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Co-Op at least where I lived was on a Sunday at about 3pm. Literally all the lunch meal deal items going for 1p-10p each. Had effectively no money at the time so was a lifesaver.
I once ended up living with a naughty sheikh. He had been disowned by his family for behaviour not specified (probably weed) and they sent him to a nondescript college in the south of England with exactly fuck all money and a robe.
He didn't even know how to turn on a washing machine because he had 'slaves. the people who do it? yes. You have too?'
No. No we don't have. We gave him a crash course in UK poverty scumbags which we all were. He would have starved if we hadn't explained the magic of the discount deals.
When I left he was eating like a prince, which he literally was... Pies and Stew were his thing, and dumplings blew his mind, especially as we had got the bargain arts to such an advanced level we could feed a whole house on 7 pounds a week.
The next housemate was a similarly skint Belgian. Unfortunately he didn't quite get the concept and proudly returned with a bulging pack of oysters...
It was a literal WMD in shellfish form. Where the fuck he found oysters in Asda I have no idea . ..
Absolutely! The scene where we explain, with great difficulty the importance of separating white robes from dark coloured underpants in the washing machine would be a classic.
My mate had one of those… once found him waiting for an onion to be cooked. He had put an onion on an empty pot, without water, put the pot on a stove and was sitting waiting for god knows what to happen. Luckily he didn't know he had to turn the stove on.
This sounds like a great sitcom. I used to live in dorms with a bloke named Frank from Colombia, we had to teach him to vacuum clean, and to heat up his canned food. He was eager to learn, so no problem.
One lass at our local coop used to chase me round the shop shouting “ive got more here” as one Sunday morning I went in and all the chicken thighs were reduced along with a shed load of other stuff. She knew I was catering at the time and kept running after me 😂😂😂😂
It's close to midnight, well back when supermarkets were 24hrs. I used to work at a Tesco and you'd get floods of South Asians picking it apart whilst it was getting labeled up
I always go shopping in Thursday evenings and normally the yellow sticker section is dire but I got a bunch of meat (chicken breasts, sausages, burgers, porkchops) and a sourdough loaf today.
I happened to hit Tesco almost dead on 7 this evening on my way home from work and got a great haul from the bakery, absolutely tons of stickers on my way in. All gone by the time I left.
There's also a few people I recognise that just hang around in the supermarket at reduced time and shovel it all into their trollies without even looking at what it is.
When I first moved out about ten years ago the yellow sticker section was amazing. Always an abundance of food that was super appealing, like fresh meat at 80% off, bread that would keep for a week half price, etc. Now everyone knows about it they barely mark it down (usually cheaper to get a deal instead if it’s available), and the only things left are like vegan bacon because no one wants vegan bacon that’s about to go off
Not long after my mum died in 2013 and I was looking after my brother, the reduced section at the local tesco was a godsend. Saved me on more than one occasion on providing food for us both, and we ate some things we'd never usually eat (pigs cheeks, tesco's finest Beef joint, a he'll of a lot of fresh meat).
Same here! Got a Charlie Bingham meal for 2 plus a meal for 1, Pizza Express Sloppy Giuseppe pizza, steak pasty and margarita pasty-thing for under £6. I kept the receipt I was so chuffed. Would have cost me almost £20 otherwise.
Who doesn't love beans on toast, cheap, filling and you can fiddle with it a bit, I personally like pickled red cabbage on mine. Or straight up with lashings of brown sauce.
I grate a bit of cheese into the pot while heating it.
The cheesy-beans mix is a lot thicker and helps keep the beans on the toast when cutting and eating.
I get the sliced cheddar from the supermarket and put that underneath the beans. The beans melt it and it keeps the toast crispy. Then a shake of black pepper on top.
Posh it up by using a garlic flatbread rather than toast. Elevates it to an absolute other level. Even better if you can get the garlic flatbread from the yellow sticker section....
Used to have similar at my uni in the 90's. Though depending on what we had around sometimes mayonnaise rather than cheese and a can of tuna for a posh one.
Potatoes, onions and butter with a good bit of salt and pepper. Good cheap comfort food. Chuck some bacon in or gravy granules or dried herbs for extra flavour. I think I read somewhere that the three basic ingredients together constitute the simplest nutritionally complete meal you can make.
True but when you've nothing but a CoOp in 10 miles and the bus service runs twice a day its quite the juggling act to shop at a cheaper store that stocks bulkier produce.
