1. Cheese soup
   Traditionally a French dish in the post-Soviet style, very popular among students. They prepared it like this: first, boil carrots and onions in a saucepan with water until soft, then throw in potatoes and processed cheese. When the potatoes were boiled and the cheese melted in hot water, the result was a tasty, aromatic and rich soup. It was so appetizing that even children - ardent opponents of soups - slurped it with pleasure, sprinkling it with crackers.

   Many people try to replicate cheese soup from modern products, but in vain: either the cheese curds are not the same, or before everything was tastier due to hunger.

2. Bouillon cube soup
   Magic bouillon cubes “Galina Blanca” or “Maggi” could turn any dish into a culinary masterpiece. What is there! As a child, they were stolen from kitchen cabinets and secretly gnawed just like that. Enterprising mothers still hid the cubes from premature destruction, and then prepared a delicious dietary soup: vermicelli, onion, carrots, a couple of potatoes and the coveted bouillon cube.

   The soup, depending on the contents of the cubes, could be mushroom or chicken. Quite a decent first course, no one disdained.

   

3. Beet caviar
   Those who lived best were those who had their own garden - they grew potatoes, carrots, beets, cucumbers, and tomatoes. But those who were less fortunate turned on their creativity at full capacity and prepared an excellent snack from just one type of vegetable. The most accessible and cheapest was beets. It was boiled, passed through a meat grinder, sugar, salt, oil, citric acid were added and simmered for 5-10 minutes over fire. When chilled, such caviar tasted just as good as squash caviar!

   

4. Onion salad made only from onions
   Recipes with more than five ingredients were rare in those years. Inventive housewives got the hang of it and prepared a hearty appetizer from just onion salad. The onions were cut into rings, scalded with boiling water, salted and seasoned with sour cream or vegetable oil. It was difficult to feed the children with a simple snack, but the adults crunched on such “vitamins” with delight while drinking vodka.

   

5. Oatmeal cutlets
   The most favorite delicacy of a child of the 90s was a sandwich made from a piece of rye bread and a cutlet with more bread than meat. But it was so delicious! In the complete absence of meat, the cunning parents prepared cutlets without it at all. They were made like this: a bouillon cube was dissolved in water, a glass of Hercules, finely chopped onion, and spices were added. Cutlets were made from the resulting pulp and fried in oil. Served with tomato sauce or mayonnaise.

   

6. Bread with garlic and salt
   This is now called the fashionable word “bruschetta”. Only earlier, instead of ciabatta or baguette, they took a slice of black rye bread, thickly rubbed it with a clove of garlic, sprinkled it with salt and enjoyed it. Before salting, the bread could be greased with sunflower or butter, and young green onions were used instead of garlic. If there was no cheese, sausage or salted fish in the house, it was the cheapest and most delicious sandwich in the world!

   

7. Toast with egg
   Basically, our practical parents disposed of dried bread this way. But often fresh ones were used for croutons. The bread was cut into slices, dipped in beaten egg and fried in a frying pan. If you took a loaf, you first dipped it in milk. Such a snack could be both sweet (at that time it was called “Poor Knight”) and salty, like a beer snack.

   

8. Homemade bread cake
   The simplest and fastest to prepare delicacy from what is always on hand. There were two types of homemade cakes: with sugar and jam. The classic base has always been white bread with butter. Most families always had jam in the house. But it was inexpressibly delicious to spread condensed milk or honey on bread. Almost anything could be made from bread; post-Soviet culinary creativity knew no bounds!

   

9. Sugar candies in a spoon
   Only the laziest did not warm sugar in a spoon. When overcome by a frantic desire to eat something sweet, they began to prepare an exquisite dessert with their own hands on a gas stove. And even now no one bothers you to create your favorite homemade delicacy at home. To do this, just grease a spoon with vegetable oil, pour sugar into it and hold it over the fire until the sugar thickens and turns yellow.

