Frugal Cooking

Frugal cooking is all about making more from less, saving energy and reducing carbon emissions whilst enjoying a good wholesome diet.

slow cooked casserole - frugal cooking

Frugal Slow Cooked Casserole

Our grandparents ate frugally, they didn’t waste and throw away perfectly good food. They made more from less and the free recipes for low cost meals on this site will enable you to feed your family for less by making the most of what you eat. Learn how to get more for your money and help the planet at the same time.

Meat or Vegetarian?

We eat too much meat for our own health, never mind our purse or the planet and our vegetarian recipes will taste just as good as any meat or fish meal.

Learn how frugal cooking can stretch the meat you eat with vegetable protein and to cook with lower cost cuts of meat for better flavour.

Leftovers? Reduce Waste and Save Money

Find out what to do with leftovers to produce meals you and your family will enjoy. Frugal cooking isn’t wasteful cooking. You’ll be amazed how far you can make a chicken go or how to double a chilli con carne at next to no cost.

Beans, Pulses & Rice

Higher in protein than steak, vitamin rich, fat free beans and pulses tick all the healthy eating boxes. Best of all, they cost a lot less than meat and are better for the environment. Beef, for example, is very inefficient in that cows take about 2 acres of grazing land to raise but a tenth of that land will produce more protein in the form of beans.

Dried beans and pulses and rice will all store well so long as they’re kept dry, cool and dark. An air-tight jar in a cupboard is ideal. So you can cheaply  bulk buy or take advantage of special offers.  If you’re a real carnivore, beans and pulses such as lentils are ideal for bulking and stretching meat meals such as chilli con carne or shepherds pie. Check out our articles on how to use dried beans and how to best buy.

Offal

The name almost suggests rubbish, something to throw away yet offal is often the tastiest and most nutritious part of an animal as well as the cheapest. The Eskimo people had a near carnivorous diet, not many green vegetables around in the Arctic. The most prized parts of the animal were offal. Liver and kidney happen to have the most vitamins.

Not wasting anything from an animal respects it and is more environmentally sound. It fits with a frugal philosophy as it both avoids waste and is cheap!

There’s a really useful page here about cuts of meat and storing meat

Slow Cooking, Hay Box Cooking, Pressure Cooking

Explore the alternatives and produce meals in less time, with less energy and full of vitamins. Learn how to slow cook with our crock pot recipes and how to make fantastic and filling soups. Follow our pressure cooking guide and then check our pressure cooking recipes

Tell us what you think of Frugal Cooking

Underneath each recipe there is a comment box – if you’ve tried a recipe why not tell everyone how it worked out. If it didn’t work out for you, that’s valuable to know as well.

Maybe I can help tell you where things went wrong. Your email is required to make a comment but will not be published or given to anybody but us. It is only so that we can reply directly to you if required to clarify a point etc.

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If you’ve made a variation on the recipe or have a recipe to share then don’t be shy, send it to us here.