Cheap ass / good / easy food idea's

[woofcat]

Well. Since much of Gotwoot are students there has to be a few poor students. What are some of your favorate recipe's?
For submission please ensure that
1) Its $3-$5
2) Its somewhat easy to make
3) Its good

I'll go first

I found this browsing about and i just ate it and it inspired this thread.

Need:
1 egg
1 can of tuna
1 tortilla

Beat egg in bowl. Place in drained can of tuna. Mix. Fry in pan untill egg is done. Place in tortilla fold up and eat. This is VERY filling, pretty good too.

[BioAlien]

i go second!

Dinner Kraft Dinner! around 1 dollar
read the darn intruction on the box to know how to make it!

lol
if made correctly, it is awfully good

[maikes]

2 packs of nudles
2 eggs
Spices (you can use whatever you want)

Boil some water, put the nudles in the water, put the eggs in the water, put spices in water and let it boil for some minutes.

TADA now you have a cheap but good meal to eat ...

[The Heretic Azazel]

You don't want my stoner ass on this thread..

Cheerios and chocolate chips!

[Xollence]

An eggos waffle with a slice of salami.

[Deadfire]

A condiment sandwich,
It's like what is says. Most of the time I didn't have any meat or something else to put between the bread so I just found all the comdiments i could and put that on and ate it.

[Ryllharu]

Microwave any and all lunchmeat, toast the bread. The sandwich will be greatly improved. Everyone loves a hot sandwich over coldcuts.

[Lucifus]

Find any piece of meat, toss in some tomatos and lettuece, and put in bread. And 20 Cent Ramen Noodles........:rolleyes:

[Board of Command]

Tin of tuna
Mayonnaise (1 tablespoon)
Salt (just a little bit)
Pepper (add a lot of pepper)
Hot sauce (add a little bit)
Soy sauce (add a little bit)
Sesame oil (add 1 teaspoon at most)

Mix all that together and you get yourself a delicious tuna salad.

[Psyke]

My usual quick fix when I'm lazy to prepare anything or when I need to save up would be instant noodles/ramen. The variety and different flavours is enough to let you eat for a few months at least. If I want to pamper myself I can always add some luncheon meat or an egg into the noodles. 3 minutes later and viola~ :p

[complich8]

complich8's bachelor chow guide:

First, there are four rules to keep in mind.

Ground beef, especially cheap ground beef, is your friend
Ground turkey is cheaper than ground beef, and works just about as well
ALWAYS get the spices, or the sauce. And get them right, dammit.
Use the right tool for the job.

And a comment about ingredients:

You should be able to find ground beef (like the 85/15 stuff) for like $2.50/lb or so, and ground turkey as cheap as $2.00/lb, if not cheaper. This stuff isn't the source of flavor, it's the source of protein and fat that fills you up. It's ok to go cheap on it, the main goal of ground meat recipes is to hide the meat behind flavor. Remember to drain it, and that 1.33lb of 80/20 ground beef will lose almost a third of a pound of fat, and become a pound of lean beef after draining. When I say "ground beef" I don't necessarily mean beef -- since I'm on a low-fat diet I almost always use 95/5 beef or 99/1 turkey.

If you're doing something that calls for milk, you can use powdered instead of fresh -- that stuff keeps forever, and you won't be able to tell the difference when it's cooked.


Tools.
If you don't have them, buy them as you need them. Seriously. Here's a checklist for ya:

1x 4 quart pot (stockpot, saucepan, whatever). Nonstick optional, not recommended. Useful for big batches. Not really necessary if you're keeping your cooking smaller scale, but it'll be handy for things like chili and large-batch soups -- simmering dishes.

2x 2 quart saucepans. Yep, get two of them. If you can find stainless steel, that's the best. Avoid nonstick on these -- things usually need to be scrubbed from them, and scrubbing nonstick with an abrasive pad just destroys it, it's better not to have at all.

1x 1-quart saucepan, also stainless. Because sometimes you just don't need to heat up 2 quarts worth. 1 quart is perfect for stuff like rice and mashed potatos.

1xSkillet, with a lid. Definitely non-stick, preferably with a glass lid so you can see what's going on in there. 12 inch is the right size for just about everything.

1xBaking Pan, 9x9 or 9x13, preferably glass. Especially if you're just starting out cooking, glass is the best, because you can see where stuff is burned onto it easily, and you can scrub at it or scrape at it with metal things without hurting it.

1xSpatula, preferably as thin as possible, definitely coated. You want to be able to use it in a nonstick skillet, and metal spatulas will just destroy them.

1xWire whisk. Cheap, good at beating things (better than a fork).