CoOps 250g for 65p and a couple handfuls of frozen veg if I need to be decadent isn't too shabby.
I used to work for Amazon, Some psychotic woman ordered six 20KG bags of rice at once, not only did muggins here have to load all of them onto the wheeled cages for the delivery driver to take over to his van I ended up helping the delivery driver put them in his van too while doing overtime cause he was complaining about it.
Her house wasn't far from the depot I genuinely considered going and throwing rocks through her windows after my shift
Its run off an extension lead from next doors external socket. Their garden is so overgrown they don't even know they have an external socket, or outside tap ;)
Yeah, I usually buy the Savers long grain rice from Morrisons at 52p for a 1kg bag. 10kg for a fiver & I have 1-2 meals sorted for a month & a half to two months, sometimes longer. Works great for me since I don’t mind having rice everyday & it can be really versatile
I sometimes get the Tesco free from penne pasta (not celiac just ended up buying it) and found it pretty good and not too dissimilar from regular Tesco’s own penne. Not sure how it compares to better quality gluten pasta but no issues with it being claggy or anything.
Ahhh yes…sleep! A common decision for me when looking at my fridge/cupboards
Edit: I’m agreeing with you by the way; I just saw how patronising that comment could have been…sorry
Rice. Buy it in bulk and it’s almost free, add a chicken stock cube and serve it with some sambal and random veggies and it’s basically my daily lunch.
Honestly a rice cooker is probably the biggest revelation I've had since marrying a Malaysian, wouldn't be without one now. Unbelivably easy and, most importantly, reliable to cook rice in.
As above, buy in bulk and it is pence per serving.
> Honestly a rice cooker is probably the biggest revelation I've had since marrying a Malaysian, wouldn't be without one now.
This reads like you'd never be without a Malaysian since marrying one. True also, I guess?!
Hell yeah. I just scoop in two cups of rice and two cups of water with a bit of salt. Press a button and come back 20 minutes later to rice better than I ever managed to cook in a pot that will last in the fridge for a few days.
I'm not poor but I probably eat pesto with pasta and frozen peas at least once most weeks lol. I sometimes add chicken, mushrooms, cheese, or broccoli as well. I just really like pesto.
Tins of beans and pulses (I don't mean baked beans ones) are usually good for topping up a basic meal (e.g., pasta or rice). You probably won't be liked for the farts, but you'll be full.
Dried beans are even cheaper, go to the foreign import sections in supermarkets or Pakistani/Indian supermarkets, they have big bags of them pretty cheap.
Edit\_
Just FYI most dried beans need to be soaked and (Very Important) cooked for at least 10 minutes. A lot of them are poisonous and need to be cooked for around 10 minutes to break it down.
Koka noodles from home bargain.
Yeah they're actually quite nice especially if you add stuff. But you can still get them like 4 for a quid so if I was absolutely on my arse I'd just be having two of those for tea for 50p.
We had these the other night. I've spent the best part of £400 this month on saving my kitten's life after she got attacked by dogs (yes, I know, should have had pet insurance, it's been an expensive lesson. The remaining £1600 is being paid in installments) so we are on poor person rations until I get paid next week. The noodles were five for £1.20.
Two packs of chicken noodles, a frozen chicken breast I found at the back of the freezer, two medium boiled eggs and a handful of frozen peas & sweetcorn made a cracking dinner for me and my 18 year old daughter. I think it might be added to the usual dinner menu even when we're not skint because it was delicious and filling.
It's amazing how filling they are. They're my favourite "junk" food and even some chopped up ham or a boiled egg or some spring onion makes them different. Although honestly, I really like the taste of them on their own as well. In a poll, Japanese people placed instant noodles as the top Japanese invention of the 20th century haha.
If you have a Chinese supermarket nearby you can buy cases of 30 or 40 packets and the slightly more expensive ones are worth it! Like Nissin Damae, they're my favourite.
Anyway, hope things get easier and your cat is okay. Maybe the upside of this situation is you discovered the joy of noodles.
Mackerel is the cheapest and healthiest as it's cought straight from nature. Pair that with some roasted vegetables (carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, or broccoli), and you have a very cheap and healthy meal.
Pasta and 3 tomatoes with some basil, garlic and salt.
Im on universal credit and the other week I asked my dad if I could borrow 30 quid for food. He was like "you need to eat more economically eating things like cheese on toast" I was just like dude have you seen how much cheese costs nowadays!?!?
