Due to a combination of inflation, supply-chain disruptions, and tariffs on certain foreign imports, food prices have steadily risen since 2020.
In the US, for example, food prices — which includes both food at home (groceries) and restaurant orders — increased 2.2% from February 2023 to February 2024, and the previous one-year period saw a spike of 9.5%.
So when Reddit user WhatIsThisWhereAmI made a post on the platform's forum 'Cooking,' asking people what's their preferred budget meal, they immediately got plenty of answers. Here are some of the most upvoted ones.
Keep your house stocked with potatoes, onions, rice, beans, and canned tomatoes. Add whatever vegetables and/or meat is on sale to your weekly trip. With those 5 items you can have a variety of meals and they are perfect staples for whatever you are able to add.
Keep your scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer and use it to make stock. Just don’t add scraps from broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, or cruciferous vegetables as it’ll make your stock bitter.
You can seriously save every part of your onion, carrots, celery, etc to use for stock.People talk about rice and beans a lot , but no one talks about other legumes. Chickpeas and all kinds of lentils are incredibly cheap if bought dry. Buying in bulk from an ethnic store makes them even cheaper.I love potatoes and eggs. Eggs got stupid expensive for a bit but they’re back down again. You can get a bag of potatoes and a dozen eggs for like 5-6$ or even less if you shop right. Toss some potatoes in a pan and fry them up or even just boil or bake them and then take a couple eggs on the side or on top. You can get fancy and make an omelet or add a little cheese but even just basic eggs n’ taters is yum and very filling.Cabbage!
I made a quickle with some last night, it lasts a few days in the fridge and get better and brinier with each day. I also make seared "steaks" of cabbage that get so tasty when you almost burn them, give them a flip and then I pour over a miso/honey/crushed red pepper sauce with a lid, low heat until the reduction basically glazes it.
Idk I guess I really felt for the cabbage man in ATLA.If you go to the budget cooking subs, it’s rice and beans. Everyone reply is the same, rice and beans and a food bank.The new poverty food is cooking 90%+ of your food. People out there be eating rice and beans during the week and then blowing the budget eating fast casual/fast food on the weekends. Fast food ain't cheap anymore!Chicken thighs are still pretty cheap and full of protein. Frozen veggies are almost always on sale somewhere. The beans and rice move is always a classic.I don't intend to speak for others, but Red Lentil curry + home made naan is the most food you can make for the least amount of money. It's like $3 to make a weeks worth of food.I think the key is avoiding processed food in general. It used to be dirt cheap to just eat cereal and kraft mac and cheese, but I am appalled at how expensive that stuff has gotten.
Scratch cooking is the key to food savings.
And my poverty food will always be the good ol' rice and beans. I eat at least 1 meal of day of rice and beans in various permutations: channa masala, red beans and rice, mujadara, gallo pinto, Jamaican rice and peas, collard greens and black eyed peas, even tofu counts in my book. The possibilities are endless.Costco/Sams rotisserie chicken! Add it to rice.I've been negative on the bank account for a week and been surviving on a 10 pound bag of potatoes, air fried with some spices, and some onions and garlic I have laying around.
Payday coming soon, though.Rice is cheap, onions are cheap, eggs are reasonable.
=Egg fried rice.
Add garlic or meat/poultry if you can find a deal.Porridge for breakfast, rice and beans for dinner, a third meal would be bourgeois excess.I think this is a great question.
I think my personal answer is a vegetarian burrito bowl or tacos. Rice, black beans (from a bag of dried beans), and salsa. Can put in tortillas. Sauteed onions and/or bell pepper, tomatoes, lettuce or cabbage, a little cheese and sour cream are all optional if you've got extra money to burn, lol.I've resurrected a long lost staple from my childhood - Pizza Bread. Take a few slices of cheap bread, slather some ragu, top with mozzarella, bake, and viola pizza bread.Chickpeas with any dressing.There is a Korean grocer near me with tubs of tofu in the refrigerated section. $1 for a small, $1.50 for a large. The large is enough for me, my wife, and our 2 year-old with some leftovers. I'll bread it for noodles/stir fry, saute it as a tofu scramble, throw it into a chili or other stew...
It's a very versatile protein, and I always wonder what other families do with the blocks.
