Hey all, things are getting tough out there so I wanted to seek out what your tips are for getting a little more value out of cooking
My tips:
- I throw all my vegetable trimmings into a freezer bag for stock later
- Breaking down a whole chicken can be cheaper than buying specific cuts. This varies a lot depending on the sales.
- Save the drippings in your pan after cooking meats. I put them in containers and label them, then use them for flavouring or roux
- This one will sound weird, but I smell the potatoes at the store. After a while you’ll be able to smell a difference in which ones will last longer.
In general I just try and find ways to use up all the bits of food that get discarded.
I’m still only a novice chef, so any of your tips would be greatly appreciated.
Rice can be combined with other things in an infinite amount of ways, is cheap in bulk and will stay good forever in its dry form (as long as it’s kept dry), Sam’s club has a 50LB bag for $24 right now
Meal prep your own junk food. I freeze smash burger patties, peeled and cut fries, stir-fry veggies and get some dry-store ingredients in advance so when the craving hits, I can make stuff at home faster than it takes for the delivery to get here. It’s cheaper and can be healthier than takeout.
Beans are inexpensive and full of protein and fiber.
Grocery stores typically run sales from Wednesday to Tuesday. Check weekly ads for sales/coupons when planning your meals. Also, check for meat on mark down near the end of the sale cycle. If you can’t use it right away, you can still freeze it.
Try to eat fewer meals with meat, or use smaller amounts per meal. It’s better for your wallet, your health, and the planet.
Fiber helps you feel full, while ultra-processed foods keep you hungry. You’ll eat less and feel more satisfied if you eat whole foods.
I do steel cut oats or ground flax seed and yogurt for breakfast, it’s cheap and high in fiber, and it does work very well at keeping me feeling full with energy.
Frozen berries are cheaper and more nutritious than the sad out of season ones in the market. I like to defrost half cup portions in the fridge overnight for my morning yogurt.
Yogurt isn’t super expensive but making yogurt is actually pretty easy if you happen to be set up for it (it helps to have a bread proofer, an oven with a proofing setting, a yogurt maker, an instant pot or a giant thermos)
Super obvious, but number one should be buy in bulk if you can, for items which you will use before they go bad.
There are some things that I get in bulk at Costco since I use them enough that they won’t go bad before I get through them: Peppercorns, salt, olive oil, frozen berries, frozen salmon. Bananas are dirt cheap there, if I can’t get through them all before they’re overripe, i peel and freeze them for smoothies and banana bread. I always get a sack of organic yams when I’m there. I slice and dehydrate half for dog treats. Roast and mash the rest for spicy tuna yam cakes. Canned tuna is often a good price there too.
The $5 roast chicken is a great deal. I grab that, the giant two pack of spinach and cheese ravioli, a jar of pesto and a pack of whatever veggies look decent in the produce section (often organic zucchini). That’s a few days of dinners plus a bunch of ravioli and pesto that will keep for a month and a chicken carcass for soup.
Keep masking tape and a marker in the kitchen. Label and date everything. Periodically check to make sure you’re using everything before it goes bad.
Soups, stews and curries are super filling and can be very nutritious and economical. Recipes that use beans are excellent for health and cost.
I buy 5kg bags of sushi rice from a specialty store along with large bottles rice vinegar and mirin. Saves like 75% of the cost especially since I like to make a lot of asian dishes.
Also making asian noodles is very cheap and fast even without a pasta machine as its just flour, 50% water and 1% salt.
Its also way cheaper to make tortilla bread, burger buns, hotdog buns yourself than to buy them where I live and once you get used to it, it stops being a hassle.
I have so many, but you’ve named a few. Let me throw a few things in:
- make and freeze stock with ALL the trimmings from veggies you don’t normally eat. Celery leaves, meat bones, stalks from parsley or Cilantro. Save them all, or boil them down.
- Use grocery delivery apps to find cheap deals around you, like Instacart or similar with wide searches. I regularly want to find a specific ingredient, but it might be 2x the price at “Store A” vs “Store B”. This app makes it easy to find deals. Don’t buy from them, just use it as a search engine.
- Dry ingredients are always 3-4x cheaper than canned ingredients. Dried beans, dried mushrooms, fruits…etc.
- Go check the butcher aisle for “last day” deals. Most stores want to get rid of meats within a few days of their sell-by date, and discount them heavily.
- Get a cheap dehydrator. Got some herbs turning or pepper flesh looking sad? Dehydrate them and save them for years.
- Never shop the spice rack at your local stores. They are 20x the price of buying a slightly larger amount direct from the maker, or somewhere like Costco. Salt, Pepper, Garlic…etc.
- Never waste meat. If you think it’s going to go to waste, and it’s not past expiration or smells bad, just boil it down into a broth and freeze it.
- NEVER buy any marked up spice mixes at the store. They’re all just cheaply available spices mixed up for a markup. If you eat a particular dish that requires a specific mix, just make it yourself!