   

The crisis has already affected us in full, and more and more often on the Internet people are looking for cheap recipes for every day from simple products. When there is no money, and more and more of your earned money is spent on food, then naturally you want to cook budget, inexpensive dishes to save the family budget. You can often hear the expression: all the money goes “down the toilet.” And yes, the products are expensive, but you still want to get dressed, put on shoes, take some time off from everyday work, teach your children, etc.

Therefore, on our website you will find many simple recipes from which you can create a menu for every day and for holidays. You will learn how to save money on groceries, and at the same time cook deliciously and simply, without spending a lot of money on food. This is important now. And indeed, you can buy inexpensive offal and prepare a delicious liver pate, cook gizzards in sour cream sauce, simply bake potatoes with spices in a sleeve or in foil, and feed your household tasty and satisfying food.

You will find recipes for cheap main courses for every day on the pages of the site, see step-by-step recipes with photos. And the team of our website will try to help you prepare budget, simple and inexpensive dishes for the second or first course. Soups and side dishes, appetizers and sandwiches, cereals and cottage cheese dishes will help your budget and you can reduce food costs without harming your family.

When you don’t have money (and now the majority of the population doesn’t have it), recipes for simple and tasty cheap dishes will come to your aid, and you can save at least a little money for various other needs, utilities, vacations, etc. Inexpensive budget meals such as canned soups and various cereals can provide good help in saving money.

Our cheap recipes for soups and salads, main courses, baked goods and snacks will help you feed your family inexpensively and economically, but at the same time tasty and satisfying. We will also show you how to prepare cheap holiday dishes and how to economically celebrate a birthday or New Year. You will learn how to save money on groceries and survive in a crisis.

Look, tasty and aromatic, and save money on a store-bought, and also harmful, product.

Many people are now interested in how to cook economically, without spending a lot of money on food, but at the same time making it tasty, healthy and satisfying. And it's not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. Let's figure out how you can save on food without infringing on your household, and so that it doesn't affect your health. On the website, in the “Cooking Economically” section, you can see the simplest and most delicious dishes made from cheap ingredients, and make sure that you can significantly reduce food costs and spend money on other needs.

Save on meat

Meat is perhaps the most expensive product of all the components of the daily menu. Although fish is not cheap at all now. Let's see how we can replace these products or reduce them at the expense of other healthy products.

How to cook simple and tasty food without meat

Beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils are healthy, filling, and may well save you money on food. For example, look at the cooking recipe - you can have a pretty satisfying meal with it. And in terms of its beneficial properties, beans do not lag behind meat, and in many ways even surpass it. If you don’t want no meat at all, you can mix, for example, minced meat into cutlets with boiled beans.

It will also be delicious to cook borscht not with meat, but with beans, soup with peas, roast potatoes with chickpeas. And lentil soup is generally a nutritious and excellent dish that can completely replace a whole lunch. To do this, you need to add more lentils, and you will get such a hearty stew that you can easily eat it for lunch.

You can cook from lentils that your household will enjoy eating. You can make a lentil salad with potatoes, canned food, peas and have a pretty decent breakfast.

We use offal instead of meat

If you haven't done this yet, I highly recommend it. By-products are very helpful in terms of saving money. You can prepare many dishes from the liver - liver cake for a festive table, fried liver in sour cream sauce for any side dish. Add a fresh vegetable salad to this and you have a great lunch dish.

You can make a wonderful pate from liver (pork, chicken, beef). It can’t be compared with store-bought pates stuffed with all sorts of crap, it’s delicious and easy to prepare. Look, which will help you out both for breakfast sandwiches and added to pasta for lunch.

You can prepare a wonderful dish from chicken hearts and gizzards by frying them with onions and simmering them in sour cream sauce. Prepare a side dish of mashed potatoes or buckwheat porridge and get an excellent option for a budget-friendly and tasty lunch.

