While going through this period, I learned to cook tasty things on a budget. Not a "budget" like £10 a meal - a budget like £5 to feed me for a week. I feel it's about time I shared a few of those tips.
One of my persistent beliefs, as best exemplified by Jamie Oliver's excellent Ministry of Food series, is that the world would be a better place if we all cooked more. Especially among the poorest people, a better understanding of how to cook would leave them (and crucially, their children) with more money, and better lives.
Now, most of my friends (especially my most patronising socialist friends) usually tell me:
1.) Working people don't have the time.
2.) Cooking is too hard for the average person.
3.) Cooking from fresh ingredients is too expensive compared to processed food or fast food.
4.) You and Jamie Oliver are both massive twats.
Now, I disagree with everything but 4.
I think especially in comparison with processed &/or fast food, you can feed a family cheaper & better by home cooking. I'm going to compare a Burger King Whopper with the kind of homemade burgers I learned to make when properly hard up.
The Burger King Whopper
We're all familiar with it, but in case you've forgotten what the grim things look like, here it is in all it's glory.
The whopper costs, in a meal with fries and a drink, an astonishing £6.49. I reckon I can produce a better result, with far more food, for far less cost. It's something of an unfair test - I imagine very few of the drastically poor eat at Burger king.
But that said, there is evidence that the poorest people are eating at takeaways rather than cooking - a situation we haven't really seen in this country since the 1920s.
AV Burgers
Much like the alternative vote, this meal isn't perfect - it's probably high in fat and so on. But, it is delicious, and almost certainly better for you than the alternative.
Ingredients (these are representative of the cheap version - if cooking & not on a budget, feel free to, for example, substitute any kind of mince, use red onions, etc)
400g of Sainsburies Value mince (£1.00)
One loose onion (20p)
One box of eggs (£1.65)
4 rolls (£1.00)
Iceberg lettuce (69p)
Sainsburies value Tomatoes (45p)
Bag of potatoes (£1)
200ml bottle of Best-in Vegetable oil (35p)
(Cost - £6.34)
Prep time:
15 mins prep,
30 mins cooking.
Recipe - Burgers, chips & salads
1. Chop the onion, add in the beef and break two eggs into the mixture. Mulch together with your hands, until a satisfying paste is formed. (If not doing it on a budget, add a pinch of salt & pepper, a dash of tobasco, a squeeze of ketchup and a mix of strong, woody herbs - I recommend thyme).
2. Scoop the beef into four discrete patties. Don't worry too much about regularity & shape - you're not winning a prize for aesthetics.
3. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Peel the potatoes and cut them into long chip shapes - the thickness you do is entirely up to you, though the width of your finger is ideal.(Unless you have really fat fingers). Rinse under the cold tap and pat dry with a tea towel.
4.Spread the chips on a baking tray and toss with oil. Lie them flat in a single layer, then bang them in the oven. Roast for 25-30 mins, turning now and then. When cooked they should be golden brown and crisp with a light fluffy centre.
5. Make the salad by roughly chopping half the lettuce, roughly chopping the tomatoes, and then tossing them together. If not on a budget, make some kind of pleasant dressing!
6. About ten minutes before the chips are ready, heat the oil to a moderate heat in a frying pan. Add the burgers to the pan. Fry them slowly, regularly turning them. Make sure they are cooked through before serving.
7. Pop the rolls in the oven for the last couple of minutes of the chips; serve on one plate with the salad, chips and so-on.
Voila! A kid-friendly meal, reasonably nutritious meal for 4 on the same budget as a BK whopper. When researching the costs for this, the extent of food inflation did hit me; when I was skint in 2003, I could do it (and lots of other pared-down meals) on about £4.
I did this experiment in 2007 originally, and by then we were up to just under £5. The jump in the prices of staples, especially eggs & bread, is pretty shocking.
You could cut that even further by baking your own bread. £1.20 buys enough flour for dozens of rolls. Fresh yeast is free if you ask in the Asda bakery, or 60p buys enough for months.
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