a handful of saltine cracker packets, and I had myself a hot meal for exactly $0.00

With some money to spend, rice is where it's at. Hitch a ride to Costco or Sam's with someone who has a membership, and they have iirc 50 lb bags of that short grain fortified rice for like... $15? That's well over 100 meals worth of rice.

Cook that up with literally almost anything that has some flavor or nutrients - whatever's cheap. Or just eat it straight... bland, but it'll fill you up. Eggs go great with rice.

Fair warning, you'll get fat. Cheap food is NOT usually healthy.

Beans shouldn't be much more pricey, give you less worry about arsenic and contain a fair amount more protein than rice.
If affordable, I'd pick beans over rice any day.
Big bags of dried beans it is!
- Also, for variety, there are a lot of kind of beans, plus there's chickpeas and lentils which can be made in the same way.
  For even more variety, one can eat beans with rice 😁
- Beans are also fantastic. More expensive and more work than rice though, so my cheap and lazy ass usually went for the white stuff. Didn't even know arsenic was a concern... nor would I probably have cared when I was that broke - all I really cared about was price.
  But 100% beans will keep you full without breaking the bank!
I hope you're better off now ❤️ !
The rice comment is 100% spot on BTW, you know you're in dire straits when you can't afford rice...
- Things are way better now! I was getting pretty depressed, and struggled with suicidal ideation. Had a plan, and a redundant backup plan in case the first one didn't turn out to be fatal, but then randomly decided to try an extreme change in lifestyle so I enlisted into the Air Force on kind of a whim. Was always opposed to military cuz of the whole killing innocent people thing... figured if they put me that kind of position I'd just refuse (gave absolutely zero fucks back then) or worse case I'd just go back to plan A and kill myself instead.
  Didn't have to find out though: got lucky and they made me a medic (surgical tech specifically). And hugely: access to actual healthcare, to include mental!
  Got the fuck out as soon as my enlistment was up, and I've been working as a civilian surgical tech ever since, which has me up to $24/hr. Actually not broke anymore, which still feels kinda weird. Using my GI Bill to go to nursing school right now, so soonish I'll looking at another income bump, but I'm already making enough to at least eat healthy... you don't realize how shitty you just always feel at baseline when your diet consists of carbs and whatever you can find on the clearance rack.
  I see a lot of my classmates with that with that same kind of "aw fuck" expression on their face when they see the price tag on the hospital cafeteria food at our clinical rotations, so I've been pretty quick to buy their meal and tell em to pay it forward when they're a 'rich' nurse lol. 😝
  But yeah, it sucks absolute balls to be poor. I will never let myself forget what that's like.

Rice and beans. Together they make a complete protein so can make up a larger bulk of your diet.

Pork loin, those gigantic big ones, are cheap per pound. Cut it into three for three roasts, freeze the other 2.

Try to get Multivitamins and magnesium. Long term you want those vitamins and minerals. Fish oil too. It seems expensive but it's cheaper than fish itself.

Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this
Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.
- Yeah agreed. Beans/lentils, rice, potatoes and flour make up most of my meals. I rarely eat meat but I do consume dairy and eggs occasionally. If you mix in some cheap vegetables like carrots, celery, onion, ect you can get really far with tasty meals.
+1 For rice and beans. Add some drops of ketjap manis or soy sauce/salt for flavour. If you just eat rice and beans all day everyday, you're not even that far off a complete nutritional package. If you love in a potato country, switch out the rice for taters, even better nutrition but might still be a hit more expensive.
+1 for the beans (or lentils, or just any pulses fwiw), but why the rice?
Pulses contain carbohydrates, but much more protein than rice and as rice is a hyperaccumulator of arsenic and pulses aren't, wouldn't that make a diet centred around pulses healthy while still affordable?
Put some canned tomatoes, vegetables, onions, garlic, spices or whatever else is available and affordable to the beans and you have a nice enough and quite healthy meal.
- Because even the poor like a bit of change?
- Because rice and beans together make a complete protein. Link: https://www.livestrong.com/article/351077-the-protein-in-rice-beans/
  To reduce the arsenic in your rice, first give it a good rinse. Place the grains in a fine mesh strainer and pour water over them until it runs clear. Cook the rice in excess water, at a ratio of one cup of rice to six cups of water, and drain any extra leftover once the grains are tender.
  https://www.allrecipes.com/article/arsenic-in-rice/

Rice and beans is the staple pretty much everywhere else.

Don't buy ultra processed Mac and cheese or frozen pizza. It's nutritionally bad for you, and won't keep you full for long.

Start with rice and beans and canned sauce. Cheap, easy, and good for you.

You can obviously add chicken/tofu/protein, or try to start making sauces yourself. But always keep the rice and beans as a base. Every meal you eat, rice and beans. They're cheap as hell and close to what we evolved to eat.

the answer is always either rice and beans or potato.
I'm a fan of Cuban rice and beans. I can't make it all that well but it's good enough and my version is palatable. Dirt in the hole!

Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!

