FRUGAL COOKING TIPS

MEAL PLAN

This is by far one of the best tips for frugal cooking. I’m not going to get too much into meal planning in this post. But I cannot do a post on frugal cooking tips without mentioning meal planning. By planning what you are going to eat, and purchasing for those specific meals you will make excess purchases. And you will be sure to use up what you purchased.

COOK SIMPLE RECIPES WITH INGREDIENTS YOU MOSTLY HAVE ON HAND

By cooking simple recipes, you won’t need to pick up new ingredients all of the time. Cooking with basic ingredients makes grocery shopping easier and less costly. When I see a recipe that has a bunch of ingredients in it that I am not familiar with, I usually just move on, When you have to purchase specialty ingredients they often add up quickly. And if it’s something you are not familiar with, you will likely not know if you are getting a good price or not. Often those ingredients that are not so common end up going to waste after the recipe is made as there is no use for them in other meals.

DO THE PREP WORK YOURSELF

Whenever you purchase food that has had some prep work done prior to purchasing it, you are paying extra for someone to do that work. For example, thin-cut chicken breast cost more.  It only takes a minute or two to cut it yourself. The same goes with fruit or vegetables that have been precut. This is especially true for fruit, cut-up fruit is so expensive. Plus, it seems to go bad faster.  So, if you have the time to do the work yourself, you can save a decent amount of money.

SKIP OR SUBSTITUTE INGREDIENTS

I like to mainly cook simple recipes with ingredients that I typically use.  But, I’m not going to skip making something I would like to try just because it might have an ingredient or two that I don’t typically use. Unless a recipe truly needs a very specific ingredient (I wouldn’t skip the tahini in hummus), I often skip or substitute ingredients and the recipe comes out just fine. If baking, you need to be more careful and do research on substitutes. I am referring to just regular cooking.

Often recipes call for a specific seasoning, and I just season it with something else that seems familiar. Will it be exactly as the creator intended it, maybe not, but most likely it will still be a good meal. I have made mac and cheese with a mix of shredded cheddar and shredded mozzarella several times. It comes out just as good, and I was able to use up extra cheese I had that may have otherwise gone bad.

I have also made lasagna with bowtie pasta that came out great. After getting the filing ready to make lasagna once, I realized I had forgotten to purchase the noodles. I saw that I had bowtie pasta.  So, I decided to boil it up and make a lasagna-type casserole. It came out great! Of course, this was not done intentionally. But it’s a good example of how you can make substitutions and still make a great meal.

USE LESS MEAT, OR ANY EXPENSIVE INGREDIENT

I have found that for certain meals, where meat is not the main dish, I have been able to cut back on how much is being used and not really have any impact on the meal. Meat is usually the most expensive portion of the meal. If you can cut back on the amount of meat being used, you can often cut a good portion of the cost. I often do this when I make a meal like make at-home chipotle night, or tacos.  I used to make a lot more meat than I actually needed.  With all of the other parts of the meal, I found I could cut back quite a bit on the amount of meat being used and it was still plenty. This can be applied to any other expensive ingredients that you might be using in a particular recipe.

FREEZE LEFTOVERS AND MAKE SURE TO USE THEM

For the most part, we eat our leftovers within a couple of days, so I don’t really freeze that many things. However, certain things I know just won’t get eaten up.  If those items freeze well, I make sure to freeze them ASAP before they need to be tossed.

I recently started doing this with canned refried beans.  I usually put out some canned refried beans as a meat alternative for one of my kids when we have tacos. While several of us might take some to add to our taco also, we never eat the whole can. I used to put it in the fridge, and it would not get eaten. Now, I immediately freeze the leftovers. To make sure they don’t go to waste, I put a reminder on my phone for the next day we will be having tacos to take the refried beans out of the freezer to use with dinner.

I also do this with pulled pork and French dip, which both freeze very well. I put a reminder on my phone a few weeks later as a reminder to defrost them and make some sandwiches for lunch on a weekend.

PLAN ONE OR TWO LOWER COST MEALS  DURING THE WEEK

Some meals can be really inexpensive to make.  I try to plan at least one or two of them each week to save some money. Breakfast for dinner is one of my favorite inexpensive meals. The most expensive part is the turkey bacon, which only costs a few dollars. Eggs and potatoes are so inexpensive, and those make up the rest of the meal. Some other lower-cost meals I make are: Crockpot potato soup and grilled cheese, Lentil soup and grilled cheese, Homemade chipotle night

Thanks so much for checking in! If you would like to hear the podcast version of this topic to check out Lola’s Frugal Life Podcast! Also, be sure to check out my other blog posts on this site!

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