Cooking vegetarian meals is one the best ways I’ve found to save money. Yesterday I cooked up two recipes and then froze them in single servings. Beans and lentils are inexpensive when compared to meat and by buying them when they are on special you save even more. As part of my plan to reach my grocery challenge goal of $250 a month, I’ll be cooking up recipes each weekend for the freezer. Here’s this weelends budget beater recipes:
Crockpot Chilli Beans.This first recipe is courtesy of Mimi (who is an amazing cook!) i from the simple savers forum. I made a few changes to it. It made 12 generous serves costing 62 cents each.
Ingredients:
2 cups dried red kidney beans ( I used dried four bean mix instead)
1 cup red lentils
1/4 cup olive oil (original recipe had 3/4 cup)
6 cups water
1 onion diced
8 cloves of garlic, sprinkled with a touch of oil and roasted for 15 minutes in a moderate oven
1 large tin diced tomatoes
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
season with pepper & salt
1/2 tspoon chilli powder
1 Bay Leaf
Adjust the garlic, spices & chili to your tastes. Rinse the beans and lentils. Squeeze the centre from the roasted garlic & chop. Add all ingredients to crock pot and cook on high for 9 hours. (My crockpot is old so newer ones may need less or a lower setting). Once it’s cooked put in fridge to cool. Then blend the mix for sauce for tacos, enchiladas, cold as a dip or as a topping over vegetables. Or use unblended. Lovely on toast, or as the protein part of a meal with vegetables. This is a really lovely recipe and SO easy to make!
Chickpea & Lentil Burgers
I eat these instead of meat with our evening meal and also instead of a hamburger. I made this recipe up based on what I have available at the time, When ever I cook potato (white or sweet) I always cook extra now and just keep it in the freezer ready to use for patties. This recipe made 14 patties at a cost of $4.70 – thats just 33 cents each.
Ingredients:
1 tin lentils
2 tins chickpeas
2 cups mashed potato
2 carrots grated
1 zucchini grated
1 teasp curry powder
salt & pepper to taste
Adjust amount of curry powder to taste ( like a lot!). Add ingredients to a bowl and mash with potato masher. Mould into patty shapes. Spray some olive oil in a non stick pan and cook until browned. You could add a flour coating to these, or a coating of LSA (ground linseed, almond, sunflower seed) mix if you like crunchy patties.I place them on a tray in the freezer so that they freeze individually and then package. This way they don’t stick together as they freeze. I really like these, great with gravy if everyone else is having a baked dinner and also nice with a salad or as a veggie burger.
Thank you so much for these recipes! They look delicious (and inexpensive.) I am definitely going to try them!
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Louise Reply:
December 31st, 2012 at 5:29 pm
hope you enjoy them Fiona, they are great budget stretchers
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Lentils are also commonly used in Ethiopia in a stew-like dish called kik, or kik wot, one of the dishes people eat with Ethiopia’s national food, injera flat bread. Yellow lentils are used to make a nonspicy stew, which is one of the first solid foods Ethiopian women feed their babies…**
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