Fry onions in coconut oil, add lentils and water, season with garam masala and/or other herbs and spices, optionally add dried fruit and nuts, eat with rice. The best thing about this is that all ingredients keep well in the cupboard so you can stock up a little when you can afford to.
I cook beans and rice regardless of how its going. Nothing can beat that. And you can add anything you want, which makes beans really flexible.
- I can cook rice OK, but it's never really enjoyable to eat. Always too bland. Never tried cooking with dried beans and lentils so I'll have to explore that. Cheers.
1bag dried black beans
1half onion
Vegetable oil
Bay leaf
Red pepper flakes
Garlic
Salt
Water
Pick out any bad looking beans, then place them in water to soak over night. Next day, drain the water, put beans in a pot with 1tbsp oil, salt, bay leaf, half an onion, and enough water to cover. Cook for about an hour or until beans are soft. This can be divided into 4-5 quart bags and frozen to store. Do not throw out the water, store it with the beans.
Add about a cup of veggie oil, 1 tsp garlic, 2 tsp red pepper flakes to a pan. Cook over medium hear until aromatic. Add about 4 cups of beans and juice or 1 bag thawed. Stir carefully until it thickens, then mash with a slotted spoon/spatula/potato masher.
The first half makes beans that goes great with basically anything, the second is true, authentic refried beans. As a honky boy who only ever had then from a can, the refried beans were life changing and I married the woman that taught me how to make them.
1 cup dry beans, 1.5 cups water in instant pot. Press the "beans" button and go back to Lemmy til pot beeps at you (about 45 minutes). Can't get much simpler.
budgetbytes.com great cheap recipes their older stuff was a bit more budget conscious. But you can sort by ingredient and find good bean and lentil recipes.
Soak the dried beans over night and the lentils at least for 2 or 3 hours.
Fry an onion and some cloves of garlic in oil. I prefer olive oil, but take whatever is available.
Add a good amount of canned tomatoes to it - canned tomatoes are typically more affordable than fresh ones while tasting better at the same time due to typically being harvested and processed when being ripe. Also they can be bought in bulk due to the long shelf-life.
Put some spices in: pepper, cumin, oregano, thyme, cardamom go well with it, or whatever you like. If the fancier spices are too expensive, just pepper does quite well.
Finally add whatever vegetables are available and affordable: bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, green squash, whatever you can get and like.
If you can get some minced meat, put it in the pot/pan before you add the canned tomatoes. The same goes for sausages: slice the sausages and roast them gently; it improves the taste.
More affordable than minced meat (potentially healthier than sausages) and a good source of protein (next to the pulses, which contain a nice amount of protein already) would be eggs.
Crack one, two, three eggs into the pan, put a lid on and let it cook for around 10 minutes. The result is close to eggs Benedict ;)
Have fun and hang in there!
- I had a similar (but much more primitive) dish:
  I'd pour a can of tomatoes onto sausages as they cooked. It sort of braised them. Then I'd add basil for a European touch, or curry for something more exotic. Not sure how dried beans and lentils will go, but I'll have to try it. Cheers.

I started eating a lot of chickpeas recently. Buy them dried, boil them for a couple minutes them let them soak in the water for a few hours. Then either roast them in the oven or if I'm lazy, toss them in the microwave for like 5 minutes, then add some seasoning. I snack on them between meals, or also toss them into things like soup or curry.

Also if you want a different take on ramen, boil them until they are al dente, drain the water and then stir fry with some cheap veggies or whatever.

There is this curry spice blend that comes in a small green carboard box (fits in your hand) that I find at a local indian groacery store. Its specifically made for chickpea curry. Anyway dump a bunch of this shit and a little salt on your chickpeas before roasting. Its genuinely so goddamn good I eat it every other day atleast. I'll see if I can't find the name
Found it

Really depends on the situation.

If I'm just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don't hunt, but I'm not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.

And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I'd take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I'd go there and take what they had to offer.

At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.

A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don't go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper -- in moderation -- so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.

When I've just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I'd just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.

Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.

Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.

Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.

So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don't have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that's still a meal even if that's not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that's still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you've got.

Basically pasta.

I don't know where you are, but a 500g pack can be had for significantly under 1€ and is sufficient for multiple meals. Add a similar priced can of tomatoes, onions (optional) and some spices (I assume you have those).

Obviously there are other options for the sauce, many are cheap enough to consider when money is tight.

Yeah I'll have to get creative with pasta. I can't just eat rice, dried beans and lentils forever haha. Cheers.
Even a little bit of butter is great! Also teaches you to cook pasta correctly.
- If you're doing anything with pasta that involves butter you're doing it wrong, but you do you.
While pasta might contain calories and some protein, there's a lack of other nutrients.
I advice going for pulses instead of pasta.
Dried pulses have a long shelf-life so they can be bought in bulk to reduce the price per meal.
- You can get nutrients from the sauce. IMO tomato sauce is very tasty and can be pretty cheap as well. Probably the cheapest would be tomato paste and water as a base. Or canned tomatoes. Depending on how cheap you want to go you can add vegetables to your liking. Onions are always great but also carrots or peas.

Back in my early 20s there were a few things.

Making beanie weenies were pretty inexpensive
Ramen is the old standby
Totino's party pizzas were also cheap calories
Canned soups, stretched out with cheap crackers
Peanut butter on celery or toast

No idea if those are still cost effective, but two or three of those could be stretched out over a week for under $10 at the time. I still eat all of those things at least every few years for some hits of nostalgia, even the cheap ass pizza.

This is all processed food that's not only more expensive than just cooking something but also horribly unhealthy. Loaded with sodium.
- When I was really low on money I had one small saucepan, one pan, a spatula, and a few dishes and silverware. No soup pot, no mixing bowels, or any other prep stuff. No spices or other ways to make flavorful food.
  Cheap processed food is more affordable in the short term than spending money on stuff that will make cooking cheaper in the long run. I'm not saying it was the best choice, just answering the question of what I did make.
- Assuming someone asking how to eat when poor has access to fresh ingredients and the time/means to prepare them

Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!