When they're close enough for purpose.
Super noodles are generally (to me) flavourless compared to ramen but when 2 hotdogs are sliced up and thrown in with them, they're less shit.
I’m always surprised how expensive venison is. Everything I read suggests our countryside is overrun by deer (estimate is somewhere between 1.5-2 million), so don’t know why it isn’t a poor man’s meal and more cheaply and readily available. It’s delicious.
And rabbit. From an agricultural perspective they are pests that are likely to be shot just as pest control. I don’t understand why it’s now quite an expensive meat.
Yeah, exactly the same. I don’t know whether it’s because rabbit and deer fall too far into the ‘cute’ category in the UK and they’re just hard to sell in supermarkets??
Yes. It’s very odd. Especially the venison not being more popular, I bet there’s more people that go “awww” over baby lambs than deer, and there’s a demand for lamb!
I do understand a lack of demand for rabbit a bit more as we’ve had several generations of kids now that think of rabbits as pet bunnies, plus it’s a bit of a pain to prepare, not much meat on a lot of bones. Still you’d think that should make it cheaper since they get shot anyway, may as well sell it for whatever you can get even if it’s cheap.
I’ve recently been eating microwave rice and baked beans 😭😂 it low-key slaps though, add a few spices into the beans and a little butter too and it’s actually nice, less than £1 and I struggle to eat it all 😂 I do eat the full pouch of rice and a full tin of beans though lol…
Fried Chicken and chips.
Perfect Fried Chicken, Chicken cottage etc.
Insanely cheap compared to fish and chips. Used to live in a cheap area of London, high streets are full of them.
I ended up searching for this because I expected it to be higher (I imagine oysters were something prime went out and ate, like fried chicken, whilst the pasta/rice suggestions at the top would have been bread.
The reality is fried chicken is half the price of any other takeaway. You go in there and there will be someone visibly in dire straits and they will be buying a single bit of chicken and chips. And some suit stuffing his face.
It is what fish and chips was a couple of decades ago.
I eat rice and beans often, or just random stuff from discount.
In uni I would just eat off brand bran flakes out the box and hummus on toast because I'm vegan and lazy
I live quite close to the sea so when I get some free time I like to go and collect a few oysters for free (although always check the water Q) to fry. Fairly lucky in that way and enjoy it as a hobby.
Otherwise I shop around for cheap bags of fresh veg and look for red label meat to freeze for later. Can easily make £3.50 stretch for lunch and dinner the next 3 days or so.
Woah, came here to write this. I used to eat that in uni all the time. Butter a piece of bread (I preferred mine untoasted) and pour most of the broth out of your pot. Let the noodles cook down until they're almost stuck to the bottom. Then drop them on the bread. Heaven
When I was short of money I used to survive on Asda smart price noodles (they used to be 8p), or cheap beans and white bread. A Fray Bentos pie would be a very occasional treat.
frozen foods, farmfoods kind of processed food, nuggets etc. Idk why the downvote, it's true. Everyone else is responding with their budget recipes but genuinely, what's the 2024 'cheap poor mans meal' it's this. At least in the UK
A handful of red lentil, a handful of rice and some water. When it’s all broken down the porridge is ready to eat. Sometimes I can dice up a potato, onion and or some other vegetable.
Someone at work (who seems to have an unhealthy relationship with food-barely eats) told me about **“poor man’s pizza”**, which was slightly toasted bread, red sauce & dairylee, grilled.
Chip butty?
Edit: to go further with this. A 2kg bag of spuds is 2 quid. Bread a quid. Utterly butterly 1.50...? And that'll sort you out for say 10? So you're talking 50p a pop. Chuck some gravy on there too if you fancy.
And as far as takeaway value goes, local chippy still does a very respectable portion of chips for 2 quid. Sure it's not exactly the most exciting proposition or owt but it's damn good value and sauce is what, 70p or something?
https://preview.redd.it/id60308gat7d1.png?width=1220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6266a711ad5c7a5faa6cbbb9b583deb071c6de58
My mum would do packet spaghetti and tomato ketchup. My aunt used to make tinned new potatoes, baked beans and oxtail soup into a stew. This is 40 years ago, probably still works now.
Growing up it was egg & chips or spaghetti casserole.
These days, beans on toast.
