I’m sad that this is worth mentioning. But if you are dealing with hunger amid threats to SNAP benefits, rice and beans are very cheap per meal and can be bought in bulk. Here’s some tricks I’ve learned:
If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them. Canned beans are easier to prepare, just dump in near the end of cooking to heat them up. Dried lentils don’t need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice and I find them more filling. Whole grains take longer to cook than white grains.
Frying diced onions in the pot before adding the grains and water is an easy way to kick the flavor up a notch. Use a generous amount of cooking oil (light olive oil is healthiest) for cost effective calories and help making the meal more filling.
Big carrots or celery in bulk are pretty cheap too. I like to dice carrots by partially cutting length wise into quarters, but leave the small end intact to keep the carrot together to make it easier to dice down the side. Add them to the same pot as the grains after the grains start to soften. Beets are also great; skin and cube then boil separately until soft. Change up your veggie to get a mix of vitamins
Get some bulk garlic powder, hot sauce, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.
You’ll only need 1-2 pots and a cutting knife/board for veggies.
I recommend Harvard’s Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition information and they have some recipes too
Edit: discussing big changes in diet with a primary care doctor or registered dietician is generally a good idea.
Probiotic supplements may help with gas.
As a bonus this sort of meal has a very small environmental footprint.
A quick point to add. Adding fat to your meal makes it more filling and for longer. The worst fats are trans fats, second worse are polyunsaturated fats, and mono seem to be fairly good along with most saturated fats. In terms of cost some of the vegetable fats are much cheaper but they often have trans fats which are essentially toxic and they also go rancid very easily.
Saturated fats are generally solid at room temperature and don’t absolutely need to be refrigerated on cool to moderate weather days. If you would sweat the butter would too, so put it in the fridge.
If you add a small amount of mince to your beans it will stretch really far and add tonnes of flavour and protein without breaking the bank. Cheaper mince comes with more fat but if you are making beans you want that, so get the cheaper mince, lean is not helpful.
Beans on rice freezes well for weeks. Beans without rice is good for months frozen. Beans with rice and any cheese or sour cream is not OK frozen. Beans with cheese microwaves well, but add sour cream after heating.
To make it more satisfying you can add a little bit of some chilli sauce. Hotter sauces go further, but the best is fermented sauces. The cheapest chilli sauces are full of sugar and water, so they just sweeten and dilute rather than flavour your dish.
If your beans tastes sour add a small amount of sugar, stir for a minute, and test again. Sugar fixes the sourness quite well.
For extra flavour a stock cube can be added. I would recommend beef stock for beans, but it will work with chicken or fish too. Most stocks are now vegan because they re synthetic, but they add a lot of flavour and are perfectly fine to eat.
The best option if you can manage it is to learn how to make a beef broth from bones. You boil the bones for hours, around 8 or so should do, and the bones will start to soften and become translucent. At this point all the nutritional goodness of the bones is in the broth. You can then use this as a base for making stew, beans, soup, etc, or you can reduce it by open top heating it and letting the steam leave. This will make a strong stock you can use to add flavour and nutrition to other meals for the cost of some energy and cheap bones.
A slow cooker can make cooking all of this much easier and safer. Electric slow cookers are able to be set up in the morning and have dinner most of the way ready by dinner time. The slow steady heat is great for bones and for softening meat and the easy of use is just fantastic.
Thanks for contributing. Some of your content on fat is not supported by evidence. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are the healthiest fats, and saturated fats increase risks of heart disease.
Here’s a great article from the Nutrition Source discussing these concerns head on. TL;DR
Given the above information, is commercially processed canola oil harmful?
Although care must be taken in handling and processing of canola oil and other vegetable oils, canola oil is a safe and healthy form of fat that will reduce blood LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease risk compared to carbohydrates or saturated fats such as found in beef tallow or butter. Indeed, in a randomized trial that showed one of the most striking reductions in risk of heart disease, canola oil was used as the primary form of fat. [8] Whether using cold-pressed canola oil provides some small additional benefit is not clear.
In general, variety is a good strategy in nutrition, and thus consuming a variety of oils is desirable, for example using extra virgin oil when the special flavor is desired and canola oil or soybean oil for other uses. Both canola and soybean oils provide ω-3 fatty acids that are important to include in an overall diet. Of course, avoiding overheating and burning of oils is important to provide the best taste and to avoid damaging the healthy-promoting fatty acids that they contain.