Bulgur wheat makes a really good textural element in vegetarian chili.

Pasta and sauce. As long as you have a few basic herbs and spices on hand (garlic powder, Italian seasonings, salt pepper), you can buy a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of pasta, and you can have several delicious, filling meals for less than 5 bucks total. Spend a little more and toss in ground beef, ground pork, or mushrooms, or a combination of all three.

Aldi has the ingredients for really cheap. You can even buy a pound of ground pork for only about $3. The spices are only about a buck each.

A bag of onions and a jar of minced garlic punch above their price tag for pasta enhancement as well.
I like to saute the onion (diced) until golden and translucent, then add a scoop of the minced garlic, then just as it starts to brown, dump in the sauce, Italian seasoning, and stir at a very low simmer while the noodles cook.
Add some pasta water to the sauce before you strain so it sticks to the noodles better.
- I didn't know that about the pasta water, thank you!

I'm grateful I haven't reached my college level of broke (yet), but with the economy absolutely booming right now under our current leadership, money is very tight. I'm pretty good at figuring out meals with some budget to work with.

Not sure if this only applies to Costco prices right now, but rounding up I got a 4.5lb bag of quinoa ~$13, a 5 pound bag of red beans for $10, and a 5 pound bag of red onions for $6. So a total of ~$29. Depending on how many people you're feeding you can stretch that several weeks. If you go with rice instead of quinoa it's cheaper and also still gives you a complete protein when you combine it with beans.

My father in law always said he lived for an entire year in college eating nothing but potatoes. I wouldn't recommend trying that but I guess it's an option?

Also recently made a loaf of bread for the first time. All you need is flour, yeast, oil and water (forgot you do also need salt and a small amount of sugar to activate the yeast. I've used juice from different fruits (grapes, oranges) as an activator when I didn't have sugar, but never tried that with bread specifically).

Chickpeas and lentils are very cheap and can be used to make a lot of recipes. Buy some taco seasoning, tortillas, and lentils. Make a giant pot of that, and it will last a while. Lentils are pretty similar in texture to ground beef, so it works pretty well. This may sound weird but lentils are also really good as a meat substitute in spaghetti.

It gets really boring eating the same thing everyday, so I've also used this website to make some really good meals: https://www.budgetbytes.com/ They have a ton of options for both meat and vegetarian meals.

This was like 10 years ago, (so shit is definitely more expensive now) but when I was between jobs I had to make $50 for groceries for two last a little over 2 weeks. I went through the recipes on there and found a bunch that sounded good and contained the same core ingredients. Made a list of core and extra ingredients I would need (garlic, ginger, etc) and then went to Walmart and got everything I needed within budget.

The mujaddara was and still is my favorite. I always end up needing to double the water the recipe calls for to cook the lentils and rice. I will also say it is definitely a time consuming recipe compared to the others I tried. Make it on a day when you can set aside enough time to slow cook and caramelize the onions instead of sauteing. That is definitely the key. https://www.budgetbytes.com/mujaddara/

Also keep in mind if you buy something like fresh ginger, onions, or mushrooms, but don't end up using all of it right away, you can chop it up and freeze it for later so it doesn't go bad.

I've stored chopped frozen ginger by itself in a ziplock bag. It seemed fine to me but apparently you're supposed to put it in oil and then freeze it. Some people use ice cube trays and make small aliquots of oil and ginger or other herbs.

I've been told repeatedly you shouldn't freeze onion, but when you're broke and need to make what you have last, whatever. It might lose some flavor and texture, but I always saute onion anyway. If I was trying to eat it raw (or caramelize it later) I could see that being a no.

Mushrooms have to be cooked first before freezing (as far as I know). Chop and saute with olive oil and a little bit of butter or coconut oil (there is something about the extra fat that helps preserve it when frozen). After cooking, spread out on a nonstick surface or sheet of parchment paper, put them in the freezer and then once they're frozen, move them to an airtight container.

Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they're DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you'll find it's basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever

Also super nutritious!!
As a side note, it's a good investment to buy a pressure cooker at least for the beans since it cuts the cooking time to about 10 minutes (and this is assuming you've soaked the beans for at least 12H).
Pressure cookers will also cut down the cooking time of things that need longer cooking to not be too hard to chew, such as cheap pieces of beef.
Also consider chickpeas along with beans and lentils since you can cook them in the same way and they're the same kind of thing (pulses).
- If you didn't soak your beans, you can still do them in a pressure cooker. It'll just take about an hour. It lets you make a somewhat last minute decision to have beans whenever you want.

Oats are underrated. Dirt cheap, with calories and nutrients. Super easy and fast to cook. Can be cooked in water or milk. Can be made sweet (e.g. with apple and cinnamon, drop the sugar) or savory (e.g. curry powder, or tomato etc).

And it definitely fills your stomach.

Falafel: dried chickpeas with garlic & parsley fried in oil. Very high calorie/cost, because the chickpeas are basically oil sponges, and it's hard to beat vegetable oil on calories/cost. $1.50 for 1000 calories.

Kimchi fried rice: Kimchi, rice, couple of fried eggs for protein. $2.10 for 1000 calories. Make your own kimchi even cheaper.

Chili noodles: cheap, store-brand spaghetti with chili oil-soy sauce dressing. Don't sub ramen for pasta - that stuff's expensive. $2.50/1000 cal. Make your own chili oil for extra savings.

