We live in expensive times, and it only seems to be getting worse. The prices of some essential things like food keep rising, and it makes people look for ways to save their money in order to survive.
However, some are more ready for this than others, as those who have endured some kind of poverty before already know some great 'poverty meals' that are very tasty despite being pretty economical, and that is what people online shared on this online thread. Scroll down if you want to learn about some of these delicious money-saving recipes!
More info: Reddit
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A 'poverty meal' is the kind of food that is made from ingredients that are as cheap as possible yet still provides all the needed nourishment that a person needs. It is usually something eaten in the more economically challenging times that some people have to endure.
Nostalgia could be another strong reason for people sometimes indulging in these foods, as they might have eaten stuff like this when they were younger if their situation wasn’t as fortunate back then as it is now.
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However, just because it’s called a poverty meal doesn’t mean that it can’t have an amazing taste. According to The Foodbank, quite a few of today’s delicacies first started out as the food of the poor.
One such example is lobster. Nowadays, it’s often considered one of the most desirable and fancy dishes, at least in America, but back in the day, it was something that capturers would feed to prisoners and what Native Americans used as bait for fishing.
We could also add the now-all-so-popular barbeque, which used to be what enslaved African-Americans made before the Civil War, or the Chinese-American and Mexican-American cuisines that were created by immigrants, displaced people, and working-class representatives.
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Even the superfood quinoa, which you can find on the shelves of almost every supermarket today, comes from Peruvian farms that were much poorer not very long ago. In fact, according to statistics from Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture shared by Grace Livingstone of BBC, the price of this crop in the country rose by over 500% when compared from 2005 to 2014.
With the country-wide production grew from roughly 32,500 to nearly 115,000 tonnes a year, the once-poor Peruvian farmers who ate quinoa through generations turned their fortunes around when they started selling it. Now, thanks to the sky-rocketed popularity of this magnificent grain, these people are able to enjoy electricity and send their children to good universities, all while continuing to manage their now-successful businesses.
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In the end, this goes to show that just because some food is cheap, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be tasty or nutritious, just like expensive meals aren’t necessarily of high quality.
So, if these expensive times have struck you, just know that eating healthily and deliciously is definitely not out of the question. And if you need inspiration, threads like this one are there for you.
What is your favorite poverty meal? Do you know of any other foods that have had their popularity turned around and become delicacies? Share all of them in the comments below!
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Does cinnamon sugar toast count? Because it slaps.Tomato sandwiches: tomato, mayo and white bread.Bread pizza.
Bread (toasted if feeling fancy) with cheap tomato/pasta sauce, bulk cheese (I dunno if dad went to Costco or not) and a few slices of pepperoni (dad always had that too for some reason)
Broil til cheese melted
If we were out of pepperoni...just cheese and sauce lol
Now that he's gone...that's dinner on his birthday.I’m British and was brought up in the 1970s. I no longer eat meat, but I was brought up by a Welsh mother who wasted nothing.
We had a meat grinder and anything not eaten in out Sunday roast was ground up and added to our slow cooker with barley, lentils and any leftover veg. Shortly before it was served my mum would drop in dumplings. It was amazing.I used to cook and eat a can of ravioli and then cook ramen in the leftover liquid. I used to buy the ravioli when it was 10/$10 so I would be pretty full for only like $1.15 which was pretty good back in 2012/2013, but I told my ex this at one point and they never let me live it down. People gotta stop that struggle meal hate. Sometimes you do what you gotta do and it honestly was pretty tasty.My favourite was a Bulgarian "poverty meal" staple in my house growing up - cooked macaroni in warm milk sweetened with sugar (and vanilla if you have it), then some crumbled brined cheese like feta to top it off. The sweet and salty just really works together. If you have any remaining macaroni, you can throw it in a baking dish with milk, sugar, and an egg and bake it into a custard-like macaroni dessert. Sounds strange to non-Balkan people but we all have our cultural poverty meals!Bread and butter simply slaps. We used to do sandwiches with just butter and radishes as well.Baked beans on toast with grated mature Cheddar.Papas con chorizo, cubed boiled potatoes scrambled with egg and chorizo.Red beans and rice. Ham hock, some andouille sausage, some beans, some rice, spices, you've got a big pot of a good meal that can feed you for a few days. Ditto for chili.
