I see so many articles about budget food ideas, but they are actually so expensive. About to go into my second year of uni, I wanted to give some real budget food ideas for those of you that may need to save a bit of money. Let me mention that these foods don’t have very much nutritional value, and I wouldn’t recommend just eating these meals, but interspersed with few more expensive meals per week allows you to save some cash. These are meals that I cook quite regularly. As well as being incredibly cheap, they are mostly quite quick and easy to make, so anyone can do them. A tip before we get going: I would recommend buying things like pasta and rice in bulk, because this is usually cheapest, but make sure to check the price per kg while you shop for all your groceries.

Budget Food Idea #1: Tomato Pasta

This is one that I do fairly regularly. Buy the cheapest tomato and herb jar sauce you can find, cook some pasta and serve. Tesco does quite a few varients of tomato sauces, so you can keep it a bit varied. If you’re shopping at Tesco, look out for products by Hearty Food Company, because their stuff is incredibly cheap.

Budget Food Idea #2: Curry Rice

I got the idea for this one after buying just the sauce and naans from an Indian takeaway. Something you realise when you start buying groceries yourself, is that meat is very expensive. Check in the frozen section to see if its cheaper to buy in bulk there, or look into veggie options, which are sometimes cheaper. Or, as I’ve done in this instance, cut out the meat completely. I like to buy a cheap curry sauce, some rice and a couple of naans (preferably Peshwari). Heat up the sauce in a pan, boil the rice, and warm up the naans in the oven. Mix the rice into the sauce and use your naan to dip. Make sure you up the serving size for this one, as you want to make sure you’re full.

Budget Food Idea #3: Wedges

Some of you may not agree that this is a meal, but it fills me up, so I say it counts. I buy the pack of four jacket potatoes from Tesco and use about 3/4 of them, cutting them into 8. Mix them in a bowl with some oil, paprika, salt, pepper, and mixed herbs. You can also add some garlic or garlic paste, or any other spices you wish. Once it’s all mixed and the wedges are evenly covered, put onto a tray and place into the oven (at about 180°C). After 25 minutes, shake the tray and put it in for a further 25 minutes. I just eat these with ketchup, but they’re one of my favourite budget meals. The spices may seem expensive at first, but really they’re an investment, because they will last you so long.

Budget Food Idea #4: Pancakes

Who says pancakes are just for pancake day? Again, this is one some of you may disagree with as being a meal, but again, they fill me up so who cares. You can either follow a simple recipe online, or you can buy a mix. I like to buy the shake bottles that Tesco sells. They cost about £1 and you just add water, shake it, and it’s ready. My favourite topping is lemon and sugar, but you could make savoury ones as well, with ham and cheese. That’s what’s great about pancakes, everyone can enjoy them!

Budget Food Idea #5: Cheesy Pasta/Spaghetti

My dad used to cook this when I was a kid. It’s very simple. Just cook some pasta or spaghetti, drain it, then add some butter/margerine and lots of grated cheese. It is basically an incredibly simple mac and cheese. Cheese can sometimes be expensive, but you can find the cheapest by checking the cost per kg. Tesco has a brand called Creamfields, which is very cheap.

My Favourite More Expensive Meals

Of course, you can’t just eat these 5 meals all the time as that would not be particularly healthy. Here are a few of my favourite meals to cook and eat when you want to splash out a little bit.

Fajitas

I’m not very good with spice, so I always get the mild ones, but they are still great. You can cook these with Quorn chicken if you want, or you can just spend the money on the chicken, it’s up to you. I then like to buy a couple of peppers, sour cream, salsa, lettuce and tomatoes. If you buy just the spices rather than a fajitas kit of course you will also need to buy wraps. This is quite an expensive meal if you’re going to buy all the extras, but it’s a nice treat once in a while. You can also cook it for a group of you or on a special occasion.

Macaroni Cheese

This is one of my favourite meals of all time. I love cheese quite a lot, so this dish is ideal for me of course. I’ve already written a blog post on my recipe of macaroni cheese if you want to check it out: https://www.a-day-in-june.com/the-best-macaroni-cheese-ever/. Again, you can buy very cheap cheese, or you can get some nicer stuff, which I would definitely recommend once in a while. Cathedral City cheese from Tesco is nice and not crazy expensive.

Homemade Pizza

This is quite a fun one to make. I tend to buy the dough mix from Tesco where you just add water and roll it out, but you can make it from scratch if you’re more adventurous, or you can buy pizza bases. You can then choose to buy specific pizza sauce, or use tomato puree, or you can use the same tomato and herb pasta sauce mentioned earlier. Top it with cheese and whatever else you want and put it in the oven. This one is not too expensive depending on your toppings, and how you make the dough.

Chow Mein

This one can be very cheap depending on what you put in it. I use the term chow mein quite loosely, as I’ve struggled to find a recipe that makes chow mein as good as a Chinese takeaway does, but there are some different variations. One incredibly cheap one, is simply to cook some noodles and add soy sauce. This is great if you need something fast and don’t really care about the nutritional value of it. You can follow some recipes online but a lot of them use stuff like oyster sauce that is fairly expensive and you won’t use again. You can add bean sprouts, mushrooms, chicken, whatever you want to add. If you want a recipe to follow, find any chow mein recipe and just basically ignore all the other ingredients that you don’t want to buy. It’ll turn out fine either way.

Spaghetti Bolognese

This is a classic homely meal. Find any recipe online and it’ll be delicious. You can find flavour packets in supermarkets that will give it a bit more taste, or you can just wing it. Some mince can be quite cheap, especially if you don’t care how healthy it is. This recipe is also a great way to sneak in some veg if you’ve not been getting in your five-a-day.

Last Few Tips From Me

Before I go, I just wanted to give you a few tips.

Tip #1

First of all, I would recommend getting at least one recipe book, specifically a student one, or collating a bunch of recipes from a website like BBC Good Food. It gets quite difficult to come up with food ideas each week, especially if you’re getting bored of some of your go-to meals.

Tip #2

Secondly, make sure you have lots of tupperwares. If you are cooking for only one person (yourself), most of the time recipes will be for four people. Sometimes it’s also easier to buy ingredients for four rather than one. In this case, you can put the leftovers into boxes, and eat them as lunches or even dinners for the rest of the week. If you don’t want to eat it that week, you can freeze it and save it for another day.

Tip #3

Next, I would recommend planning your meals weekly. If you get an idea of what you want to eat each week, you can make sure to not overspend when you shop. It’s also better to do one shop per week rather than go every day because you’re more likely to save money that way. It also helps you to keep your meals varied; if you have events on in the evenings, you can make sure you have a quick meal planned that day.

Tip #4

Lastly, if any events at your uni, especially in Freshers, offer free food, go! Never pass up an opportunity for free food. That can be your dinner for the night and then you’ve saved a couple quid.

I hope these ideas were helpful for those of you going to uni in a few weeks. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or contact me by filling in the contact form. Good luck to everyone going back to school/uni, and I’ll see you all soon!