To add to this, buying from specific ethnicity markets tends to be cheaper. If you have nearby Chinese/Eastern, any middle eastern, Mexican/Latin American stores, you can find a lot of really cheap staples to make.
- I moved recently and the overall lack of ethnic stores is driving me up the walls! They are usually both cheaper and better quality than anything you find at the supermarket… I guess I moved to white-as-butter-land :/
God I fucking love falafel

There's a few things I usually have at home because they're cheap, can be used for various dishes with or without additional ingredients and I will actually eat them before they spoil:

Beans, lentils, tomato paste, eggs, peanuts, cottage cheese, smoked tofu (not neccessarily a cheap item but I only use half a block or less per dish), bread, rice, spring onions, bell pepper, frozen spinach, hummus, cucumber.

Frozen spinaches haven’t gotten a lot of attention in this thread yet!
Depends on how poor is poor and the cooking budget, but they stay good for a long time and you can add a bit to basically any dish: omelette, rice and beans, tomato pasta. Tasty, simple and flexible
Is tofu considered expensive? I don't have much money per month for groceries, but I usually have 4-5 blocks of tofu in my fridge at all times because of its versatility and range of use in various dishes, so I've never thought about the price. It's around 2€ for 2 blocks of tofu. Not bad imo.

I eat cheap all the time, but rice and beans is the classic. If you can afford a can of tomatoes and some spices, then you can upgrade this to rajma masala. That's one of my fav post workout meals. Throw in some alliums, and other vegetables as you can (frozen is often p cheap).

Actually just look up vegan Indian recipes and source ingredients as cheaply as you can. Like dried beans, lentils, chickpeas, and spices — ideally purchased from bulk store — and you'll be healthy and satisfied for less money than you would believe.

When I was poor I ate boiled chicken and rice for every dinner. Breakfast was either cereal+milk (you can try ringing up multiple boxes at the self checkout using a "small" box but bag the bigger boxes), or yogurt+granola (I'd steal granola by ringing up bulk granola as cheaper bulk items and ring up the single yogurt cup in a 6 pack and pay <1/6 the actual cost).

Petty theft rings too true. Had a friend that worked at one of those bulk ingredient shops who'd regularly just take home like a kilo of rice or flour. They don't check anyway and it hardly affects their bottom line.

You do not need to be broke for: noodles made in herb water
Once you try it you may never go back to only salted water

Herb water? As in tea? Never heard of this
- Its probably some kind of herb tea
  I put herbs like oregano into the noodle water before even adding salt. Mostly i use some ready made mix

Rice bowls, rice with chickpeas, rice with beans, throw some furikake and kimchi in there and some sriracha mayonaise.

Dal makhani

In a beat boxing tone:

Beans 'n rice (repeat as many times as needed).

Also do pasta with tomato sauce a lot, add whatever I have or what I can find on sale (mostly lentils, beans, frozen vegetables (kinds that have protein)).

I've always loved lentils but I've kinda rediscovered them lately, it's crazy how good they are in every way. Cheap, somehow always makes more food than you think, easy to cook and extremely versatile, makes you feel full with less and keeps you going for longer. Truly a superfood IMO.

Beans, rice, potatoes - the holy trinity.
- Adds nicely to the beatboxing too
Even easier:
Rice with broth of joice + pureed (blended?) tomatoes.
Add a solid spoon of sour cream and parsley.
Easy tomato soup with rice. (also works with pasta)

My ultimate struggle meal:

In 1 pot:

Rice (the good one from a sack, forget about minute rice)
Carrots, sliced
Whatever is cheapest between Sweet potato, Pumpkin or Eggplant at the time, cut into cubes.
Thai Curry paste & Soy sauce
Salt
Cook 15 minutes
Put into a tortilla with mayonnaise

Fast, really cheap, and has the important bonus that the only dish to clean is the 1 pot. When struggling, I also don't feel like doing a lot of housework.

Sadly, I can never remember the best ratios, so the mayonnaise is rather mandatory as it can save a rather bland filling. Sometimes, I splurge and use guacamole instead, sometimes I also put in mini-spring rolls from the same shop I buy the rice and curry.

With my "recipe" out of the way, the important thing is to find some ingredients that have a low price for lot's of weight, and then choose a recipe that's like 90% cheap ingredients by weight. (Remember that some ingredients take on a lot of water, rice taking on twice it's volume for example, so they're cheaper than the price tag implies). I personally look for food that's under 3€/kg. The other 10% of the meal can be way more expensive (curry paste in my recipe), but, because you only use so little of it, as a whole it's still cheap.

Probably the absolute cheapest meal are homemade hash browns, potatoes are ridiculously cheap, with apples being the cheapest fruit where I live. Next cheapest vegetable around here are carrots.

Breakfast: oatmeal

Snacks: popcorn (air popped, buy kernels. ~~Need~~ I recommend an air popper, but they're like 20 bucks. Then you can eat cheap popcorn forever). Bonus tip: if you can get your hands on a cheap electric coffee/spice grinder or want to grind seasonings by hand into an extremely fine powder, you can make popcorn salt that coats the popcorn really nicely. E.g. curry popcorn (salt + curry powder), lemon pepper, ranch (get ranch dressing powder). Spritzing with a fine mist of water can help the salt stick.