Edit: Don't forget an onion, green pepper, and celery stalk or two.Mac n cheese with hotdogs. Or,
Elbow noodles, Hunts tomato sauce, butter, and salt.My mom finds it disgusting that to this day, my brother and I, in our 50s, love the occasional bowl of plain macaroni and canned stewed tomatoes. We ate that a _lot_ lol.Canned tuna is a pretty divisive place to start. As for poverty meals, I eat lots of beans and lentils, partially because of cost, partially because it's shelf stable and easy to stock up on without having to worry about spoilage.Beans and cornbread! Still a fave.I would say "anything with ground beef," but it now costs about as much as cheaper cuts of beef (USD $4/lb).
When I as growing up ground beef meant chili, or spaghetti, or shepherds pie, or hamburger helper, or sloppy joes, or meatloaf, or just plain burgers. The only kind of beef not pre-ground was chuck roast for stew.I can relate. I made Haluski - cabbage and egg noodles. I added Italian sausage that I found on sale. My partner was horrified. She likes the hamburger soup though. I ate a lot of Haluski last week!My kids called this "Mexican goo". It's similar to a 7 layer dip , but made into a casserole.
Bottom layer is refried beans that you heat up and season. Second layer is rice, I generally used leftover Spanish rice. Or leftover rice that I seasoned. 3rd layer is whatever meat that you have, already cooked. Ground beef, ground turkey or chicken, leftover rotisserie chicken, leftover pot roast, pork that you chop up, whatever it is.and season that with either cumin and chili powder, salt and pepper , enchilada sauce, taco seasoning, whatever you have on hand or can afford. Next layer is vegetables. Generally Rotel, pico de Gallo, or canned diced tomatoes and jalapenos if you have them. Next layer is cheese, whatever you've got. Bake it at 350-400 until the cheese on top is starting to brown and bubble.
Eaten over tortilla chips (in a bowl) or made into tacos with any combination of hot sauce, salsa, sour cream, pickled jalapenos, more pico de Gallo, cilantro, chopped onions with a squeeze of lime, chopped up tomatoes that have seen better days, or whatever you have.
If you use corn tortillas, and don't use packaged seasoning, it's also gluten free. If you skip the meat, it's vegetarian.
If you want the crispy burned rice, then oil your pan and put your rice as the bottom layer.
Edit: if you skip the rice and top it with cornbread batter and bake it, you have a tamale pie.
Edit: season every layer. Otherwise it's just an awful bland mess, and hot sauce wasn't invented to be a main flavor.I’m old so this is probably very 1950’s, but we would have fried bologna sandwiches. On white bread. I wonder if they would still taste good to me?! Sure not very healthy!Hot dogs and baked beans.Once in a blue moon, I’ll get a craving for S**t on a Shingle (aka, chipped beef gravy on toast). I have the gravy over popovers instead of toast, but the spirit is the same ?.Soup. Just soup. My most consistent one is onion, celery, carrots, cabbage/kale, whatever herbs I find and a small pasta. Can cook up a protein separately to add in or add white beans/whatever you have.Salmon Patties. My wife hates them.Ghetto chicken parm. It's just frozen chicken nuggets on spaghetti with prego sauce and the green bottle parmesean.My mom used to make a tomato base stew with oxtails...can't even afford poverty meals anymore.My mother used to make something called rice and eggs when I was very young. I asked her recently for the recipe and she laughed and asked why I would want to make it, she only did because times were tough. I remember a frying pan, cooked rice, and her tossing it with beaten eggs. It came out like creamy rice, something like a risotto but firmer. It might have been the last time she made it when the oil in the pan splashed onto the back of her hand causing a gnarly burn.
I still would like to have it again, poor people food or not. It's one of those memories that is burned into my brain and after 40+ years I can still taste it.Instant ramen is one of the worlds great food inventions. I have recently rediscovered Maruchan Cup O Noodles shrimp flavor.As a kid, my brother and I would make bologna roll ups (fried bologna and scrambled eggs rolling the bolonga around the eggs) a lot.
