Cheap Meals: Eating on a budget.
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Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Bone-in chicken and rice casserole is excellent. You can add your personal favorite spices to make it even better. I like to add cayenne pepper and paprika or Italian mix.
I thought of a "cheap" from scratch recipe that I cook now: Shakshuka
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That's different than the chicken spaghetti I know. The one we always made was Velveeta, cooked chicken stripped off the carcass, can of Rotel, cream of chicken soup, and lots of whatever pasta you wanted, typically vermicelli. Mix everything together and then bake it for a bit.
I loved it, and you can make it a huge batch. You can always throw whatever other leftover vegetables you have like broccoli, broccoli, mushrooms, tomatoes or whatever. I've made it a long time because the wife doesn't like it, but that might be on the menu soon. It's even better if you grill your chicken, and maybe toss in some smoked sausage of some sort. It's a complete abomination of a meal, but it tastes so great.
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Are chicken thighs that really expensive where you live, that's nuts? I just bought some the other day and I think maybe they were $3 a pound, which is still way more than they ought to be. I just always buying because hey they're cheap and they just taste better.
My mother grew up in Brazil so we always had feijao on hand (black beans). It's basically free, delicious, tons of protein and fiber, easy to make in bulk, and keeps for months in the freezer.
Feijao is one of these "cook what you have" dishes, so the link below isn't authoritative by any means. I like to put sausage and cubed beef in mine. It should always be eaten over rice that is salted and cooked with garlic, olive oil, and onion latin-style. (My wife is ethnic Chinese and it took her years to accept that using the rice cooker wasn't appropriate for this.)
Edit: To really bring it home, put a fried egg and chipotle Tabasco on top.
braziliankitchenabroad.com
Feijao is one of these "cook what you have" dishes, so the link below isn't authoritative by any means. I like to put sausage and cubed beef in mine. It should always be eaten over rice that is salted and cooked with garlic, olive oil, and onion latin-style. (My wife is ethnic Chinese and it took her years to accept that using the rice cooker wasn't appropriate for this.)
Edit: To really bring it home, put a fried egg and chipotle Tabasco on top.
Brazilian Black Beans Recipe
This easy instant pot Brazilian Black Beans recipe will transport you straight to Rio de Janeiro, and will become your new go-to Latin comfort food.
braziliankitchenabroad.com
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Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Meat prices are completely out of control. And the quality is the worst I've ever experienced in my adult life.
I have a theory on this. Way more restaurants are selling way more food because of how lazy Americans are, thanks to Grubhub and Doordash, etc. And those restaurants get first dibs via distributors.
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I guess that's the Latin version of red beans and rice which we ate all the time growing up. Just dried kidney beans, an onion, celery, bell pepper, some smoked sausage, bay leaves and garlic if you have them to hand, and some bullion. Serve over white rice.My mother grew up in Brazil so we always had feijao on hand (black beans & rice). It's basically free, delicious, tons of protein and fiber, easy to make in bulk, and keeps for months in the freezer.
Feijao is one of these "cook what you have" dishes, so the link below isn't authoritative by any means. I like to put sausage and cubed beef in mine.
Brazilian Black Beans Recipe
This easy instant pot Brazilian Black Beans recipe will transport you straight to Rio de Janeiro, and will become your new go-to Latin comfort food.
I do love black beans though, and I think I might have to make that soon.
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Whole chickens are still rather inexpensive. I guess no one wants to break them down or whatever. Costco has 2 whole birds for like $10-$12, Kroger has them for like $6-$8 depending on the size of course. And there is plenty to be had on a chicken for 1-2 people. 5lb sacks of chicken quarters are cheap as hell too. Can make a myriad of shit with any of those. Can also buy the Costco rotisserie chicken for $5 and do a whole bunch of shit with that from sandwiches down to chicken salad or whatever. In fact a lot of places are now selling rotisserie chickens for cheap.
We also make fejouada at home. Step dad was born in Brazil. Package of ham hocks, some smoked sausage of your choice, and like 3 lbs of black beans you can make a huge ass pot of the shit you can eat for a while, freezes well too.
We also make fejouada at home. Step dad was born in Brazil. Package of ham hocks, some smoked sausage of your choice, and like 3 lbs of black beans you can make a huge ass pot of the shit you can eat for a while, freezes well too.
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LiquidDeath
Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
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Not only are meat prices ridiculous, but the butchers are also being fucking lazy in my area. Lately steaks are cut like shit with way too much fat and almost all of them have silver skin or other inedible fat on them. I've had to re-trim almost every steak I've bought in the last year.
Furry
WoW Office
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I like a full prime rib. Costs 100$ for around 18 lbs of meat when its on sale here. Rice, beans, pasta, bread, potato? Any of those sides will do, and heck, why not all of them as you work through 18 lbs of meat? Cheaper than a family of four getting burgers at five guys. Watching poors buy 6$ bags of potato chips, boxes of cereal, and shitty tiny sodium and science frozen meals sure does make me chortle when I read threads like this.
I pretty much always buy whole cuts. Fuck letting the 70 iq unibrow hack at my steak. Most grocerys wont put stuff like this out, but they'll have it if you ask.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Oh yea? Costs ~5.12/lb for a rib roast for you? K.
Rib roasts are $14/lb at bottom tier Walmarts around here. You're either living next to a Cattle Ranch and know the owner, or you're full of it.
But nah, none of us have ever thought of magically getting Prime Rib for 1/4th the normal price as long as we cut it at home.
Rib roasts are $14/lb at bottom tier Walmarts around here. You're either living next to a Cattle Ranch and know the owner, or you're full of it.
But nah, none of us have ever thought of magically getting Prime Rib for 1/4th the normal price as long as we cut it at home.
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Gotta get em during holidays. Easter is coming up, Kroger usually has rib roasts for sale, and then after even cheaper. Costco sells full slabs too rib eye or NY strip usually on sale too. Then just cut them up and vac seal the shit off. Its def not $6/lb but you can get it cheaper than $14/lb for sure. I usually use the rib bones for a good stock for a beef soup too.
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Yeah costco can be hit or miss. I find their meat prices rather high compared to other places. But they do have sales on the shit sometimes.
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Koushirou
Log Wizard
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Had ended up taking a leave of absence from college for a year, and my parents’ deal was always they would pay for my essentials as long as I was in school, so with no job (lived in the boonies at the time) and no school, had to scrape by for a year with whatever was in my bank account. Would just buy the $1 pound spaghetti boxes and a package of the cheapest sausage I could find, make a big ass batch of pasta every week with a little butter and oil. Somehow I never got tired of it.
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LOL during college I worked my way through it, in the beginning I worked in fast food before I got my co-op position, but there was always food to be had for free. Best was A&W at the local mall. They had everything from soups and chicken breast sammies to burgers and coney dogs, they even had an ice cream bar where they would have everything from waffle cones to blizzards and other shit. I ate like a king, all for free. Only saps paid for their shit. They even made me a manager there and I used to close the place on the weekends sometimes. Used to take shit home all the time to cook.