You can cook it with kidneys, which your household will like; from pork or beef tails you can make a hearty borscht; from chicken wings you can make a delicious noodle soup. You can fry pies or pancakes with offal. You just need to boil everything, cut it, fry it a little with onions, twist it through a meat grinder - and the filling for the pies is ready - economically and simply.

Diluting meat with vegetables

You can also save a lot on food if you add vegetables to meat. For example, cook and get a hearty dish with a minimum of meat, tasty and healthy. Any side dish will go well with them, and an eggplant salad will complement the dish and you will get a hearty and tasty lunch.

You can also dilute the meat gravy with side dishes. Take a piece of any meat and cut it into pieces. Fry the onion in oil, add meat, chopped vegetables (bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, simmer until tender. Add spices, herbs, a couple of spoons of sour cream - you have a delicious gravy ready.

We use meat sparingly

From a 1 kg piece of meat you can fry chops and eat it all at once, or you can cook several dishes from it. For example, with 300 g of meat you will get a wonderful one, 300 g will be used for borscht, and another 400 g will be used for delicious cutlets, to which we add potatoes, onions and carrots, and you will get three dishes, tasty and satisfying, from which you can feed your household for several days .

Buy bones with meat

The bones, which have leftover meat on them, are not expensive, and you can cook several dishes from them at once. Make broth for soup or borscht from the bones, remove the bones, cool, and remove the meat from them. In a frying pan, fry an onion, grated carrots, add pitted meat, a couple of spoons of sour cream, salt, pepper, herbs and get an excellent gravy for the side dish.

Use mushrooms

You can cook many delicious, satisfying and healthy dishes with mushrooms. For example, a wonderful breakfast for the whole family, fried potatoes with mushrooms is a great lunch, and if you add a salad to it, you can have a wonderful and satisfying meal for dinner. Mushrooms can also be added to salads, just like beans, for example, in a vinaigrette or potato salad with cucumbers and eggs. You can stew cabbage with mushrooms, cook soup or make a stir-fry.

Use pumpkin

Even if you think you don’t like pumpkin, try making it, or fry pumpkin pancakes, or bake an apple and pumpkin pie, and you will understand how tasty, economical and simple it is. And with pumpkin you can cook wonderful porridge with milk and feed your kids. And if you consider how useful this vegetable is, it becomes completely clear that you cannot give it up, and you need to include pumpkin in your diet at least once a week.

Lavash breakfasts

This is such a simple breakfast option - it couldn’t be simpler! Buy thin Armenian lavash, spread with any filling (bean pate, sausage, cheese, cabbage, potatoes with onions and mushrooms, stewed cabbage, liver pate), roll into a tube, cut into portioned pancakes and lightly fry in oil. Everything is thin, crispy, ready in 5 minutes!

Baking pancakes for breakfast

If you haven't tried baking pancakes yet, just start now! Believe me, it is not at all difficult, satisfying and economical. You can fry the pancakes in advance, and in the morning you just wrap the filling in them, heat them in the microwave or in a frying pan - and that’s it, breakfast is ready. You can use leftover potatoes, stewed cabbage, mixed with sausage, cottage cheese, and a bunch of other products for the filling.

Replace sausage with homemade delicacies

Sausage is an expensive and very unhealthy product with a bunch of all kinds of harmful additives. Instead, you can cook delicious boiled pork for your household, bake chicken rolls with different fillings - it will be tastier, cheaper and healthier.

Potato dishes

You can prepare many dishes from potatoes - fry them, boil them in their skins, serve them with butter with onion and pickled cucumber, and if you also add herring - it’s very tasty and satisfying. You can make excellent zrazy and cutlets from potatoes, stew potatoes with cabbage and rice, make potato pancakes, bake with fish in the oven, bake pies or pancakes with potatoes. This way you will learn to cook cheaply without compromising the quality of food.