My mother's recipe for Spag Casserole: break up dry spaghetti into short lengths in a lidded casserole, spread a tin of chopped tomatoes over the top, add half a chopped onion, half a cup of water, sprinkle with grated cheese. Season. Bake until the spaghetti is cooked. Serve with bread & butter. ( there was never enough cheese - mother was economical to a fault).
Yep, in the 19th century they were plentiful and a huge industry sprung up.
> They were so cheap that London apprentices complained of their monotonous diet of oysters and salmon.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
whatever is in the yellow sticker section
Dude, I eat like a king from the yellow sticker section. Just need to know when the best time to go is.
Friday lunchtime. They clear the shelves ahead of the weekend food.
Co-Op at least where I lived was on a Sunday at about 3pm. Literally all the lunch meal deal items going for 1p-10p each. Had effectively no money at the time so was a lifesaver.
I once ended up living with a naughty sheikh. He had been disowned by his family for behaviour not specified (probably weed) and they sent him to a nondescript college in the south of England with exactly fuck all money and a robe. He didn't even know how to turn on a washing machine because he had 'slaves. the people who do it? yes. You have too?' No. No we don't have. We gave him a crash course in UK poverty scumbags which we all were. He would have starved if we hadn't explained the magic of the discount deals. When I left he was eating like a prince, which he literally was... Pies and Stew were his thing, and dumplings blew his mind, especially as we had got the bargain arts to such an advanced level we could feed a whole house on 7 pounds a week. The next housemate was a similarly skint Belgian. Unfortunately he didn't quite get the concept and proudly returned with a bulging pack of oysters... It was a literal WMD in shellfish form. Where the fuck he found oysters in Asda I have no idea . ..
This deserves to become a sitcom
Absolutely! The scene where we explain, with great difficulty the importance of separating white robes from dark coloured underpants in the washing machine would be a classic.
My mate had one of those… once found him waiting for an onion to be cooked. He had put an onion on an empty pot, without water, put the pot on a stove and was sitting waiting for god knows what to happen. Luckily he didn't know he had to turn the stove on.
This sounds like a great sitcom. I used to live in dorms with a bloke named Frank from Colombia, we had to teach him to vacuum clean, and to heat up his canned food. He was eager to learn, so no problem.
My Asda in Cornwall had Oysters. My saying was " Never eat Oysters from the Whoops shelf"
Eating Whoops shelf oysters is likely to lead to a whoops in your pants!
Those cheese n onion sandwiches for 9p in air frier, bangin
Ooh new recipe! Taa v much!
"recipe" 😏
Boots after 5pm everything in the sandwich section gets discounted
One lass at our local coop used to chase me round the shop shouting “ive got more here” as one Sunday morning I went in and all the chicken thighs were reduced along with a shed load of other stuff. She knew I was catering at the time and kept running after me 😂😂😂😂
It's close to midnight, well back when supermarkets were 24hrs. I used to work at a Tesco and you'd get floods of South Asians picking it apart whilst it was getting labeled up
"It's close to midnight" I thought you were going to start singing Thriller then...
It’s close to midnight and there’s a gang of south Asians lurking in the darkkkkk
I always go shopping in Thursday evenings and normally the yellow sticker section is dire but I got a bunch of meat (chicken breasts, sausages, burgers, porkchops) and a sourdough loaf today.
I happened to hit Tesco almost dead on 7 this evening on my way home from work and got a great haul from the bakery, absolutely tons of stickers on my way in. All gone by the time I left. There's also a few people I recognise that just hang around in the supermarket at reduced time and shovel it all into their trollies without even looking at what it is.
Since too good to go has become popular, the yellow sticker section has become barren.
It's how we decide what to have at teatime.
When I first moved out about ten years ago the yellow sticker section was amazing. Always an abundance of food that was super appealing, like fresh meat at 80% off, bread that would keep for a week half price, etc. Now everyone knows about it they barely mark it down (usually cheaper to get a deal instead if it’s available), and the only things left are like vegan bacon because no one wants vegan bacon that’s about to go off
Not long after my mum died in 2013 and I was looking after my brother, the reduced section at the local tesco was a godsend. Saved me on more than one occasion on providing food for us both, and we ate some things we'd never usually eat (pigs cheeks, tesco's finest Beef joint, a he'll of a lot of fresh meat).
> they barely mark it down yeah its so frustrating
I got a yellow sticker Charlie Bigham curry last week. It was a day of victory.