Altogether, I think "Americana" poverty foods like cereal, Kraft mac and cheese, and baloney have gone up in price because they don't sell as well... it was competitively priced because of profit in volume. Instead, ethnic foods from Latin American and East Asian immigrant populations have become more widely known.Mine was a whole uncooked chicken. I’d cook it in a slow cooker and then pull it apart. The liquid is then a broth to make soups. You can buy tortillas from
A Mexican grocer for dirt cheap (like 20 for $1). A few veggies or a whole purple cabbage. You can keep yourself fed real well for roughly $30 a week or less.Same things that have always been: pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, eggs, vegetables, whole chickens, pork shoulder. Buying the right whole foods and doing some prep work to get the most out of them is still the cheapest way to eat.Gardening is the new cheap food. Sorry if you don’t have space. You’d be surprised what you can get from a balcony or window though!
Also chicken feet for bone broth. Organ meats are pretty cheap too.Pork Loin is still pretty cheap. I got one that I'm sure I can make at least 4-5 meals for three people for $14.I wouldn’t say new, but buttered egg noodles look like they’re becoming a trendy again. the real ones never slept on them tho.In my city you can get 1kg of frozen pierogies for like 3 dollars. Dip them in sweet Thai sauce or Greek yogurt. Easy cheap filling meal.That has generally been the case of “poverty foods.” Meat in the west only became the main focus of a dish because of factory farming. Everywhere else it’s almost treated like a condiment to veggies. Your cow was almost priceless so you wouldn’t butcher it until it stopped producing milk. Which you valued so much you’d try to preserve it by fermenting.
So the poverty food is the poverty food. Trying to extend the shelf life/ or package of meats. Eating more veggies forward.It’s not new, but Cajun rice and gravy has been always a pretty cheap food in South Louisiana. Get a cheap fatty cut of beef and seasoning it with salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Sear the beef on all sides. Pull the beef out the pot and add your Trinity. Once the veggies are lightly browned, around 5 to 10 minutes, add beef back along with a Bayleaf, Cajun seasoning, and whatever other herbs you want to add, add enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer, simmer for 4 to 6 hours, adding water as needed to keep things covered. It’s done whenever the beef is falling apart. Put it over rice, add hot sauce.Pork is the best value meat out there right now after chicken. People overlook pork chops in particular. I got 5 lbs of amazing pork chops for $10 the other day at Costco. Made 3 dinner meals for my fam of 6 with them.
Lentils are great too.1 minute noodles.
2 minute noodles are for the bourgeoisie.Marcella Hazan’s red sauce is relatively inexpensive…. Can of tomatoes, butter, salt, onion cut in half simmered on low 45 minutes or so. Noodles are cheap.I don’t understand why people can’t learn to share. I have one person (me) to feed on a six figure income. I love Costco but I tend to get bored of the food before it goes bad. If a friend wants to share, I would happily go to Costco split a bulk pack of whatever.15 minute potatoes- 8 minutes in the microwave, cover in oil, butter, or margarine and seasoning, and then cook in the air fryer for 7 minutes. Cut open and add anything, chili, sour cream, butter, bacon, up to you!For me it's just buying everything that's marked down b/c it's about to bad. I've gotten 2 lbs of chicken for $2 at Target & Mariano's. Jewel does a lot of BOGO free on fresh pre-sliced veggies, meat, prepared dinners, & random deli items like hummus or salsa.
I also keep an eye on food apps - you pretty much have to use the app to get decent prices. Frozen breakfast sandwiches are insanely expensive now, so I either make breakfast tacos for the week or I use the Dunkin app for discounts. Fast food places often have great deals but only if you use the app.
My fave cheap meal is just whole wheat pasta with a protein and frozen veggies on the side. I add butter and Parmesan cheese & whatever spices I'm feeling. Grilled cheese is still cheap, eggs aren't bad although I miss buying higher quality ones, and I love chickpea salad sandwiches for lunch.Ramen?
Yogurt is usually on sale.Popcorn. Like a bag of kernels, popped in your microwave in a paper bag, with nothing else. Popcorn kernels are cheap and 3 Tbsp of popcorn kernels makes you feel like you at a big meal, all for about 120 calories if you’re counting.