Bigger family meals from childhood:
- Chop salad (lunch meats, hard bolied eggs, a head of iceberg, and your dressing of choice)
- Spanish spaghetti (fry spaghetti noodles like Spanish rice, add liquid, tomato paste, and spices good until spaghetti is soft. If you're feeling extra, add cut-up hot dogs)
- Bum food (potatoes cubed and fried with bacon and eggs)
- Summer dinner for those hot days (kielbasa, cheese, we like pepper jack, and triscuts)
- Peanut butter and banana toast
- Cinnamon sugar toast
- Tips and noodles (cheap meat normally beef chuck in small cubes fried, then add cream of mushroom soup a can of water or beef broth and egg noodles)
Something else we have been doing more (only 2 or 3 of us at my house often). Make a cheap roast (slow cook or instant pot), and the next day, make shredded meat tacos or burritos.
The other day, we did a ham (bone in), next day ham sandwiches, and then 3rd day pork and beans using the bone with the beans and leftover ham and some kielbasa.Growing up we had a lot of Campbell's soup casseroles, tuna casserole, chicken casserole etc. Creamed tuna on toast ( béchamel and tuna), sloppy joes, anything hamburger helper like etc. Butter tortillas were also a favorite snack. It was kinda like noodle, meat, soup can, cheese, topping and go.
We make american goulash now pretty regularly. I can't get my kids to like tuna so I rarely make tuna casserole now, but maybe I will make myself some tuna on toast! I love it.
I used to make tuna mac as one of my standard backpacking meals because of how easy it it to pack in ingredients. Nom.My husband who came from the middle class was also disgusted by the food I grew up with. Hamburger helper, tuna casserole, etc.
Apparently frozen burger patties cooked in a frying pan and eaten on white bread is a sin.
Most meals growing up would consist if a carb and a sauce and if you were lucky meat.
But it was ALL one pot meals. We didn't have sides, snacks, or salads. We had rules about how much food everyone got too. Like with stoufers lasagna it was deliberately portioned into 12 pieces and everyone was entitled to only 2 pieces so we all had equal. We never opened a high value food and we NEVER were allowed to finish it, the last of anything good was reserved for mom.
It was really weird going to college and learning what it was to not be food insecure. Like most people just eat when they are hungry. They don't have to worry about being yelled at for having the last mac N cheese box.One of regular "pantry meals" is chicken noodle casserole. We always have Kirkland canned chicken in the pantry, some cream of whateverthehellyouwant, egg noodles, cheese, and a bag of frozen mixed veggies.
Also... Mac n cheese with chopped up ham was a weekend lunch regularly had in my house. To make it more of a meal, add in a bag of California mix veggies while the noodles are boiling.Rice and chicken porridge.
Take extra s****y quality rice, cook it with cheap chicken parts, boil it all till it turns into porridge. Add salt and pepper, remove chicken bones, stir it so rice and chicken mix well together and you're done. It looks terrible but sooo comforting to eat during winter, I'd like to eat it more often but I don't find rice that is as low quality as it was in my childhood though.Open face hot turkey. Slice of toast, shmear of leftover mashed potatoes, sliced turkey lunch meat, spoon of simple gravy (chicken bouillon, water and corn starch). Serve hot. Side of canned green beans.I love the bottom-shelf store-brand instant mashed potatoes. Mix them with water, crack in an egg, add little pepper and salt and a scoop of flour, then spoon it onto a griddle! Excellent lunch.My mother was a horrible cook. I've greatly improved her Halushki, Pasta sauce, Goulash and breaded chicken.
My husband hated his mother's Goulash so much I wasn't allowed to even make it. So I made "Ground beef stew with spices" and he loved it.How did you jazz it up? My MiL loves with us and observes Lent, so as a non “fish” lover, I’m struggling to move beyond salmon lol. (I do, oddly enough like tuna… I know it’s weird)
And Potato soup is my favorite struggle meal. My mom’s was just butter, water, onion and potatoes. I add some cream, celery and carrots if I have them. And if I don’t, it’s still super tasty. And one of my favorite meals period.SPAM onigiri punches way above its weight.
