Delicious Dinners For Under $20
Eating well doesn’t need to be expensive. Try these tasty new meal ideas and make delicious easy – for less!
These recipes use everyday ingredients, are easy to make and feed 4 people for under $20*.
*Countdown Online 26/9/23.
Useful tips for eating well on a budget
- Increase the vegetable content in recipes and you’ll decrease the amount of meat which is usually the most expensive component of a recipe.
- When shopping for vegetables only buy what’s in season.
- Substitute onions for leeks, potatoes for kūmara or pumpkin, eggplant for mushrooms etc.
- Use frozen vegetables eg; Corn, beans, broccoli, cauli, spinach etc. They’re very economical, snap-frozen and great quality to cook with.
- Develop the habit of looking at the ‘per 100g’ price on packaged supermarket items as it’s not always good economy to buy larger packets/jars/cans. Counterintuitive but true!
- Never throw out stale bread or buns – make breadcrumbs or freshen them up by running briefly under a tap and re-baking for 10-15 minutes at 180 C – even the hardest stalest bread comes out like freshly baked!
- Don’t discard the water from boiling your potatoes/peas/beans etc – save it and use it for sauces and gravies in place of stock.
- Cheese is expensive in general, so use less - you’ll be surprised that you don’t need as much as you’d think to get that wonderful cheesy flavour.