It’s the return of depression meals, 1930s style
Can anyone recommend an economical and tasty gruel brand?
Unlike my dumbass family back then I’m not afraid of spicing my rice and beans like people with melanin
I can’t imagine spices were exactly cheap. When you’re at the point of making water pie I’m gunna guess that spices are an easy enough thing to let go of.
I’m not talking spices from around the globe or some shit. I’m talking jalapenos, serranos, chipotles…
Ya know, cheap staple crops from my region of the world that grow like weeds and add flavor for cheap.
Ok, with as little intended rudeness as possible: Spicing is a weird word, and usualy for clarity anything to do with heat would be “spicing” or “making spicy”.
And yea those are definitely not too expensive at all. I really enjoy using spiciness as a way to add a a lot of depth basically for free. Everything is better with some red pepper flakes.
Frankly I disagree, chili powder and paprika are spices commonly sold as spices and are just dried then crushed chilies. It’s just a preservation method and in Asia chilies are preserved in chili oils so not technically a spice but is used for flavor like a spice.
Really the only problem here is that the language we are using is so fucking bad at describing flavor and cooking.
I mean, a little yes but if you’re specifically talking hot peppers, and you said that you were, then the bulk of what they bring to the table is heat. Flavour for sure a little, but I wouldn’t consider them spices.
I can agree that the language is a little vague. Like at what point does ginger become a spice and not a normal ingredient? Only when it’s dried and powdered?
fuck the rice, nice mixed bean salad with olive oil, some salt and pepper, that shit will fill you and make you fart like crazy.
That’s fine in the short term. Whole grains have essential amino acids that beans lack
well i don’t only eat that so of course im not eating beans 24/7
so add rice and then you arrive back to the post :)
This is untrue. Virtually all plants have all essential amino acids. The only difference is that the main plant-based sources of proteins that people rely on - legumes and grains - have relatively lower levels of one or another amino acid than some other sources. But no studies have found those differences to have any negative impact on people’s health, or even their ability to gain muscle, whether they combine proteins or not.
Here’s an interview with Christopher Gardner - a specialist who goes into detail on this topic.
What we really need is for people to worry more about where they’re getting their fiber, than protein.
Edit: although it should be noted that it is still good to eat both grains and beans for other reasons. Diversity of foods is important for the gut microbiome for a start.
We also do the sauté onions (which is just onions cooked slooooowly). They caramelise and become sweet, add some generic chicken seasoning to them (I use a salt/paprika mix from the general store), tinned baked beans in tomato sauce, rice, and that’s all. Spice it up with some jar jalapeños and its a damn fine meal for nearly no prep or cost.
Also a very underrated flavoring that’s unjustly stigmatized because of racism is MSG. You can get really big bags of them for super cheap, and it’s an easy way to make any meal taste savory.
MSG is my secret weapon for making my cooking better than his mother’s.
MSG has been a godsend in the kitchen for us. It just makes everything taste better!
It stands for Magical Savory Goodness
leave it to lemmy users to disparage the primary staple of 3.5 billion people. “Pre-diabetic junk food” lmao sure ok
It truly is the way too many enthusiasts on any topic think.
Like they can’t fathom the idea that other people are focused on other things despite this being 100% the reason humans were able to create what we have.
If humans all focused on the exact same things, we’d have a very narrow scope and much less innovation.
It’s why its so hard to find good advice.
You go to a cooking subreddit, and they’d have you thinking that unless you knew every artisinal craftsman shop in your area (your local butcher, your local baker etc etc), you must not know food, and that you need 400 dollar pans to get utility out of your cookware when literally just a common stainless steel set would do you just fine, and even if you had to replace it 20 times, it still wouldnt be the cost of the more expensive one.
People live in their own bubbles and expect that everyone else not only could but should meet them where they are in their bubble, rather than realizing that guess what, food is just to eat for most people, not some passion they want to dedicate multiple hours a day to.
You’re right, and I’ve learned to ignore most advice I read from enthusiasts. I bought a cast iron pan 20 years ago for $15 and I still use it to cook almost everything, including eggs.
I did splurge and buy a nice dutch oven to make baking bread easier, but it’s not necessary.
