What are some cheap, easy, and healthy meals to make at home?
What are some cheap, easy, and healthy meals to make at home?
37 comments
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Get a large pack of nice, no-added-sugar Muesli. Get a regular supply of curd from your local dairy.
Add a wholesome serving of Muesli to ~8oz of curd (and maybe a few drops of honey) every night, and leave it in the fridge. You're set for a nice, tasty and fulfilling breakfast each morning.
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Big fan of beans, rice, and veggies. Cheap, vegan, filling, and healthy, while tasting great too!
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Soup!
Get a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, that's a few meals right there. Throw the bones into a pot with a few aromatics, simmer for a couple hours, now you have homemade chicken stock which is a good base for just about any soup.
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Ramen soup. Just dump into a bowl noodles, spices, soy sauce, boiled egg, butter, onion, and some veggies. It's so good you'll forget it's instant ramen.
Bean soup. Sauté onions with spices, then add garlic and fresh tomatoes. Add a can of tomato passata, beans and some corn. Let simmer for a moment. Season with chicken/beef broth, pepper and unflavored yogurt, fresh basil if feeling fancy.
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Instant Ramen is empty calories though
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Freezer meals are pretty easy because all the work is done on the weekend. And because it is being cooked from scratch, they can be made without using processed ingredients. Besides soup, it can freeze pretty much anything, like chicken curry, ropa vieja, or chilli.
I freeze them in these trays so there is no extra or wasted plastic.
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I second the freezer meals! What I like to do is make things that I can make a very large batch of to make food prep easier when I want a quick healthy meal. My favorites to make are chicken pot pie, pesto, kale pesto, pulled pork (not healthy), and falafel. All of these things take lots of time and or ingredients. So when you make them, you make a big massive batch and then divide them into meal portions for freezing. This way all I have to do is grab 1 portion of say pot pie, thaw it out in hot water or in the fridge the day before, pop it in the oven with some pie crust or crescent rolls on top for 25 min and BAM, I'm eating stuff from my garden in the middle of winter with little to no effort!
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How do you store them after they are frozen? Do you move them into a different non plastic container or leave them in the trays?
We have some of these but I haven't used them yet b/c I am not sure what to put them in after freezing and if it's a ziplock it doesn't seem like this beats vacuum sealing. I am looking for some ideas because I would also like to cut down on plastic.
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I kind of do both. You can leave them in the tray, since they have a lid.
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It beats vacuum sealing cause you can put like 20 servings of food in one big bag, but they remain separate servings that you can thaw one at a time. I often just use a zip lock, but I just reuse the same one over and over again.
I use them for freezing stock, and it's nice to know that each cube is 125 ml.
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Frozen veggie are a cheat-code. If you're in a hurry, just throw some veggies in a pan, You can make pasta or rice to eat-with if you want soemthing a bit more heavy, and if you feel in a luxury mood add cococonut cream in curry powder
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I LOVE this sweet potato and peanut stew we found. We originally tried it when looking for easy camping meals, but it's so good we just keep making it. I'm not even vegan, but it's so hearty and filling. People we make it for often ask if we're sure there's no meat in it. Best part is it only takes 30 minutes to make and uses relatively cheap ingredients. I like to add extra kale to make it thicker and make some wheat rolls to go with it: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/sweet-potato-and-peanut-stew/#recipe
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Looks very similar to a stew I sometimes make: https://www.budgetbytes.com/african-peanut-stew-vegan/
The site in general has a lot of great recipes
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I make that sometimes! It's good stuff
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Oats can go far. Grab a big bag of steel cut oats and the possibilities are endless. Stir some peanut butter in after the oats are done cooking, throw some fruits on top, maybe some protein powder and you've got a cheap filling breakfast. You can also go savory, if you like oats you'll find a ton of good combo ideas on google.
Depending on where you are, a lot of grocery store rotisserie chickens go on sale something like 2 or 3 hours after they were made so you can get a half price chicken if you pick one up past dinner hours. A quarter chicken with rice and some greens will fill you up nicely. Use the carcass for chicken broth and you can cook oats in that too.
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Previously I couldn't eat oats because of the texture, but soaking them overnight in whole milk makes it way better for me. I do frozen fruit layered with oatmeal, raisins, a bit of honey, and cinnamon. A spoon of jelly if I'll want it to be sweeter.