Cabbage dishes

Don't ignore cabbage - you can prepare many dishes from it, from cabbage rolls with and without meat, pies with cabbage, dumplings, pies, and ending with simply stewed cabbage or vegetable cutlets. Go for it, and see how much money you have left over using such economical products. In the following articles, we will look at specific examples of how to prepare a tasty, satisfying and economical lunch for the whole family, breakfast and dinner.

Fish dishes

You can also cook fish inexpensively. For example, you buy crucian carp larger than your palm. Clean, carve (that is, make cuts in front with a knife - this is so that the bones are fried, the fish is bony), and fry in a frying pan. The mashed potatoes are boiled, the cabbage salad is chopped - and an excellent and economical lunch is ready.

You can prepare a lot of dishes from pelengas - the fish is not expensive at all. And bake in the oven with potatoes, and fry with vegetables in a frying pan, plus a side dish of porridge, salad - again, a delicious lunch is ready. Collect fish heads and tails in the freezer, and then prepare a delicious fish soup. Economical, simple and tasty. You can fry small fish, or cook soup from inexpensive canned food like saury, make a salad, boil pasta and mix with mashed fish. There are a lot of options - experiment and save a lot of money.

» Budget meals for the whole family

Budget meals for the whole family

You can eat delicious food in any situation, even when you need to tighten your belts. Main, learn recipes for budget meals and plan your menu in advance. If you make bulk purchases in discount stores or wholesale stores for two weeks or even a month in advance, you can save about 1000-1500 rubles monthly. Here are some tips for creating an economical menu.

Recipes for budget meals for starters

Eating economically means having a first course in the refrigerator. It is advisable to cook a large pot of borscht or soup so that it will last for several days. This is due to the fact that preparing fresh first meals every day requires more time and a larger assortment of products in the refrigerator, unless you prepare the same thing every day or at least alternate two or three dishes. In any case, it would be more advisable to cook a large pan at once.

It is quite cheap to cook any soups using porridge or pasta and potatoes in a 1:1 ratio. As a meat ingredient, you can buy chicken soup sets or chicken backs, livers and hearts. You can also buy all the chicken at once for several dishes. If you are buying wings for meat dishes, you can cut off the last phalanges of the wings and store them in the freezer. When a large number of these scraps accumulate, where you can throw all the scraps, you can cook a new soup or borscht.

In summer you can do okroshka. To do this, you need boiled sausage, fresh cucumber, boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, sparkling mineral water and low-fat kefir (or kvass). All ingredients are cut into cubes, as in Olivier, and poured with kefir and mineral water. To add a more piquant taste to the okroshka, you can add a few tablespoons of mustard, salt, pepper and fresh herbs.

Also ideal from the point of view of economy may be lean, or cold, borscht. It is prepared similarly to regular borscht, but without meat. Instead, just before the borscht is ready, sardines or tomatoes in tomato are added. If you have the financial opportunity or your own canning, then you can add canned corn or beans to the lean borscht. This will make this first dish more satisfying. Even hodgepodge You can make it on a budget if you save up scraps of meat for it and set aside small pieces of sausage, and use your own preserved cucumbers. Or cook directly the day after the holiday, using the remaining deli meats.

Delicious budget dishes for the main course

For main courses it is cheaper to use cereals, pasta and potatoes. What could be cheaper than fried or oven-baked potatoes? Or mashed potatoes? These budget-friendly potato dishes are also complemented by potato pancakes. There should always be millet, wheat porridge, buckwheat or rice in the house, which can not only be an independent side dish, but also become the basis for the first one. So, you can make buckwheat soup and field porridge for the first half of the week, and soup with millet and buckwheat with mushrooms for the second half.

Field porridge, like naval pasta, is perfect both for camping and for dinner in a cozy family circle. For field porridge you will need seasonings, herbs, undercuts, oil and millet (or wheat porridge). Put butter or sunflower oil in a saucepan (preferably in a cast iron roasting pan) until it heats up. Then the undercut, thinly sliced, is thrown into the oil. When the pieces are browned, water and millet are added to the pan, and the porridge is cooked until all the water has boiled away.