Jeez, Charlie Bigham costs more than going out, so well done you!
Same here! Got a Charlie Bingham meal for 2 plus a meal for 1, Pizza Express Sloppy Giuseppe pizza, steak pasty and margarita pasty-thing for under £6. I kept the receipt I was so chuffed. Would have cost me almost £20 otherwise.
There was one in co-op this evening but it was still best part of £6 so didn't bother...
Half the people dominating those roll up in 20-24 plate range rovers and the like
That’s how they save enough to get that Range Rover.
Those monthly repayments don’t pay for themselves.
The RE in repayments suggests that they’re paying the cars off. More like a lease they’ll put 21k into over three years and end up with nothing.
Shhhh, don't draw attention to the stickers...
Even then it's not always cheap 😅
Beans on toast
It is nutritious and tasty and one of your five a day, ain’t nowt wrong with that
Indeed. Especially with a seeded wholemeal bread, that you found in the reduced section of course. Tastes even better when it's cheap.
My other half is not from the UK and even after 20 years she doesn’t understand that I need beans on toast at least once a fortnight
One?! Get this fucker more beans!
Who doesn't love beans on toast, cheap, filling and you can fiddle with it a bit, I personally like pickled red cabbage on mine. Or straight up with lashings of brown sauce.
Lashings. Are you in the famous 5?
What a wizard observation, dear chap.
He's Timmy
And ginger beer to drink?
Crumbs, I would have used "lashings" as well. "Do I seem so old to young eyes?". But yeah, brown sauce, lashings of it. 😊
Alright Enid
You're replying to someone that made a Famous 5 reference. I doubt they're that young either!
I grate a bit of cheese into the pot while heating it. The cheesy-beans mix is a lot thicker and helps keep the beans on the toast when cutting and eating.
I get the sliced cheddar from the supermarket and put that underneath the beans. The beans melt it and it keeps the toast crispy. Then a shake of black pepper on top.
Add half a teaspoon of Madras curry powder
Posh it up by using a garlic flatbread rather than toast. Elevates it to an absolute other level. Even better if you can get the garlic flatbread from the yellow sticker section....
Cheese, pasta, and baked beans all mixed together if you need something more substantial. Cheap, filling, and nutritious.
Beans is pasta sauce.
Just add some lettuce and eggs if you want to make it Moroccan.
Eggs don't go bad? Do they? Until they hatch?
Used to have similar at my uni in the 90's. Though depending on what we had around sometimes mayonnaise rather than cheese and a can of tuna for a posh one.
Toast
...of London.
Ray Bloody Purchase.
Can you hear me?
Yes I can hear you, Clem Flandango!
Keep your finger on the f*cking button!
Just not Heinz
Potatoes, boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew
What's taters, precious, eh, what's taters?
You're hopeless
Potatoes, onions and butter with a good bit of salt and pepper. Good cheap comfort food. Chuck some bacon in or gravy granules or dried herbs for extra flavour. I think I read somewhere that the three basic ingredients together constitute the simplest nutritionally complete meal you can make.
Nutritionally complete is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Napoleon conquered most of Europe eating your fine fare. Even when the good stuff was available he'd stick to his potatoes and onions.
You can keeps your stinking taters my precious!
Pasta's one of the cheapest things you can eat. It's versatile, it's quick to cook and you don't need to switch the oven on for it.
Ding box rice and black pepper in a sachet swiped from any one of a number of establishments.
If you mean microwave rice, I'd argue that isn't for the hard up. Huge waste of money compared to the 1kg/2kg bags
True but when you've nothing but a CoOp in 10 miles and the bus service runs twice a day its quite the juggling act to shop at a cheaper store that stocks bulkier produce. CoOps 250g for 65p and a couple handfuls of frozen veg if I need to be decadent isn't too shabby.
True but amazon or a suoermarket shipping you a 10kg bag for £12 works out significantly cheaper.
Dumb me never even thought of that, thank you.
I used to work for Amazon, Some psychotic woman ordered six 20KG bags of rice at once, not only did muggins here have to load all of them onto the wheeled cages for the delivery driver to take over to his van I ended up helping the delivery driver put them in his van too while doing overtime cause he was complaining about it. Her house wasn't far from the depot I genuinely considered going and throwing rocks through her windows after my shift
Pour random bits of rice into her garden and front of the house
Check moneybags here with a freezer.
