Today, you can find a huge variety of tips on how to eat good food without overpaying. Some of them are boring and monotonous, and some are simple but effective. Here are a few tips from the second category, for which you will definitely say thank you.
Same Foods – Different Meals
Eating soup or boiled chicken several days in a row isn’t too desirable. To make breakfasts, lunches, and dinners tasty and varied, prepare a few ingredients in advance and then combine them in sandwiches or bowls. It will help you spend less time on cooking and have some minutes for more pleasant activities, like playing at Playamo or going to a workout. For example, roasted mushrooms and chicken can be dressed with sauce and served as beef stroganoff today, assembled into a cereal-based bowl tomorrow and used as toppings for a shawarma or sandwich the day after.
Another example is rice. Boil a whole pot and then use it for different meals: for rice with vegetables, salad with rice, and crab sticks. You can also make cutlets, paella or risotto with porcini mushrooms.
Natural Fats Instead of Butter
Vegetable and butter oils have risen in price considerably lately. But there is far from always a need to use them. Sometimes you can be limited to natural fats, such as pork, chicken, or beef. Use the one that is left over from cooking. It can be frozen and then cooked on it.
The rendered fat makes a tasty sauce called gravy. After pan-frying the meat, add flour to the fat (four tablespoons of flour per 50 ml of fat). Dilute the thick mixture with broth, milk, or cream to get the desired consistency. The sauce can be liquid or like sour cream – you decide. Stir the ingredients until the flour is dissolved. The gravy should come to a boil, after which it should be salted and peppered.
Seafood Broth
In most cases, hostesses cook broth from fish heads and tails – it turns out an excellent basis for a rich soup. However, this is not the only option. The no less tasty, flavorful, and nourishing broth is made from leftover shrimp and other seafood. If you do not have enough heads and shells, put what you have in the freezer, and when you have enough, make a broth. It can be used to make any first course, but one of the most successful options is the classic French bisque soup.
Baking With Old Cheese
If you don’t adhere to the rules for storing cheese, it will dry out and absorb all the flavors of the refrigerator. In this case, eating it in its pure form won’t be too pleasant, but using it in baking will be just right. We suggest making scones. This is a traditional British pastry, which is a small bun. They are usually served with butter and jam for breakfast. Any kind of hard or semi-hard cheese is good for scones.
Here is a quick and easy recipe. You will need 250 grams of flour, 10 grams of baking powder, half a teaspoon of mustard powder, 50 grams of butter, 120 grams of cheese, one chicken egg, and 125 ml of natural yogurt. To grease the buns you will need one egg yolk and cheese to taste.
Flour should be sifted through a sieve, along with baking powder and mustard powder, and then combined with diced butter, and grind everything into crumbs. Grate the hard cheese and add to the flour. Whisk the eggs together with the yogurt and add to the dry ingredients. Knead together a soft, smooth dough, then roll out into a two-centimeter thick layer and cut out circles of seven centimeters in diameter. Brush the scones with egg yolk and sprinkle with cheese. Bake for a quarter of an hour in a preheated oven at 220 degrees. The buns should rise and take on a nice golden hue.
Fruit and Vegetable Meals
Consumers usually shy away from overripe fruit, even though they are given almost half the price at the market and in stores. Look at these products in a new way and prepare delicious dishes with them. For example, overripe bananas make a tasty, and most importantly – healthy homemade ice cream, from berries – cocktail, smoothie, flavorful sauce for meat, which can be stored both in the freezer and on the refrigerator shelf, from grapes – candy (pre-coated with chocolate and frozen).
As for stale vegetables, they can also come in handy in the kitchen. Tomatoes need to be skinned, chopped, or crushed pulp with a blender, and then the resulting base is turned into a tomato sauce with herbs for pasta or pizza. Zucchini should also not be discarded. They should be sliced, dipped in salt, spices, and oil, and then baked in the oven until golden. This makes a great side dish or component of warm salads. The zucchini can be kept in the refrigerator for a couple more days.