smack
I make enchiladas fairly often and without fail they do not stay intact when removing them from the dish I baked them in. It never occurred to me to do it lasagna style… that would make it so much easier! And less messy to serve!
A different source of recipes might be in order, then (you don’t have to buy a new cookbook- there are recipe sites online, after all). Cheap food doesn’t have to be stereotypical poor-people food, after all, and it doesn’t have to be so depressing. Polenta, for instance, is cornmeal and water with a little butter and cheese added (and you don’t have to buy special imported polenta cornmeal or hand-ground cornmeal- I use the regular store-brand plain old cornmeal, and it turns out fine). It’s not expensive to make, but most people don’t think of it as poverty food (though that is how it originated).
If you find cheap food depressing, you’re going to resent having to make and eat it, and you probably won’t be able to stick with it for long. It’s important to find a way of eating cheaper that you can live with.
If I were trying to cook with more lentils, say, I might try to find a cuisine that has traditionally used them. Indian dishes with lentils are good. I don’t think “Cheesy Lentil Bake” sounds too appetizing, but I’d certainly go for a lentil dal, lentil soup, or lentils with sausage.
They do. They also tend to have good produce, or at least the ones near me do.
Bonus canned-bean recipe:
Maryland Flag Chili
This vegetarian chili (can be vegan) can be made entirely with stuff that keeps for a long time (the only thing in it at all perishable is the onion, and those keep a long time), so it’s a good one to do when you really should go to the grocery store but you’re too tired or don’t want to bother. It also uses only one pot (I use a Dutch oven or big saucepan- nonstick is best, just because it’s easier to clean) and one spoon. It doesn’t require precise measurement of anything.
It’s Maryland Flag Chili because it contains things that are red (the tomatoes), white (the white beans), gold (the corn), and black (the black beans), which are the colors of the Maryland flag, and I’m from Maryland.
It was partly inspired by the Chili Con Corny served at an on-campus cafe at UC Santa Cruz.
Slice an onion and saute it in a little olive oil in the pot you’re going to use for the chili.
Add a big can of tomatoes, a can of white beans, a can of black beans, and a can of kidney beans.
Add a can of corn (you could also use frozen corn).
Add as much stock (I use vegetarian beef-flavored stock, which you can find in the kosher section of the supermarket, but you could use real meat stock if you’re not vegetarian or kosher) or water as you want to make the chili the right consistency (some people like it really chunky, some like it soupier).
Heat up the chili until it is simmering.
Add salt, chili powder, and cumin to taste. If your chili powder isn’t spicy enough, you could add some cayenne, too. I like to put in a splash of tequila as well, but you don’t have to.
Leave it sit on the burner until you’re ready to eat.
This recipe makes enough for a one-dish meal for at least three people. Mr. Neville says it is even better reheated as leftovers. You can vary the leftovers a bit by draining off some of the liquid and using the beans and vegetables as a taco or burrito filling. That feels a little more like a new dish and less like having to eat up leftovers.
Serving suggestions:
It’s good with crumbled-up tortilla chips in it, and that’s a good way to use up the little tortilla crumbs that you always get at the bottom of the bag.
It’s also good with sour cream and/or shredded cheese.
How about some Cajun gumbo? Boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs, smoked or Andouille sausage, or shrimp, or a combination. Leftover chicken works, too, just add it at the end (as you would shrimp.)
1/2 stick of butter, margarine, or 3 tbs veg oil
3-4 tbs flour
4 ribs celery, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 onion chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 10-oz pkg frozen sliced okra, thawed
4-6 cups chicken stock (or shrimp stock made from heads and peels)
1 tbs cajun spice
1/2 tsp cayenne (or to taste)
1 lb cooked meat, chopped (except shrimp - add raw peeled shrimp about 10-15 minutes before serving, add cooked shrimp just long enough to heat through)
Salt and pepper to taste
Melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and stir often (towards the end, stir constantly) until roux gets peanut butter colored, about 15 minutes. Don’t burn it!
Add chopped veggies, and stir and cook about 15 minutes until veggies get soft. Add broth to cover about an inch above veggies and spices. Bring to a boil, add meat, reduce heat. Add more broth if you think you need it. Simmer for as long as you can stand it (about 20 minutes is ok, longer if you have time.) Salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice. Garnish with sliced green onions.
This makes a big pot full, and freezes very well.
In fact, unless you’re just buying potatoes and cabbage, it can quite easily end up being cheaper cooking with meat. I mean, with 99 cents per pound pork shoulder and 79 cents per pound chicken pinwheels (thigh + drumstick), it’s often hard for me to eat vegetable dishes, since it ends up costing me more.
Non-popular meat cuts are obviously your friend here.
I love liver, for example, and “fancy” it up by sauteeing onions, garlic, and bacon, tossing in the liver cut in to small pieces (tossed in seasoned flour if I can be bothered), then finishing it off by dumping in sour cream and dijon mustard. Mushrooms work in this too. Serve on a big bed of egg noodles and pretend you are eating beef stroganoff.
I feel your pain. I started a thread a while back asking for good cheap food recipes:
Thanks to all that contibuted! I tried several of them, and they were indeed good and cheap.