You can make a stew from all the vegetables you have in the refrigerator or pasta with sausage, onions and bell peppers. For the last dish, you need to fry the onions and sausage (sausages), add sweet pepper and a little tomato paste. Cook the pasta and mix with the resulting sauce.

It should be noted that preparing dishes where the side dish is mixed with meat, for example, pilaf, is much cheaper than preparing separately. You can make chicken in the oven, baked with vegetables and potatoes. You can also use foil and baking sleeves, which will make even ordinary potatoes along with any other ingredients - vegetables, meat or fish - lick your fingers.

By the way, if there is some puree left over that no one wants to finish, you can make cutlets out of it: just form the cutlets according to the shape and fry them a little in a frying pan. Similar transformations can be made with any dish, that is, the leftovers of uneaten food can be turned into other budget dishes.

Budget salads and desserts

Salads themselves can hardly be called an economical option, especially if the family loves them. To diversify the menu, you can stuff eggs (cut them in half, remove the yolk, mix with mayonnaise or sour cream, add spices and herbs to the mixture and put back in the white) or make squash caviar, columns of zucchini, eggplant or zucchini, as well as all sorts of onions or zucchini cutlets. You can also stew cabbage with finely chopped meat or sausage (sausages) and tomato paste.

For dessert, pancakes, pancakes, jelly with seasonal fruits or apple pie are suitable. Let us remember that popular wisdom says that absolutely anything can be wrapped in pancakes and pies. For example, pears disappear from the dacha, it is better to make a pie with pears or pear jam; There is minced meat and mashed potatoes left - you can make pancakes with meat or potatoes with sour cream. Pancakes and pies will help replenish sour milk and save time.

You can significantly reduce your food costs by canning and freezing vegetables and fruits in season. Then, using chopped frozen sweet peppers, you can make any borscht tasty, and pickles will be an excellent addition to your daily diet.

Do you want to save your family budget so that your family is always well-fed and happy? Then you need to resort to proper savings in the kitchen. This means preparing dishes from affordable and healthy products. What foods should be included in the diet so as not to deprive the family of a balanced diet?

Cheap products

Vegetables

Delicious and economical recipes must certainly include plant products. Their abundance, especially in season, is simply amazing.

From every vegetable we can prepare delicious dishes, including soups, main courses, side dishes, and sometimes even desserts and baked goods.

Cabbage of different varieties(cabbage, Beijing, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, Romanesco, etc.). Each variety of cabbage will certainly help diversify your menu. However, it is important to buy each variety at its own time, that is, in season. Then the dishes will be really economical. But white cabbage, the cheapest product, always remains out of competition. It is included in the most economical recipes - vegetable stew, lean cabbage rolls, borscht, cabbage soup, cabbage cutlets and other delicious dishes.

Potato- undoubtedly the most affordable and popular product. If you're looking for budget-friendly potato recipes, there are plenty of them. Mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, vegetable stews, casseroles, zrazy, rolls, potato pies, pies and other very tasty and cheap dishes will help diversify your diet. Stock up on potatoes and cook many different cheap dishes from them.

Pumpkin adored by many housewives for its low cost, as well as extraordinary beneficial and taste properties. Pumpkin is included in simple, economical recipes. These are baked goods, desserts, cereals, salads, main courses. With the help of this vegetable you can really save your budget.

Beet- the most affordable product. You can always prepare first and second courses from it, as well as many salads. But quick and economical recipes most often contain beets that have already been boiled or pickled in advance.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplants, zucchini, bought in season, will help you prepare the most delicious, healthy and cheap dishes. And to enjoy them at any time of the year, you can freeze all these products.

Legumes

Legumes are very often included in economical menu recipes: lentils, beans, peas. They make rich and very satisfying soups, borscht, as well as side dishes and meatless cutlets.