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Ya I find a lot of people don't like oats simply because of the way they make them
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I always like chopping all the vegetables I have and throwing them into a pot of mashed tomatoes. Throw in some minced meat or small noodles if it tickles your fancy.
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If you don't have a good sized freezer, buy one. They aren't that expensive and they'll pay for themselves. Right now I have pints sized portions of two different home made soups in the freezer. Takes me five minutes to microwave. It takes just as long to cook 10 portions as it does one.
If I know I'll have a busy week I'll make myself a three pound roast chicken on Sunday afternoon. Other folks I know will make a lasagna or roast beef or a big pot of rice and beans. Just make something you can use all week. The good thing about chicken is that I can make tacos, or a sandwich, or throw some on a salad.
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You can make "khichdi" - It is a Indian dish, but not really, it is more of a procedure - basically get anything you have (rice, pulses, any other grain, just see if they are too hard, give a wash before, and let them soak for some time), add vegies(almost anything works, my favorites are potatoes, onions, tomoto, carrots, basically whatever is available in season), add spices to taste (I mostly just add salt and pepper, but anything is fine, just add a bit more, since all stuff previously added in a taste profile sense is bland) - then cook in pressure cooker (pressure cooker is not necessary, just accelerates cooking). Depending on how much you put - this can serve you many servings. If after cooking, it is dry for you, either have it with curd or youghurt if you want something cooloing, or just add a bit of vegetable broth and warm it up. Just store it well. It is cheap, not necessarily very nutritious (it is mostly carbs, fibre, and plant protien, which is not bad, but could be better). It is easy - no culinary skills required other than knowing how to wash and cut stuff, and operating your pot.
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I like dust
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I'm a big fan of slow-cooker chili. It's easy to make different variations by throwing in whatever leftover ingredients you have, and stuff that would otherwise be going bad soon. Like the last bit of pasta sauce, random veggies. Always have some beans or lentils on hand to fill it out. It's easy to make lunches for a week in one go.
Stir fry. Similar to above. Use the last of the broccoli, onion, carrots, even peanut or almond crumbs that would otherwise go to waste.
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I've toyed with this... what lentil and beans do you make? And do you have too start it in the pan?
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I'm not OP but here's a sweet potato & lentil turkey chili that I make in the crock pot. It's easy and really good!
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Usually red kidney beans (canned), and/or dried lentils in a bag. No prep necessary (besides cutting up veggies) as long as you know there will be enough time for the dried lentils or other ingredients to soften in the slow cooker. I like to leave it on low heat all day or all night to be sure. You could boil/pre-cook them if you needed it to be ready in only a few hours, though.
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OH MAN!!!
My favourite thing to cook is stir-fry veggie-mix with mashed potatoes.
I buy a myriad of vegetables in "bulk" (not that much, y'know, but the more you buy the more you have and the less you have to go back to the store) and cut them all up thinly, mix them up, and store them in the freezer. Carrots, cabbage of many varieties, chickpeas, regular peas, onion, french onion, leek, turnip, spinach... It's hard to go wrong with your choices.
Yes, it does require some prep, as you can see, but it's just a matter of picking your prep day: the day you buy and prepare the veggies.
When you buy the veggies, you should also buy potatoes. Peel and cut them up in equal chunks; store separately to the veggies.
That's the prep done.
Then, whenever you want to eat, you just take some of the veggie-mix, olive oil, salt, and your favourite herbs (garlic, parsley...) and stir-fry the whole thing! Take the potatoes, boil them in salted water, drain the water, mash them thoroughly (I like to mix some spices here too, like cayenne pepper and garlic).
So delish every time! You can easily get the protein from the veggies, but you could also add tinned fish of your choice, I like tuna.
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Spaghetti or meatless Spaghetti. A jar of sauce and noodles.
Potatoes, make em anyway, they are usually cheap and take little ingredients. Mashed, roasted, fried...
Avoid prepared foods though, they cost more than doing the work yourself.
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Baked chicken breasts with seasoning of your choice (tonight I'm planning to do a blend of smoked paprika, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, salt, and pepper)
Salad (mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, avocado; for dressing I do blood orange olive oil with fig balsamic vinegar)
Farro cooked in spiced chicken broth (I use reduced-sodium broth and add paprika and a small amount of onion and garlic powders)
Freshly brewed iced tea with mint
37 comments