Brilliant Budget Dinners
Our tips, tricks, and over 20 recipes to help you cut down on costs for the coming months, without compromising on flavour. Tender slow-cooked meat, hearty seasonal vegetables, and warming curries.
Hello hello,
The winter season is well and truly upon the southern hemisphere, which provides the perfect opportunity to cook lots of delicious, warming, nourishing meals for yourself and those you love.
With food costs being as high as they are right now, we thought it would be helpful to share some of our favourite budget-friendly winter dinners for the coming months.
Knowing how to make the most of what’s in season is one of the best ways to cut down on food costs. Plus, having a handful of pantry essentials at the ready reduces any unnecessary last-minute trips to the supermarket (which is often when you end up spending much more than you intended!). In our winter pantry, we like to have: stock or bouillon cubes, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and canned beans and chickpeas as a starting point. Then, you can add on some flavour enhancers such as Dijon mustard and tahini for dressings and marinades, a range of spices such a Moroccan ras el hanout or chermoula, Mexican spice mix, and Indian spices as well as dried herbs like thyme, rosemary, and mint (don’t bother buying dried basil or parsley — the flavours aren’t great).
As you likely know by now, eating seasonally is one of the best ways to cut down on food costs. Potatoes are usually readily available and affordable year round. We like making a big Potato Gratin (you can use tasty cheese in place of the gruyère) to serve with a green salad dressed with a tangy Dijon vinaigrette, like this Mixed Leaf Salad. You can add sliced onion into the gratin as well as sliced pumpkin if you want to make it go even further. These Domino Potatoes are also great, and likely to be a bit hit with the household. If you have chooks or access to cheap eggs, you can’t go wrong with a simple Spanish Tortilla — with just a handful of ingredients it’s perfect for any time of day.
Onions, especially brown onions, tend to be cheap at this time of year. Cook up a big batch of caramelised onions and make a delicious tart such as this Caramelised Onion Tart (you can use feta in place of the goat cheese) or this Classic Pissaladière. Again, this is fab with a fresh green salad.
A big tray of roasted vegetables with chunks of pumpkin, carrots, beets, and wedges of red onions is a useful thing to make in the weekend and serve in different ways during the week. This Roasted Vegetable Platter is a good starting point. You can serve it warm with a roast chicken, make a buddha bowl for lunch with some cooked quinoa or couscous and a yoghurt and tahini dressing, or serve it tossed with baby spinach or rocket and some fried halloumi as a warm salad.
Cauliflower is another great winter vegetable that we look forward to. However, it is often quite expensive. Luckily, both this recipe for a Chermoula Tray Bake and this Roasted Cauliflower with Peas & Almonds are excellent with both cauliflower and cabbage. When we make these with cabbage, we like to cut the cabbage into big wedges (using the core to keep wedges intact), and then roast them in a hot oven in the same way as you would the cauliflower.
It can be easy for winter food to feel a bit stodgy and heavy — enter winter slaw. You can make it with Cabbage, or finely sliced cauliflower or broccoli as we’ve done in this Raw Broccoli Salad.
We both love dhal and it’s so easy to make. When legumes are paired with rice it delivers a complete protein, and the taste is so soothing and comforting. This Creamy Mixed Pulse Dhal can be made with any combination of lentils or beans. We also like to add in some frozen spinach at the end for some added green if we have it in the freezer. We also recommend making these Spiced Chickpeas with Halloumi if you have canned chickpeas at hand too.
Getting to know the freezer section of the supermarket is also useful for cutting down on food costs — slow cooking meat cuts tend to be less expensive than more tender quicker cooking cuts, and if they are frozen they will likely be cheaper too. We love to make an Italian-style slow cooked braise of beef, like this Tuscan Beef Ragu — don’t be put off by the anchovies as they melt into the dish, just leaving their umami richness. This Tender Beef Bourguignon
is a great recipe for your slow cooker too, and if you want, you can bulk it out with extra carrot, mushrooms, and even some diced potato. Our Slow-Cooker Bolognaise is so delicious and serves 8, so you can save half to use in Beef Lasagne, or Moussaka (we recommend using potatoes in place of the eggplant at this time of year), or tacos later in the week.