Lunch/Dinner:

Fried rice (egg, whatever meat/veg, I like doing soy sauce glazed canned sardines with it for a cheap meal)
Red beans and rice
Chicken & sausage gumbo over rice
Enchiladas, rice, beans
Rotisserie chicken tacos
Collard greens and cornbread, you can add bacon or other cheap cuts of pork to add protein.
Pasta bake (chicken, spinach, pesto, white sauce, little cheese, optionally dried tomatoes - dry them in your oven to save money or buy canned for a little more)
Korean rice bowls. Chicken, gochujang (like $5-8 but lasts a long time in the fridge), red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil. Marinate overnight. Cook on stove or in oven. Serve on rice with side dishes: carrot and cucumber banchan - just get some matchstick carrots, combine with vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, chili flakes. Cucumbers: slice thin, salt, drain. Combine with sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes. Assemble.
Filipino style Chicken Adobo (potatoes, carrots, chicken, onion, garlic, ginger cooked in a vinegar soy sauce based sauce)
Make like 200 pierogis for like 20 bucks (and several hours) and freeze them for later. Boil or pan fry and eat with a sausage and some saurkraut. For fillings, I like a little ground meat with onion and mushroom and saurkraut - 1 part meat, 1 part mushroom, 1 part onion. Even cheaper is potato and cheese - typically this means mashed potato mixed with sour cream and cheese.
Cabbage rolls. Head of cabbage, rice, ground pork, onion, garlic, a couple cans of tomato soup. Cook rice, mix with ground pork, diced onion, and garlic. Dunk cabbage head in boiling water for a minute or two, peel a leaf off, stuff with pork mixture and roll. Put all rolls in a baking pan on a layer of the tomato soup, top with tomato soup. Bake covered mins or until cooked (165f internal temperature)
West African Peanut Stew. Lots of recipes online. Contains a mix of peanuts, peanut butter, sweet potatoes, collard greens, chicken/veggie stock, and optionally chicken. Very filling, calorie dense, and cheap. I make like 2kg of soup for <$20.

In general, if you want cheap food then look for cultures with rich food traditions born from poverty. Also look for more plant-based recipes or find ways to stretch your meat using fillers like cabbage and onion.

Examples: Louisiana Cajun, American South, India (at least the more modest dishes without lots of meat and cream/butter), Eastern Europe, Central and South America, even provincial French food & British "food" (I jest, but bubble & squeak or bangers & mash have fed many a hungry family)

Staple foods should include:

Staple Starches: potatoes (sweet potatoes and normal potatoes), rice, corn, beans, lentils
Chicken (whole raw or rotisserie) - benefit of a whole raw chicken is you can use the whole carcass to make stock and get enough meat for 2 people for a whole week. Rotisserie is the same deal, but precooked and not best suited for all applications.
Filler vegetables: basically all of your cruciferous vegetables, onions, root vegetables

Popcorns don’t need an air popper: a pot with a lid and some oil+salt.
Warning: you need to keep the pot at a high temperature for quite a while, so avoid using non-stick pans because they are going to die quickly.
- That's a very good point. I still prefer air poppers because it prevents burning the kernels, but a pot would totally work.

I used to fry a pan of frozen veggies with salt and thyme, but these days I'm often lucky enough to be able to get a lot of rescued food for free.

Cuban beans and rice are very delicious and very affordable.

Consider the food bank too probably.

Bulk dry beans, bulk sack rice, canned beans for chilli when feeling lazy or on sale, meat only on steep discount usually making stew or chilli with the worse less/undesirable cuts. Stir fry when you find better ones. Frozen vegetables and fruit bags. Store brand usually. Basic frozen pizzas, pasta bags with tomato based pasta sauce. Pasta sauce cans are frequently on sale and baseline is a low price.

Bananas, kiwis, and mandarin oranges are usually cheap in Canada anyways for fresh fruit.

I have a meat grinder attachment on my used mixer, very useful.

You can do a lot with apps like Paprika or Supercook. You add stuff you already have and it spits out only recipes with what you have on hand already. Helps me use up what I buy efficiently and stops you from getting bored of eating the same stuff. Less food waste and flavour bordeom is always good for mood and wallet.

If you have space, gardening. Fruit trees alone fill a deep freezer eventually.

I'm growing potatoes, carrots, shallots, parsley and dill - and something called "mother of herbs" that I don't really know how to cook with yet.
I'll check those apps out, cheers.

Back when I was in the US like 5 years ago, I've been able to stretch my meals out to about $40 per month.

You can make a flavourful cheesy-pasta (not actual mac-and-cheese) with some pasta, some chicken bouillon, a tablespoon of butter or margarine, and a slice of processed cheese. For protein you can buy cheap chicken franks and chop it up, and for veggies I like frozen peas and frozen broccoli. Get store-brand for the cheapest possible options.

I was so stingy that I was able to stretch one box of pasta out to 11 meals, and I still looked forward to each meal.

To keep myself from going insane, every grocery run (every three weeks) I rewarded myself with a gallon bucket of store-brand ice-cream and two packs of store-brand chocolate sandwich cookies, all of which I completely devoured within one week.

I lost hella weight and felt really good about it. Unfortunately, I've gained it all back now.

Rice and beans.

Oatmeal

Pasta

Marked down produce

Burritos. Beans, rice and whatever else you can get that's on sale it cheap. Make a batch Sunday night. The poorer was the more I would cook.