- BUY CHEAP FLOUR. Even if you don’t want to make bread, flour is so useful in a lot of dishes. Get it when it’s on sale, and keep it around.
- It’s SUPER CHEAP to dress a dish up that is seemingly not that exciting. Herbs are usually cheap, so get some chives for those eggs, basil for some pasta, bay leaves and parsley in all your soups…etc
- BARLEY is insanely cheap. Drop it in any soup or rice dish and elevate it.
These are great tips, never would have thought of checking grocery delivery apps!
NEVER buy any marked up spice mixes at the store.
This is way easier than it sounds too, and with a good base of spices you can make a lot of different mixes.
Never waste meat
Yep, and every part of the meat is useful.
Dry ingredients are always 3-4x cheaper than canned ingredients.
Dried peas and lentils are great. I make a delicious pea soup and the recipe is basically “throw ham bones in a pot with dried split peas and simmer for 3 hours”. It’s very cheap and nutritious. There’s an asian grocery store near me that sells ham bones for cheap, which makes the soup easier to make whenever. I’ll add barley into vegetable or chicken soups too.
Actually on that note: the asian grocery near me has all the less desirable cuts of meat. There are a ton of older recipes that help make those into awesome food.
For example pork hock ragout was a favourite growing up.
Yep, if you just need to use something in the future, find the cheap dried versions, or the adjacent ingredients for broths. Some stores even freeze and sell the marrow bones which makes great bases for Ramen, Pho, or Stew broths. 3-4x cheaper than the fresh version for sure. No difference at all.
Careful with the store delivery apps. The prices are occasionally marked up. Wegmans does this. I save $30 a trip by shopping myself
Invest ~$300 in an Amazon 7 cubit foot chest freezer (delivered free with prime). Best investment I’ve ever made. That and a vacuum sealer. I find a sale on something I eat, I buy multiples, then freeze fresh, all kinds of stuff, meats, fruits, fresh herbs, rolls, everything. Bought it at the start of the pandemic, couldn’t imagine doing without it now.
We got a similar one from Costco and do the same! Suddenly buying that 2kg pack of ground beef makes sense because you can break it into small portions.
Costco also sells frozen baguettes, they keep well and heat up in 10 minutes. Actually I freeze most of my bread and haven’t had any go moldy in years.
No knead bread is delicious, cheap and easy to make. But time is limited so you have to pick your battles
freezing rolls is a major life hack
Frozen produce is just as good as if not better than fresh in supermarkets. Helps cut down on food waste plus has more nutritional value
If you have freezer space, buy meat that’s discounted because it’s going to expire soon and throw it in the freezer.
Properly packaged (vacuum sealed is usually your best bet) the meat will last basically forever as long as it stays frozen. I’ve pulled frozen meat out of my freezer that was a few years old that was perfectly fine.
It doesn’t stop the process of things expiring, it just kind of pauses it. If you throw it in the freezer 2 days from expiring, you gotta plan on using it within about a day or two of taking it out (although you can fudge it a bit, if it doesn’t look or smell weird it’s probably fine but do that at your own risk)
My schedule works out that I can do a lot of my grocery shopping in the middle of the day during the week, and it seems like Tuesday or Wednesday is when a lot of stuff gets marked down at my local grocery stores, I assume their meat shipments come on Thursday and they’re trying to clear space for it. I pretty much just buy whatever’s on sale, and throw it in the freezer. Sometimes I even luck out and get some really premium stuff- I’ve gotten wagyu steaks, duck breasts, beef tenderloins, etc. Even marked down they’re a little spendy but I save them for special occasions (got a tenderloin I’m gonna pull out of the freezer for Valentine’s Day and make a Beef Wellington)
And really, having a dedicated freezer is pretty great in general if you have space and especially if you’re able to shop around and buy in bulk.
I also have a full sized deli slicer. I won’t necessarily recommend you buy one of those, but I got mine for free, so I’ve started going to a restaurant supply store and buying whole deli meats and cheeses. That can be a great buy if you have the ability to store it. I’ll slice down the whole thing and portion it out into 1lb packages, vacuum seal and freeze them, then I’m usually set for a couple months. I break the cheese down into 1lb-ish blocks to freeze and slice them down as needed.
For lunch meat, making your own can also save you a bit of money and get you a better product. I’ll buy up some chuck roasts or those butterball boneless turkey roasts when I find them on sale, season and roast (or smoke) them to my liking, and slice those down. Miles better than the roast beef or turkey you get from a supermarket deli, and if you shop smart it’s a good deal cheaper. (Those butterball roasts, for example, are usually around $12 around me, and get you about 2 or 3lbs of meat after roasting it, 1lb of deli turkey is usually about that same price or more, and trust me, this is better)
It does help that I work night shift, so on my days off I’m usually up by myself most of the night with nothing much to do except food prep.
Steal from big box stores? Even if you get caught free jail food. Win win!