1x2-cup glass measuring cup. Usually, bachelor cooking is imprecise, but you still want to measure things like water, and milk.

1xServing spoon, nonstick-friendly (ie: plastic, or plastic-coated).

1xTongs. Best for spaghetti, great for flipping things. Coated or not, doesn't matter much, they shouldn't spend too much time near your skillet (that's what the spatula's for).

2x hotpads. Better, make one of them a mitt type, so you can grab things with one hand and serve with another.

1x Cutting Board (small is fine).

1x Big kitchen knife (like, 8-9 inch blade or so)


With all of that, you should be able to cook about 95% of everything you can think of. There's more you could get, but that's what I'd call the essentials for basic cooking (as opposed to just reheating). Optional would be things like baking sheets, broiler pans, etc ... specialty cookware.


With those tools, here's a couple meals to try. These are all in the "really easy, quick to make" category.


Hamburger Helper
Hamburger helper is pretty cheap, and really frigging easy to make.
Ingredients:
1 pound of ground beef
1 box of hamburger helper
milk*


Instructions:
Brown the meat in a skillet.
Add hamburger helper ingredients. Stir occasionally.
Just follow the directions.

Cost: maybe $4-5. Should make 2-3 decent sized meals.
Prep time: 15-20 minutes, depending on how long it takes you to brown the beef.
Tools: Skillet with lid, measuring cup, spatula. Maybe a bowl, for some of them.



Spaghetti
You can have decent spaghetti for really, really cheap.

Ingredients:
1 pound of spaghetti (1 box)
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
1 pound ground beef
spices


Instructions:
Brown the meat in a skillet
Put sauce in a saucepan, add browned meat, and spices**
In a decent sized pan (2 quart saucepan will be about ideal) boil water (enough to cover spaghetti when it's put in, something like 6 cups for a box).
Drop spaghetti in, and bring water back to a boil if it drops below it.
Wait until the spaghetti's softened up. Angel hair is about 6 minutes, Spaghetti (thicker noodles) are like 8-9. Read the box.
Drain it. Serve.


Cost: should be less than $8 for the whole mess.
Prep time: 15-30 minutes, depending how long it takes your stove to boil water, and how long it takes you do brown beef. If you're good at multitasking, you can do a lot of that stuff in parallel (ie: browning the beef while warming the sauce while boiling the water and cooking the noodles).
Tools: 2 sauce pans (~2 quart size, one for sauce warming, one for pasta cooking), skillet (for the beef), colandar (to drain the beef, to drain the pasta), serving spoon (to serve the sauce), spatula (to brown the beef with), tongs (to serve the spaghetti).


*: if you choose your sauce wisely, you won't strictly have to add spices at all. Personally, I always add minced garlic, and usually some oregano too.
**: you may want to add some water to the sauce to thin it out a bit if you're adding meat. Technically, meat is optional too, but it really changes how filling the meal is.


Pancakes:
Yeah, that's right, pancakes. Get the "complete" mix, that only needs water.

Ingredients:
Pancake Mix
Water
Syrup
Butter


Instructions:
Measure mix into bowl.
Measure water, add to mix.
Mix it.
Cook on a skillet on medium heat, flipping when one side's done.

Cost:
A box of mix is like $2-$3, I think, maybe less.
Butter's fairly cheap, I use the tub-style margerine, which is even cheaper, and spreads nicely. Maybe $2.
Syrup's $2-3 as well. Makes about 10-15 meals out of one box, so per-meal cost is about $0.50 or so.
Prep time: maybe 15-20 minutes. I tend to start eating them while I'm still cooking them, so it takes me maybe 20 minutes to get done cooking and another 2 minutes to finish eating after that.
Tools: a bowl, mixing tool (fork or whisk), skillet (this is where the nonstick starts to pay off), spatula



Oatmeal:
Oatmeal is uber-cheap. Most people hate it. But it's not bad if you add some maple syrup and brown sugar. Oh yeah, did I mention that maple syrup and brown sugar are dirt frigging cheap too? Well, they are.

Just add water, microwave. Or boil water, add to oatmeal. Whatever makes you happy. Quaker quick-oats work pretty nicely. Follow the directions.

Cost: practically nothing. Maybe $0.10-$0.25/meal.
Prep time: 3 minutes or so. Takes longer to eat than to cook.
Tools: bowl, spoon.



Chili:
This one's a bit more complex, and takes some more time to prepare, but it's totally worth it, and it's pretty economical too.