You can’t beat a good pie in the winter months, and if you add in lots of vegetables you can make the meat go a long way. This Leek & Mushroom Chicken Pot Pie with mashed potatoes is perfect for a cold evening, as well as this Greek-style Santorini Shepherd's Pie. These are delicious served alongside some sautéed winter greens like silverbeet, spinach, or broccoli.
When buying canned or frozen food, always check the labels and try and find things that have as few additives as possible — especially added sugar, which you really want to avoid if you can. Frozen spinach, peas, and corn are great to have on standby. We love adding frozen spinach to any curry, slow cooked meat, or stew — just make sure you defrost the spinach and squeeze out as much of the moisture as possible before using. Peas are excellent added to curries such as this Pea, Potato & Spinach Curry, as well as in a simple risotto like this Pea, Spinach & Parmesan Risotto. We often substitute asparagus for frozen peas in this recipe for a Asparagus, Spinach & Lemon Risotto too.
Fritters make an inexpensive meal, we often use this recipe for Corn & Feta Fritters as a starting point. You can sub out the corn and feta for peas, chopped cauliflower and Indian spices too.
When it comes to soup, we like to take a cue from the traditional peasant cooking of France and Italy and make big hearty soups with loads of vegetables, meat bones or chorizo like this Cabbage & Sausage Minestrone or this Chickpea & Chorizo Minestrone — we love to add lots of silverbeet and spinach to either of these whenever possible. On the veggie side of things, we love this Turkish Bride Soup and Moroccan Lentil Soup. These Smoky Chilli Beans are also great with some rice and finely shaved cabbage for a comforting winter dinner.
Kids & Vegetables — Annabel
One of our household struggles growing up was getting Rose to eat vegetables. If you put anything green on her plate she would climb under the table and hide and not come out until it was removed from her sight — which was somewhat frustrating for all involved. Fast forward 25 years and she is now a veggie lover. There is hope! Here’s some of the tricks I learned along the way…
When kids are really little, they usually eat vegetables happily, and then one day for whatever unknown reason, many of them suddenly refuse to eat any kind of vegetable apart from potatoes. As parents, we often fret that our children will be malnourished and often there will be a huge fuss at the dinner table, with threats of “there’ll be no dessert if you don’t eat your vegetables”. Avoid bargaining, bribing, or nagging — this scenario is only going to create drama and quite possibly, issues with food going forward. Children have highly sensitive taste buds which is part of the reason why they often don’t like vegetables — these vegetal flavours may be slightly bitter, sour, or in some way savoury that isn’t appealing to a young palate. Children also usually gravitate towards foods that are easy to chew and eat.
Vegetables such as pumpkin, carrots, kūmara, tomatoes, and zucchinis all break down when cooked and can be puréed to add into a meat sauce like bolognese, slow cooked meat or chicken braise, or casserole. Onions are trickier — if you have kids who don’t like onions the best thing you can do is cut them up very finely and cook them for a long time, until they start to caramelise as then their flavour transforms to sweetness.
Getting kids involved in cooking vegetables is also a good way to get them to start eating them, children love the sense of participation and achievement and usually want to try the things they’ve made.
A fritter batter is a useful start point to add vegetables such as corn, or grated zucchini, kūmara, or pumpkin. Partner slices of fresh vegetables like carrot, cucumber, and celery sticks, slices of red or yellow pepper, with a tasty dip like hummus or guacamole. You can even blend cooked beetroot or carrots into hummus.
You can also grate zucchinis, pumpkin, or carrot into cake and muffin batters — always adding a ½ tsp baking soda to break down the vegetables as the mixture cooks. And make smoothies with berries and add a little beetroot, carrot, kale, or spinach.
Hopefully we’ve given you lots of ideas and inspiration for how to eat well in the coming weeks! A little bit of planning, knowledge, and resourcefulness goes a long way in ensuring you keep food costs down without compromising on flavour.
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With love,
Annabel & Rose xx
Brilliant - loving your recipes!