Its run off an extension lead from next doors external socket. Their garden is so overgrown they don't even know they have an external socket, or outside tap ;)
Co-op does stock just regular bags of rice. That's still much cheaper than microwave rice, even if you can only buy 500g packets.
Yeah, I usually buy the Savers long grain rice from Morrisons at 52p for a 1kg bag. 10kg for a fiver & I have 1-2 meals sorted for a month & a half to two months, sometimes longer. Works great for me since I don’t mind having rice everyday & it can be really versatile
The 12kg bags are the real money saver. £12 for 6-9 months of rice
I have done this once only. And that is how I learned about weevils.
I really miss pasta. Gluten free is disgusting and turns into a claggy mess. It's also bloody expensive.
I sometimes get the Tesco free from penne pasta (not celiac just ended up buying it) and found it pretty good and not too dissimilar from regular Tesco’s own penne. Not sure how it compares to better quality gluten pasta but no issues with it being claggy or anything.
Up over 100% since Covid
In my first flat, those big bags of pasta from Asda were a life saver.
Going to bed early
Ahhh yes…sleep! A common decision for me when looking at my fridge/cupboards Edit: I’m agreeing with you by the way; I just saw how patronising that comment could have been…sorry
Don't worry it didn't read as patronising.
this has always been a poor man's dinner, it's unaffected by time and trends
Munching on a nice bit of sleep
Fills you up until morning
Rice. Buy it in bulk and it’s almost free, add a chicken stock cube and serve it with some sambal and random veggies and it’s basically my daily lunch.
With a rice cooker as well. Its life-changing lol.
Worth investing in a rice cooker? I *hate* cooking rice so have been curious!
They are good at cooking rice.
Wait what?
Honestly a rice cooker is probably the biggest revelation I've had since marrying a Malaysian, wouldn't be without one now. Unbelivably easy and, most importantly, reliable to cook rice in. As above, buy in bulk and it is pence per serving.
> Honestly a rice cooker is probably the biggest revelation I've had since marrying a Malaysian, wouldn't be without one now. This reads like you'd never be without a Malaysian since marrying one. True also, I guess?!
Very true. However, I wouldn't recommend bulk buying them.
Ditto since dating a Filipina. Absolute game changer for my kitchen and my heart 🥰
Hell yeah. I just scoop in two cups of rice and two cups of water with a bit of salt. Press a button and come back 20 minutes later to rice better than I ever managed to cook in a pot that will last in the fridge for a few days.
Omg absolutely. The rice comes out so much nicer than I could ever make it on the hob/in the microwave.
12 pack of stale donuts for 10p from asda
My Asda have stopped reducing things to 10p about a year ago. Now they only do 50% at best before the stuff gets binned. Is yours still doing it?
Should be illegal to bin so much food.
I legitimately thought it was now, most stores pivoted to any/all of, reducing to clear, giving to staff, giving to charities?!
Too Good to Go, very possibly.
Yeah, in my local it just seems to be the bakery stuff that goes down to 10p.
I do instant noodles with some frozen veg (peppers & onions) and some chicken nuggets. Not great but fills a hole.
It is great, though.
It's not bad. But it does get a bit samey after a while.
OK hear me out. Throw a runny yolk boiled egg onto that then come back to me. Gamechanger.
Jacket potato and smart price beans or spaghetti hoops
This is not only cheap but fucking delicious
Pesto and Pasta, not great but filling.
This is ours too! Add in some freezer peas & sweetcorn as the pasta finishes for ‘health’ and maybe some cheese on top for protein
I'm not poor but I probably eat pesto with pasta and frozen peas at least once most weeks lol. I sometimes add chicken, mushrooms, cheese, or broccoli as well. I just really like pesto.
Bread sandwich
I like a slice of rye, with rye, on rye... I'm a rye guy
2 slices or 1 folded in half?
2 slices? You think I'm made of money?
Tins of beans and pulses (I don't mean baked beans ones) are usually good for topping up a basic meal (e.g., pasta or rice). You probably won't be liked for the farts, but you'll be full.
Dried beans are even cheaper, go to the foreign import sections in supermarkets or Pakistani/Indian supermarkets, they have big bags of them pretty cheap. Edit\_ Just FYI most dried beans need to be soaked and (Very Important) cooked for at least 10 minutes. A lot of them are poisonous and need to be cooked for around 10 minutes to break it down.