Zsofia, I feel for you. My husband also doesn’t eat processed food, and that’s fine, but between him and the kids there’s a long list of things that are sure to make someone turn up their nose. The list includes but is not limited to: Beans, peas, macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, zucchini, polenta, & couscous. Also, everything has to have meat in it. I pretty much have to try and cook something that will gross out the fewest people. 
Anyway, I have a list of the meals I serve most frequently, and if I can fetch it while the thread’s still going I’ll put it up. Lots of the stuff on it comes from allrecipes.com or is so easy it doesn’t require a recipe (like tacos).
The greatest pot roast recipe in the universe is koeeoaddi’s recipe here, made with a jar of horseradish and a can of cranberry sauce. It’s completely awesome and it makes a lot for freezing and enjoying later.
The slow cooker is great and should be used as much as possible. There have been some good slow cooker threads here and here.
I can’t.
The way to handle leftovers is to package them up immediately. Then freeze.
Those small containers of leftovers in your refrigerator are not appetizing. And they do not improve with age.
Lots of good suggestions here. Try lentils again–but perhaps not a cheesy lentil bake. I learned to eat them cooked with hamhocks. Sprinkle fresh chopped onions on each bowl.
Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals does, actually, offer some useful suggestions. If her perkiness doesn’t drive you to the liquor cabinet…
Indeed.
You’re looking at about $4 for a 4 oz jar of curry paste, $2 for 2 cans of coconut milk, $3 for a quart or so of fish sauce, $2-3 for some red bell peppers and the rest (rice and sugar) you should have on hand.
This’ll make enough Thai red curry for about 6 servings. (PM me for the cooking procedure if you want)
We’ve been dehorning and castrating cattle for the past week. There are so many things that are more disgusting than raw chicken. For example: Seeing your dog chewing away happily on a calf testicle and then coming up and trying to lick your face. Chicken veins don’t even compare.
Sounds like dark meat and butchering whole chickens is not for you, then. Costco sells big bags of frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts at reasonable prices. Don’t buy the whole chickens anyway, even if they’re cheaper- they’ll just end up going bad in your fridge while you find reasons to put off dealing with the ickiness.
Not every hint on living and eating cheaper is going to work for you. That’s normal, and that doesn’t make you a spoiled, lazy, wasteful, undisciplined, or bad person. Find the hints that do work, and forget about the rest of them.
Well, I haven’t done it in a while, but I used to often do a beer can chicken and then enchiladas the next day, although I’m not good at scavenging carcasses. But I mind a lot less when it’s, you know, cooked.
And I have no Costco. 
Ok, I want to recommend the Saving Dinner Cookbooks by Leanne Ely. I picked up the regular Saving Dinner book, along with Saving Dinner the Low Carb Way. They have incredible recipes that take little or no time. One of my favorites is the Crock Chicken Jambalaya. Yummo.
The books are divided up by seasons…and each week has a shopping list for you. How cool is that? I can not tell you how much money I have saved following those books.
Now that I am transitioning to vegetarianism, Saving Dinner the Vegetarian Way is proving to be equally fabulous, too.
Best of luck to all.
Lentils are great pantry food. You can just toss them with some oil and vinegar and you have a pretty decent salad right there. You can add some chopped celery, onion, and/or tomato as well, maybe some oregano. And they’re filling, so you can have a smaller meat course with it (I hate to do without meat entirely).
The ultimate poor-people food is chili mac, which invoves mixing a box of mac’n’cheese with a can of chili. (with beans) But that’s not what you meant, right?
I made something for a young friend of mine who had just had a baby and moved in with her boyfriend. It was a grid, with ingredients and condiments listed vertically, and various dishes or cuisines listed across the top. If a given ingredient was in a particular dish, I put a dot in its box, down the list.
I was trying to show her that with a small assembly of key ingredients/condiments kept always onhand, you can pick from a variety of delicious meals every night yet shop infrequently and inexpensively. The trick is in having a repertoire. Flexible enough to be spontaneous, yet predictable enough to take advantage of sales and not buy impulsively.
Also, my local grocery outlet sells fresh pork chops that are thin and cut like minute-steaks – you know, with a million holes poked in them. They come in pack of three for $3! I bread them with breadcrumbs, garlic powder, salt and thyme. They always come out perfect.
There’s no reason why cheap, simple food need be scorned - and no particular reason why it needs to be desperately perked up by throwing handfuls of spices into it (not that there’s anything wrong with those things - it’s just that they’re not going to transform your frog into a prince).
Take pizza, for example - if you make the dough yourself (and it really is incredibly easy, and you don’t need fancy ingredients or a breadmaker) and strip it right back to the essentials - just some cheese and thin slices of ripe tomato (OK, a sprinkle of oregano, if you like) - it can be astonishingly good - the bare simplicity somehow heightens the experience of eating - and appreciating - those few, simple ingredients.
Sometimes, less really is more.
I go here when I am looking for good comfort food on the cheap.
I have my list of all our standard meals with me now. I’ll just skip over all the obvious cheap stuff (spaghetti, meatloaf, etc.) Someone’s already mentioned the red beans, rice, and sausage, but I think that’s a particularly good one. Vigo and Zatarain’s both sell the beans/rice/spices package, and I like it just as well with no meat.
My best cheap recipes are Pasta Primavera, Frogmore Stew, Chicken Pesto Linguine, Shrimp Etouffee, and Chicken with Couscous.