Ingredients:
Ground Beef
Chili Beans (2 cans)
Diced Tomatos (1 large can)
Chopped Onion (about half of a large onion)
Minced Garlic
Spices*
Hot Peppers**


Instructions:
Open up your canned stuff (beans, tomatos), drain the water off of them and add them to the pot. Add a couple cups of water to the pot (ie: not the stuff they've been floating in for 6 months). Mix it up a bit. Start warming that stuff up.
Brown the ground beef. Drain it and dump it in.
Chop up your veggies (if you're using fresh -- you should at least use fresh onion if you can). Add them in as you get them going.
Add spices. Mix everything in the pot up nicely, and maybe add more water to cover it. Heat it over medium-high until it comes to a boil, then lower the heat (low, medium-low, whatever) and simmer the stuff (a very low boil) for a couple hours, to get the flavors to mix together and everything to sort of stew in itself.
When you think it's ready, serve it up. You can also make some cornbread (recipe will be on a box or bag of cornmeal) to go with it, or add frozen corn to cool it down.

Cost: $3 for meat, $3 total for 2 cans of beans and a can of tomatos, maybe $1-$2 for an onion and some peppers. Probably $8 total. Initial purchase of spices will be another $6-8, but those should last you at least 5-10 batches. Should be 4-8 meals, depending on how hungry you are, so $2-4 per meal for the first batch, and $1-2 per meal for additional batches.
Prep time: probably half an hour, longer if you use more fresh ingredients. Lots to do to set it up. Also, plan on 2-4 hours of stirring it and checking on it every 15-30 minutes. Probably set a timer to make sure you remember to do that.

Tools: Skillet, 4-quart pot, colander, serving spoon, spatula, knife
* Spices to get: Chili Powder, Paprika, Cumin. In that batch size, about 1 tablespoon (roughly, just guess) of paprika and cumin, and 2-3 TBSP of Chili Powder.
**: Serrano peppers are ideal. Jalapenos are ok, but don't have as good a taste. Habaneros and Scotch Bells are probably a bit too spicy for a batch this size. If your chili ends up too spicy, add a half-bag of frozen corn, mix it in, and wait half an hour or so, it'll neutralize some of the spicyness


I've got a couple more great meals, but this is already too long ... so I'll leave it at that for now.

[dragonrage]

A condiment sandwich,
It's like what is says. Most of the time I didn't have any meat or something else to put between the bread so I just found all the comdiments i could and put that on and ate it.

lol Ketchup and bread tasty, its quite good to me everything taste better with ketchup, not the watered down stuff, the good stuff you know what i am talking about.

[masamuneehs]

Tuna Melt

1 can of tuna
2 slices of cheese (any kind, but American/cheddar work well)
2 slices bread
1/2 tomato and some lettuce
1/5 stick of butter

Get the pan nice and hot and put the buttered side of one slice DOWN on the pan (but not scalding, you don't want to burn the bread), put one slice of cheese on that and half the tuna, then your lettuce and tomato, a little more tuna and another slice of cheese and finally the last slice of bread with the buttered side facing up.

Flip a few times until the cheese is melted sufficiently and the bread is just before blackish on both sides.

Eat.

This thing is a friggin feast and it's pretty healthy too (especially if you use less cheese or low fat cheese). You can also mix the tuna with mayo, but I don't really like that so I left it out.
Sorry that my directions are a little vague. I don't ever use exact measurements or timing or any of that in cooking

[Kraco]

Spaghetti
You can have decent spaghetti for really, really cheap.

Ingredients:

pound of spaghetti (1 box)
jar of spaghetti sauce
pound ground beef
spices


Spaghetti bolognese is one of the simple foods I enjoy to make. Although I don't use any ready sauces like you mentioned (unless I use some sweet chili sauce as a spice). It's just nice to add different spices in different quantities and see how it turns out each time. And I always add plenty of chopped onion into the sauce. It makes it much better.

[kooshi]

My usual quick fix when I'm lazy to prepare anything or when I need to save up would be instant noodles/ramen. The variety and different flavours is enough to let you eat for a few months at least. If I want to pamper myself I can always add some luncheon meat or an egg into the noodles. 3 minutes later and viola~ :p

Just to add to this, you can also chop up tons of vegetables and add it to the noodles. Tastes even better and you get some of your veggies for the day. I usually add lettuce, onions, and mushrooms as my minimum amount of veggies.

[ChaosK]

Get a can of chicken broth, boil. On the side boil potatoes. And cook some pieces of meat (whatever you want, chicken, pork, beef etc). When the chicken broth is boiled, add in some noodles, and when the noodles are cooked, add the potatoes and meat. Stir for five minutes for the flavor of the potatoe and meat to sink in, then dig in.

[XanBcoo]

I'm adding this topic as a favorite. God knows it'll come in handy.