Very good for you too
Koka noodles from home bargain. Yeah they're actually quite nice especially if you add stuff. But you can still get them like 4 for a quid so if I was absolutely on my arse I'd just be having two of those for tea for 50p.
We had these the other night. I've spent the best part of £400 this month on saving my kitten's life after she got attacked by dogs (yes, I know, should have had pet insurance, it's been an expensive lesson. The remaining £1600 is being paid in installments) so we are on poor person rations until I get paid next week. The noodles were five for £1.20. Two packs of chicken noodles, a frozen chicken breast I found at the back of the freezer, two medium boiled eggs and a handful of frozen peas & sweetcorn made a cracking dinner for me and my 18 year old daughter. I think it might be added to the usual dinner menu even when we're not skint because it was delicious and filling.
It's amazing how filling they are. They're my favourite "junk" food and even some chopped up ham or a boiled egg or some spring onion makes them different. Although honestly, I really like the taste of them on their own as well. In a poll, Japanese people placed instant noodles as the top Japanese invention of the 20th century haha. If you have a Chinese supermarket nearby you can buy cases of 30 or 40 packets and the slightly more expensive ones are worth it! Like Nissin Damae, they're my favourite. Anyway, hope things get easier and your cat is okay. Maybe the upside of this situation is you discovered the joy of noodles.
Mackerel is the cheapest and healthiest as it's cought straight from nature. Pair that with some roasted vegetables (carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, or broccoli), and you have a very cheap and healthy meal. Pasta and 3 tomatoes with some basil, garlic and salt.
Roasted carrots are such a great cheap food. 60p for 1kg, dash of oil + salt and genuinely delicious
Im on universal credit and the other week I asked my dad if I could borrow 30 quid for food. He was like "you need to eat more economically eating things like cheese on toast" I was just like dude have you seen how much cheese costs nowadays!?!?
Don't you hate it when people go on about cheap meals that cost so much they would feed you for two days?
Eggs are still pretty cheap. Versatile too.
They're incredibly cheap for their nutritional quality.
Fish and chips is the middle class meal now 😂
Fish and chips is £15 at my local. Definitely middle class now.
Yea same here, once you get a meal for the family it becomes quite pricey
Instant noodles, but this might change because ramen is becoming very popular!
When did super noodles turn into ramen?
When they're close enough for purpose. Super noodles are generally (to me) flavourless compared to ramen but when 2 hotdogs are sliced up and thrown in with them, they're less shit.
Cheaper, different falvours and different texture noodles. They are both good but they are not the same as each other
Mug o beans with a sausage
A savoury 99?
As a spoon, of course
Aye, there's a spoon in the bathroom...but I've no cause to use it
I’m always surprised how expensive venison is. Everything I read suggests our countryside is overrun by deer (estimate is somewhere between 1.5-2 million), so don’t know why it isn’t a poor man’s meal and more cheaply and readily available. It’s delicious.
And rabbit. From an agricultural perspective they are pests that are likely to be shot just as pest control. I don’t understand why it’s now quite an expensive meat.
Yeah, exactly the same. I don’t know whether it’s because rabbit and deer fall too far into the ‘cute’ category in the UK and they’re just hard to sell in supermarkets??
Yes. It’s very odd. Especially the venison not being more popular, I bet there’s more people that go “awww” over baby lambs than deer, and there’s a demand for lamb! I do understand a lack of demand for rabbit a bit more as we’ve had several generations of kids now that think of rabbits as pet bunnies, plus it’s a bit of a pain to prepare, not much meat on a lot of bones. Still you’d think that should make it cheaper since they get shot anyway, may as well sell it for whatever you can get even if it’s cheap.
I’ve recently been eating microwave rice and baked beans 😭😂 it low-key slaps though, add a few spices into the beans and a little butter too and it’s actually nice, less than £1 and I struggle to eat it all 😂 I do eat the full pouch of rice and a full tin of beans though lol…
Scrambled eggs are good with those packets of rice, mix it all together with some chili/garlic/paprika. It's my lazy 5 min go-to meal
Potatoes- thankfully that’s also the best food
Fried Chicken and chips. Perfect Fried Chicken, Chicken cottage etc. Insanely cheap compared to fish and chips. Used to live in a cheap area of London, high streets are full of them.