Multiple times now I’ve been mocked relentlessly for PC building advice or opinions on software development I had that became commonplace within 3 years, like when I said noSQL databases were overrated as hell but they had their uses. Made enemies on both sides lol… And now that’s the common opinion.
I’m not a chef but I work in IT. The problem there is IT people on average are horrible at communicating and empathy.
Just get a full La Cruiset set for a wedding gift and you are golden. /S
I understand your point because often in a lot of hobbies, when you are a newbie, people can be very condescending to you. But I still think that it’s abnormal the number of people that know nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society. I am pretty sure there would be wayyy more people enjoying cooking if they could take their time doing it.
But I still think that it’s not normal the number of people that now nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
It is not essential to become a cooking enthusiast to eat.
You can be perfectly healthy eating nothing be pre prepared meals and frozen vegetables.
You can be perfectly healthy with a few family staples in a 3 set cookware set.
You can be perfectly ok drinking soylent your whole life.
People on these forums are often enthusiasts as described. They go overboard assuming everyone else must be like them, and this is often an excuse they use for their condescension as if there aren’t vastly different levels between eating because you need to for continued living and whatever the fuck they’re at.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society.
Nah. I think plenty of people simply do not enjoy cooking and thats perfectly fine. If I had less obligations and more time, I wouldn’t waste it learning to cook to the level they have. I have very little interest in cooking. Maybe occasionally Ill try a fancier recipe but I’m never going to season a pan, learn how to make Croquembouche or add beef wellington as a staple in the things that I eat.
If I had more time, Id be putting that into my hobbies. Id be making more things, going more places, not wasting my time slaving over a kitchen counter.
I fully respect that this is a completely subjective perspective. Obviously for some, they might read “waste” and feel incensed and that language, but that language is simply accurate for me. I don’t expect it to be accurate for everyone.
I have lazily been buying the same bag of high fiber mixed vegetables for monthes because it has the mixture of things I need dietarily and I mix that with frozen meals that have reasonable mixes, and through in some simple cooked meals as well (I mean simple too, like scrambled eggs on toast or vegetable soup or meat with gravy on rice).
To me the time would absolutely be a luxury, but cooking is not what I’d like to spend it on. To me, given we still have limited life spans, it would still be a waste of that span.
Vaush?
Casserole’s and tuna sandwiches
My go to rice recipe: spanish rice
Add some refried beans and a protein or cheese, kids will clean their plate.
Beans are protien
My kids call me “bean lady” for my love of beans. They are a perfect food.
Red beans and rice (red beans cooked with small chopped veg, long grain white rice)
Pinto beans on brown rice, with tahini.
Pinto beans on brown rice, with chili paste.
Pinto beans refried with breakfast.
Lentil dal with coconut milk and spinach (or lately with Hong Tsoi because it grows here, spinach is too fussy. )
Garbanzo bean soup with potatoes and chorizo.
Ful mudamas with pita and feta cheese and scallions
Channa masala so spicy, with chopped onion and mixed pickle, on white basmati
Red lentils and greens on sourdough toast. East with knife and fork.
Brothy enormous white beans cooked in veg broth but with a Parmesan rind or a bone.
I really truly love beans.
Good post. Will try it out.
We put 45 minutes on the electric pressure cooker and get the smoothest beans.
Exactly!
That’s how I start my refried beans. After pressure cooker add oil (lots…), salt, and a little vinegar. Sauteed onions, cumin, chili powder also good.
I think it’s way better than any vegetarian refried beans that you get in a can. Probably because they have more salt and oil…
Don’t “skin” beets with a vegetable peeler. Blanch them and slide them out of their skins. It sounds like more work, but it’s so much less work.
Pro-tip: If you have an Instant Pot, you throw the beets in there and pressure cook them for 20 minutes. Slow release and then let them cool a bit. The peels come right off and they are cooked perfectly. No need for any spices at all.
Great if you want steamed beets. You can just blanch them if you want them roasted.
a relatively cheap NON-VEGE way to add protein to this base is pork butt/shoulder (same thing) cooked slow all day, either slow cooker or oven at 250F. Its a cheaper cut of meat and one of them is enough to add protein to like 6 servings or rice+beans. Also, bone-in skin-on chicken thighs are great and less expensive- if you render some of the chicken fat out in your cooking vessel before cooking the rice and beans it is a big flavor boost.
Frozen peas are great for that too. Goes with a lot of different dishes. just throw in a handful, or make a side-dish.