I usually do what Psyke, Ryllharu, or BioAlien do: Kraft macaroni, Ramen, and sandwiches. I also love pasta plain, so sometimes I just cook that and don't even bother with the sauce. I will have to remember complich8's Bolognese recipe though, sounds simple.

[complich8]

Here's another on-the-cheap favorite:


Ham and Navy Bean Soup:
people think it'll be bad because it's got beans ... but they're wrong, it's awesome.

Ingredients:
1x 1 pound bag of dried navy beans
2x Ham Steak (or other source of fairly thick precooked ham, aim for a pound or two of it, to taste.
1x Celery stalk
1x Medium onion (or dried onion flakes)
3 Bay Leaves
Parseley Flakes
Salt (to taste)


The night before you're going to make it, put the beans in a mixing bowl (or other large bowl) and fill it with water to about twice the depth of the beans. If you don't do this, the beans will be gassy and won't cook up well.

Instructions:
Drain and rinse the soaked beans, put them in the pot.
Chop up the onion. Put it in the pot.
Chop up the celery. Put it in the pot. Focus on the leafy parts, and chop it fine.
Add some parseley flakes, dried onion (if you're using it).
Dice up the ham. Put it in the pot.
Fill with water to cover all the ingredients with some left over.

Bring it to a boil, reduce heat, simmer for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally (try to keep the beans from burning to the bottom of the pot). When it's really done, the beans should be mushy.

Serve it up. It's a balanced, tasty meal... admittedly not good for summer (it's more of a "warms-you-up" type of food).

Cost: About $8-$10 for ingredients, at most.
Should make 4-6 good meals. Reheats well -- in fact, it's usually better the second day, for some reason.
Tools: 4-quart pot, knife, cutting board, serving spoon (or ladle).
Prep time: 15-20 minutes of active prep (chopping veggies and meat), 3-4 hours of cooking.

When I first served this to my friends, they were skeptical of it, because it's navy bean soup... but out of the two dozen or so people I've served it up to, not one of them has been able to resist going for seconds.


Mac and cheese, sandwiches, ramen ... that stuff gets old pretty fast. If you don't have a stove and cookware, you're sort of stuck with it, but it's definitely not healthy, and it's also definitely not well-balanced. Take a look at the nutritional info on some ramen sometime -- or even worse, the ingredient list.

[Winged Dancer]

You'll need...

- Some chicken (breast works the best, one or two pieces should do)
- Any alcoholic beverage (Sake and Beer are the best... if you don't have beer at home you're just weird)
- Some soy sauce
- Bread-crumbs
- Eggs (about 5)
- Flour (kind of optional)

Cut the chicken breast into small bites (a mouthful) and place them into a bowl. Empty all of the soy sauce into the bowl (try to make it so that it covers the chicken) and add some of the Sake or beer, three or five spoonfuls should do. Leave the chicken to rest for about 20 minutes.

Beat the eggs and prepare the bread-crumbs in a separate bowl. Take the chicken-bits and submerge them in the eggs, then cover them with flour and then with the bread. Fry them until the bread turns brown-golden and ta-dah! Drunken Chicken Nuggets.

For extra flavor you can get some sliced garlic (you can find it ready for use if you search next to the pepper and that kind of thing) and some parmesan cheese and mix those two with the breadcrumbs.

[drims]

My plan to have foood that last long and is cheap is....

1. Buy huge bags of food. Whatever it is, big bags of food cost lest in the long run.

2. Who needs coke? Buy the big amount of Nestea mix tea "not the nasty bag kind ". All you need is water, and you have a tasty drink for a month or two. Except if you drink too much you can get some kind of throat infection thats hurts. I speak from experiance.

3. Buy spaghettis. No, not cup ramen, I mean basic spaghetti boxes, which you can make about 3 servings from it. 3 plates of food for 99 cents?.. sounds like a great deal to me.

If I think of more, ill post..

P.S. and as always, if you want to eat out, go to wendy's or mcdonalds and hit the 99 cent menu up.

[el_boss]

What's up with the hamburger helper thing? All you need is meat, salt and pepper.

I get a full meal consisting of two 300gram hamburgers for around $3 here. It's even a challenge to finish those huge fuckers.

Another easy one is to just fry up some sausages, meatballs or something and eat with spaghetti. This probably costs like $1 to $2, since you can use the same ingredients several days.

[complich8]

yeah, that's true ... you can just eat meat ...

but straight-up cheap meat gets old really fast, IMO. I mean ... ground beef isn't filet mignon, you know?

[complich8]

If you're really desperate ...

there's always Monkey Chow (http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html)

... oh wait, you said "good" ... nevermind =D