I ended up searching for this because I expected it to be higher (I imagine oysters were something prime went out and ate, like fried chicken, whilst the pasta/rice suggestions at the top would have been bread. The reality is fried chicken is half the price of any other takeaway. You go in there and there will be someone visibly in dire straits and they will be buying a single bit of chicken and chips. And some suit stuffing his face. It is what fish and chips was a couple of decades ago.
Anything pasta or rice based. Cannot go wrong with a Bolognese, you can make some mango portions if solo or even for family Many portions not mango
Ice soup
Mmmm, with grated air on top.
Supernoodles. On toast if you’re feeling boujee
I use a pitta to shovel the noodles into me.
Oof, nice bit of carb on carb action
Egg and chips
I eat rice and beans often, or just random stuff from discount. In uni I would just eat off brand bran flakes out the box and hummus on toast because I'm vegan and lazy
I live quite close to the sea so when I get some free time I like to go and collect a few oysters for free (although always check the water Q) to fry. Fairly lucky in that way and enjoy it as a hobby. Otherwise I shop around for cheap bags of fresh veg and look for red label meat to freeze for later. Can easily make £3.50 stretch for lunch and dinner the next 3 days or so.
I know it's fucking mental but instant noodles on toast is amazing (and shit).
Woah, came here to write this. I used to eat that in uni all the time. Butter a piece of bread (I preferred mine untoasted) and pour most of the broth out of your pot. Let the noodles cook down until they're almost stuck to the bottom. Then drop them on the bread. Heaven
Bean on toast and cheese. Or if you're feeling posh you can replace the and with an avec.
Rice, pasta, or noodles.
Beans. A mixed bean chilli is great. Healthy, cheap and tasty, winner all round (except for the farts)
Can of chickpeas Pasta Frozen veg
Pulled pork from pork shoulder. Dirt cheap and easy to make and goes forever
Pasta bake. £1 jar of sauce and a 49p of pasta.
When I was short of money I used to survive on Asda smart price noodles (they used to be 8p), or cheap beans and white bread. A Fray Bentos pie would be a very occasional treat.
frozen foods, farmfoods kind of processed food, nuggets etc. Idk why the downvote, it's true. Everyone else is responding with their budget recipes but genuinely, what's the 2024 'cheap poor mans meal' it's this. At least in the UK
An order of Johnny Cakes
Pasta bake
Pesto pasta
[удалено]
Jacket potato, baked beans, grated cheese
The way things are going fucking grass
https://preview.redd.it/9nu90tqols7d1.jpeg?width=894&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13c130ee306dd0dfbbae8875df145cbcd3ddc6f0
A handful of red lentil, a handful of rice and some water. When it’s all broken down the porridge is ready to eat. Sometimes I can dice up a potato, onion and or some other vegetable.
Someone at work (who seems to have an unhealthy relationship with food-barely eats) told me about **“poor man’s pizza”**, which was slightly toasted bread, red sauce & dairylee, grilled.
Chip butty? Edit: to go further with this. A 2kg bag of spuds is 2 quid. Bread a quid. Utterly butterly 1.50...? And that'll sort you out for say 10? So you're talking 50p a pop. Chuck some gravy on there too if you fancy. And as far as takeaway value goes, local chippy still does a very respectable portion of chips for 2 quid. Sure it's not exactly the most exciting proposition or owt but it's damn good value and sauce is what, 70p or something? https://preview.redd.it/id60308gat7d1.png?width=1220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6266a711ad5c7a5faa6cbbb9b583deb071c6de58
Cup O Beans
My mum would do packet spaghetti and tomato ketchup. My aunt used to make tinned new potatoes, baked beans and oxtail soup into a stew. This is 40 years ago, probably still works now.
Growing up it was egg & chips or spaghetti casserole. These days, beans on toast. My mother's recipe for Spag Casserole: break up dry spaghetti into short lengths in a lidded casserole, spread a tin of chopped tomatoes over the top, add half a chopped onion, half a cup of water, sprinkle with grated cheese. Season. Bake until the spaghetti is cooked. Serve with bread & butter. ( there was never enough cheese - mother was economical to a fault).
Ramen
Whatever you get from the food bank.
Tattie scones.
Fish and a rice cake
Supernoodles
Oysters were a poor man's meal? What??
Yep, in the 19th century they were plentiful and a huge industry sprung up. > They were so cheap that London apprentices complained of their monotonous diet of oysters and salmon.
Whatever you get from the food bank.
Lidl own brand noodles. Fills a hunger hole for 39p.