Yeah, this is it.
Any grain, any bean, any vegetable u can find and then slap that removed into a tortilla. Or don't, If the tortillas aren't in the budget that week. Yoghurt plus garlic makes a cheap sauce.
- (Vegan) yoghurt, garlic, spices, squeeze of lemon juice, fresh herbs is the staple yoghurt sauce we eat with anything that fits it. Salads, wraps - you name it

Sweet potatoes. Alternately, potatoes, carrots and green beans stewed together with cornbread or rice. If you can afford it, chicken, pork, or turkey for flavor and protein. It need not be expensive cuts, necks or tails will do.

Nothing against the other suggestions, but pretty much anything you can buy that is "ready to eat" (canned soup) or "easy to make" (Kraft dinner), even if it is already cheap, would still be cheaper to make yourself from scratch. Cooking, in bulk, is your friend.

Two cartons of soup broth $1.77 CDN/946ml each, half a bag of frozen veggies $2.57/500g, boom you have 5 soup meals for <$1 per meal. A cup of flour to make dumplings in that soup and make it more appealing. Compare that to a canned soup which seems to be up in price lately, between 1.50 - 3.00, and you're laughing, and eating a lot less salt.

I haven't figured out exactly the cost of making bread (I play with the recipe and how many loaves), but I am absolutely certain it costs less and tastes better than the cheapest bullshit bread you can get at a store. So less than $2 for a loaf, and it actually smells and tastes like bread and doesn't dissolve in your mouth like cotton candy. No bullshit preservatives.

Pasta with pasta sauce, ez and cheap af, filling. <$1 per meal.

Things that are more difficult imo are meat and cheese due to the cost. I like to buy frozen logs of ground beef which isn't that appealing on it's own, but is passable in chili and shepherd's pie. Cheese can go a long way especially if you shred it for pizza (and you already have flour and pasta sauce from above.)

Speaking of shepherd's pie, potatoes are cheap and versatile. One tube of ground beef with a layer of frozen veg and mashed taters on top, again <$1 per meal.

Not to mention rice which is maybe the ultimate value-for-money food when you just need something in your stomach. Foodies will crucify me, but I love to eat it with margerine (way cheaper than butter) and salt and pepper. There's so much more you can do with it, though. Good for bulking up soups too.

Tacking on..
It can depend where you shop or what resources you have. Canned clams can be dirt cheap and still good if you have the right grocery store. Using spaghetti instead of lenguine can save money as it tends to be about half the price (clams over lenguine / spaghetti). A ~$2 meal at home that tastes better than a $20 one at a restaurant.
Regarding bread, the $1 Italian loaves at Walmart's bakery are great for the price and freeze well (*yellow tagged even cheaper).
Chicken thighs are often $1-$2 a lb (cheaper than whole chickens), and are far more forgiving on over cooking. Learn to cook and pair them good (like thai peanut sauce or roasted veg or chipotle instead of Franks) and you won't want white chicken meat. Deboning them yourself can save money and make for great sandwiches (I don't know a store that sells deboned with skin on either).
Aldi has great prices on many kinds of sausages, and they're pretty good.

Roasted whole chicken from grocery; where I’m at they’re $5 and you can make sandwiches for days and or make chicken based soup with the leftovers. Also beans and potatoes. So many things you can make with them. Accent them with cheap bulk spices and some herbs grown with a little cheap desktop hydroponic grower, or outside depending on climate.

Boil some red lentils, add carrots when they're half done. Then some coconut cream and a stock cube. Fry up some onion and garlic with cumin and coriander powder, then chuck that in too. Eat with rice. Add some sambal.

try to opt for dried beans over canned if u have time canned beans are expensive these days. lentils especially red lentils cook pretty fast from dry, whereas white beans or black beans take longer but if u can cook a whole bag it should last u ab a week. u can season w season salt or bouillon or some cheap spice mix so u dont have to buy a bunch of individual spices.

Beans and cornbread. Or beans and rice. Cornmeal is especially cheap in the US with how subsidized it is, so cornbread is a good way to fill out a meal.

Ramen. Spaghetti (sauce optional). Rice. Oatmeal.

Bad choices, apart from the oatmeal, and even then thats not great. You can get by cheaper with lentils and beans while increasing nutritional value by a few thousand percent.
- The carbs have a place in a healthy diet. Nothing wrong with rice or noodles. The Ramen if it's instant is crap though

Hopefully you like Indian food, because there are loads of lentil dishes that are super cheap. Dal Makhani plus some basmati rice (and if you’re ambitious, make some naan from scratch). Basically lentils, a few spices, an onion, some garlic and ginger, and rice.

Rotisserie chicken. Cheapest thing in the store most times, and they're pre-cooked, pre-seasoned, ready to devour

I also lived on chicken nuggets for a while, but I can't recommend those.

Other comments remind me of potatoes! So many simple ways to prepare them. my favorite is microwave baked potato.

Rinse it off, stick holes in it with a fork several times, coat it in oil, salt it, and microwave until you can smash it with your fingers (through a napkin, or use the fork). Then bust it open, add whatever sounds good that's on hand, and eat it up.

If you don't add salt to a baked potato, then it pairs well with most oversalted foods. Like pour a can of baked beans over the opened potato.

One of the best tricks I've learned in my time is how to process down a rotisserie chicken. After you strip it of meat, you can toss the carcass, the skin, and the dripping in the bag into a pot and make around 2 gallons of broth or boil it down and freeze it.

Life of Boris has a funny (and actually useful) series on budget cooking if you're into that. Great watch imo

Playlist

Subscribed. Cheers.