Cereals

They should definitely be included in our diet. With their help, you can significantly reduce food costs. Any cereal not only saves the budget, but also saturates the body with useful substances. Therefore, do not forget to cook buckwheat, rice, millet, wheat, pearl barley, oatmeal and other porridges. They are all very satisfying and healthy.

And another advantage of cereals is that during the cooking process they increase several times. This means they are incredibly economical. By the way, the remaining porridge in the refrigerator can always be used to make meatballs or cutlets, for example, from liver.

By-products

If the most economical recipes for second courses are important to you, you should definitely pay attention to various offal products. As a rule, they cost an order of magnitude cheaper than meat. But the benefits of such products are no less. You can cook deliciously: chicken gizzards, pork, beef, turkey or chicken liver, as well as kidneys or lungs.

Mushrooms

During the season, mushroom pickers generally get such a product for free. Therefore, do not miss the chance to prepare mushrooms for future use. However, mushrooms are also inexpensive for those who purchase them. Champignons and oyster mushrooms are always available. They are used to prepare pates, appetizers, cutlets, stews, soups, and added to porridges.

Flour and yeast

A must have in every housewife's arsenal. You can always bake your own homemade bread, pies, pies, pancakes, and pancakes from them. Homemade baked goods are always tasty and cheap.

Economical recipes with photos

Thanks to this selection, you get access to a variety of simple and cheap dishes. So, let’s cook deliciously and economically using the following recipes.

Economical first courses

- This is one of the inexpensive recipes for first courses. Vegetables in this case play a major role. At the same time, they appear in an unusual combination with milk. However, the soup turns out very rich and tender, thanks to this milky note. Suitable for the whole family.

As already mentioned, beans are an important component in a budget menu. The soup it makes is rich, tasty and incredibly satisfying. Beans are a protein product, so this soup for lunch is a godsend, especially for the stronger half.

Collecting a large number of vegetables in one first course without adding meat helps not only save your budget, but also eat healthy. You can also cook borscht on chicken necks, frames, and also on pork bones. After cooking, the meat can be used to prepare the second one.

Economical main courses

Many housewives cannot imagine very economical recipes without dumplings. This option is available to absolutely everyone. Prepare lean dumplings in large quantities and freeze them. Then you will not only save money, but also your time in the future.

If you love quick, frugal recipes, make this. With an abundance of vegetables, you should not miss this opportunity. And if you have frozen vegetables, you can always pamper your family with this truly summer and economical dish.

And greenery. Offal is an integral part of the budget menu. With them, any dish will become satisfying and tasty. Chicken hearts are no exception. They go perfectly with vegetables and decorate any side dish.

Economical salads

By including vegetables in your diet, you not only care about saving money, but also, most importantly, about the healthy nutrition of your family. This salad will allow you to fully enjoy the extraordinary taste of each ingredient and replenish your body with vitamins.

No beets. This original presentation of vinaigrette will dispel ideas about what this salad should be. In addition, this recipe will help make your menu varied, economical, tasty and healthy.

This rich one is easy to make. It contains a minimum of ingredients, which means it can claim to be one of the budget dishes.

Economical baking

Made from rye flour. These original cookies will not leave indifferent those who love healthy baked goods. In addition, homemade cookies according to this recipe are much more profitable and tastier than store-bought baked goods.

This one, made with choux yeast dough, belongs to the category of “quick dishes”. Therefore, it saves both money and time. After all, choux yeast dough can be used immediately after kneading. The filling can be anything according to your taste and budget.

Let your culinary economical recipes be replenished with another option for preparing amazingly tasty bread. The costs for it are minimal. The output is two loaves.

As you can see, economical recipes for every day are profitable, tasty and healthy. However, it is worth noting that to save money and time, it is worth thinking through the menu in advance and purchasing products for each of the planned meals. Look on our website for other recipes for economical dishes with photos.