If putting a pizza in the oven qualifies as cooking then that.

Ramen with frozen vegetables mixed in.

Bean tacos.

Some kind of dish using chicken thighs as you can buy the thighs for cheap.

If ground beef is cheap, cottage pie.

Various pasta dishes

Ramen with frozen vegetables mixed in.
I like to add soy protein chunks (TVP) in my instant noodles too. They're one of the cheapest sources of protein and do not need any extra work as long as you get the small ones. Just dump it in with the hot soup and wait for it to rehydrate.

oats with whey

2 cans of beans with oil and spices (or chickpeas)

pasta with oil and frozen veggies (pasta always whole grain ofc) pasta with canned fish

these are my go to meals. However i cook them because im lazy and these are all very healthy, chep, and easy to make

Sandwiches and soup. I always preferred tuna, but grilled cheese or ham and cheese are solid too.

Tuna and cheese are cheap????
- A can of tuna is about a dollar, that's probably good for 2 sandwiches.
  I think that qualifies as cheap. I mean 1 tuna sandwich probably costs about the same amount as a pack of ramen, and it contains actual food.

Rice & Beans

Hashbrowns

Rice & Lentils

Popcorn

Chili butter noodles

My favorite food when I was poor was something I called bachelor chow.

Cubed and fried spam, a can of baked beans, and some rice. I’d get two or three meals out of it.

You can fancy up top ramen by putting some sliced onion, basil, egg etc in it.

I braise a whole bag of onions and use it the base for a big pot of Turkish-ish red lentil soup. This then gets portioned into 10 or so meals and frozen so it lasts till i have money again.

10 minute farro from Trader Joe's. $2 a bag.

https://traderjoesrants.com/2022/04/20/trader-joes-10-minute-farro-whole-grain/

When very low on money, it's what's in the cupboard,.which is oil, butter and pasta. Cheese is a bonus but the fridge will be empty before the cupboard.

You should always have rice and pasta available. Cheep and quick. So good for when tired or lazy, as well as when broke. Lots of people recommend beans but I don't like them so much.

Look at the specials in your supermarket. Many please discount heavily for stuff that is close to expiry date. If you shop daily you've less waste and get food deals.

Kraft Mac n cheese. You can add all sorts of stuff to it to make it stretch and be somewhat healthier. Frozen riced cauliflower, onions, beans, hot dogs, whatever.

Suddenly salad works well this way too. Add tomato, carrot, bell pepper, etc.

I used to do the same with instant ramen but the sodium level in it is way too high for me to eat anymore.

Pasta, instant noodles, polenta, rice+tuna, bean guiso or stew whatever you call it. Also whatever vegetables in season and cheap, ie, potatoes, pumpkin.

Frozen Basa fillets are the cheapest unprocessed meat too

Search for guiso recipes if you need to learn what to do with legumes. Beauty of guiso is that the amount of ingredients doesn't matter much and you can always add more of what you like and remove what you don't like. You can add any bits of meat to it like sausages, chorizo, beef, chicken, you name it. You can also add any tubers, onion, or pumpkin if you have any, but if you don't have any of these things you can still cook it.

So far wasnt in the situation, buuut:
Cheap and easy spaghetti salad: A big bowl
1 piece of garlic, finely chopped or sliced
2-3 big tomatoes or appeopiate amount of smaller tomatoes, small pieces
Basil, finely chopped
Spices (rosemary, Oregano, etc. for other pizza and pasta appropriate spices)
Olive oil, a healthy amount. The ingredients should be moderately covered in a small pool of oil (dont drown it.)
Pepper and chili flakes as much as you like
Let it rest for >60min. But you can be impatient and eat it earlier)
Salt to taste (should be a bit saltier than you like)

Cook as much spaghetti as you like.
Remove from water and add to the bowl with the oil mix.
Mix all ingredients hntil everything is covered.

Enjoy :)

That sounds amazing! And really simple, and even affordable. Some chunks of cheese would make it even better, if there's cheap cheese to be had. Will definitely try this, maybe try adding some lentils as a meat substitute. Thanks for the suggestion!
- Your suggestions arent what I'd use it with but feel free to modify as you please :)
  Take a look into the asiasn kitchen.
  Some stuff can be made very easy with few ingredients there.
  For example I made a duck breast broth udon bowl.
  But it's
  200 g (7 oz) duck breast fillet
  1 leek
  1 teaspoon sunflower oil
  500 ml (2 cups) water
  100 ml (7 fl oz) soy sauce
  50 ml (3½ fl oz) sake
  50 ml (3½ fl oz) water
  100 ml (7 fl oz) mirin
  5g (¼ oz) dried kombu
  5 g (¼ oz) katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
  Udon
  Yes, the ingredients require upfront cost and are usually more costly (for example in Asian supermarkets) but the broth was amazing for those few ingredients.
  And they could probably be substituted with cheap version (in comparison to mid-quality products) or swapped.
  Maybe not the same taste but similar enough to still taste well. :)
  (If someone wants the recipe, the epub can be found online.
  This book (EN version under the same title) https://www.dorlingkindersley.de/buch/maori-murota-wiebke-krabbe-japan-home-kitchen-9783831046881
  Page 14
  Tried only one recipe but so far it's a good book.

Basmati rice, margarine, salt, pepper

When I was in college, it was a lot of yogurt, cereal, pasta, and subway. Those $5 subways were 2 meals for me.

However, as an adult, I just made a cabbage salad. I highly recommend recipes from budgetbytes. They try to use cheap but nutritious ingredients whether fresh, frozen, or canned

That looks so good! I always forget cabbage for some reason, but you definitely get your money's worth.
I used a head of green cabbage few years ago to make baked cabbage wraps with lentils as the meat substitute. They fell apart, but still tasted really good.
Uncooked red cabbage leaves makes a pretty good tortilla/bread replacement. Also sauteing shredded red cabbage with red onion then mixing in some goat cheese and sriracha is a really delicious and easy to make side dish.
The most expensive thing is the goat cheese, but be fairly cheap depending on where you buy it. You can also just skip it if necessary bc red cabbage and red onion by itself is still really good.

Rice, pasta, hot dogs, oven baked pizza if it's cheap.

Soup with lots of root vegetables, cabbage, lentils etc. whatever is in season (a tip is to roast the veg in the oven first for better flavour and mouth feel). I always have some good sausages in the freezer that I buy for 50% off because they're close to expiration. Thaw them and fry them pretty hard before joining the soup. I can easily feed myself and my gf for a week from one batch. A boring week for sure but you do what you gotta do. Mix it up with some different toppings or other flavourings during the week.

West African peanut stew but you'd need a place to get a huge bag of berebere spice.

My recommendation is to look around your grocery store and see what ingredients are cheapest. That can help to come up with ideas I think.

That being said look up Congri. It's a Cuban dish that's quite tasty and uses very few ingredients.

I used to live off of dollar boxes of pasta from Walmart. It got me through a lot of college. A little butter will up the calories and give you some other nutrients but you'll still need meat or something at some point

Dry pinto beans are cheap (and flavorless). You just need to soak them in water before cooking.

Rice is a carb and nutritionally void, but it will fill you up and keep the cravings away.

A better path is to shift your entire diet away from carbs and toward nutritionally dense, unprocessed foods. But, this takes time, and you probably don't want to start that when you're low on money.

I've been eating a mostly plant-based keto diet for 15 years now. I can easily go two days on just water and be fine, no cravings. The best way to save money on food is to not eat at all. So, rather than eat crappy food just to feel full and stave off carb cravings, eat less food, but more nutritionally dense food. You'll save money and still be healthy.

Onigiri, or, since I'm Korean, Jumeokbap(주먹밥). Dirt cheap, literally put anything you want.

I often fry whatever vegetables I can find and add a fried egg.

Rice and buckwheat are very cheap (and vegan if you're of that persuasion). If you cook buckwheat, you can add a few tiny bits of sausage in there and you've got a very filling meal.

Oatmeal is great because you buy it in huge bags that last long and you can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If the budget is not that bad you cook it with milk. If it is you cook it with water (this is called gruel, medieval peasant food). If you're making gruel add a bit of salt to make it more palatable.

An old classic is of course ramen, but the ramen bricks can be made much more filling if you boil them in a pot with a sausage or two (this requires you to have sausage).

If you live in certain tropical areas you can harvest some edible fruits from unfenced land and use this to enrich your diet.

Eating a couple extra hours of sleep for breakfast instead of food is a dubiously healthy but certainly effective way to save some money on weekends.

A pro tip is if your drawer is not very clean your onions will start to sprout and take root. I didn't have to buy onions for about half a year at one point because I just kept cutting off a bit and it kept growing back. I didn't water them or anything, they just did that in my dark dingy cupboard.

Depends where you’re at. If you’re not too far from forests and meadows, mushrooms, grasshoppers and herbs.

Other than that, rice, noodles. You can add the above things to your rice and noodles.

You can cook your noodles in tomato sauce like spaghetti al‘assassina to get some variety.

Remove wings and legs from grasshoppers before eating, they’re scratchy.

Only eat mushrooms and herbs you’re certain they’re not poisonous.

Beans/legumes can be cheap

While chicken from Walmart (or Costco) about $5 and it becomes 4-8 meals.

Air pop popcorn. Buy popcorn by the huge bags, so I only buy every few years.

Rice is cheap. Bread is cheap. Pancakes. Bananas (it’s like $1 for the week)

Also check out your local food bank, lots of free stuff to fill the kitchen, then you just have to buy a few staples that are missing from the food bank items. (The one near me doesn’t have milk, eggs, meat, etc. but they have plenty of vegetables and fruit and some snacks) also a monthly box filled with canned foods.

Who eats popcorn for dinner? They asked about food, not snacks. Popcorn contains basically zero nutrition.
- We do all the time, popcorn and nachos with a movie or show. Sometime peanuts too.
- Really? Sure it's not a meal replacement, but it's a great snack, and who doesn't have a snack for dinner once in a while (my partner calls it "girl dinner"). You'll be hungry the next morning for sure, but I love popcorn for dinner once in a while.
  Also, found this little writeup
  Popcorn is a whole grain food that is high in important nutrients. This includes vitamins, minerals and very high amounts of fiber.
  PS obviously don't do this for young kids, but for adults who know what they're doing...

Hotdog

A can of lentils. Straight from the can with a spoon.

Taters

I can get many varieties of squash and brassica cultivars locally for a ridiculously low price as most of the entire county I live in used to be all farmland and we have a ton of actual farmers markets that aren't fully commercialized

So I eat a lot of acorn and spaghetti squash, broccoli and cabbage in many forms, peppers are usually cheap as well as carrots. Onions are cheap as well as bananas