Let’s face it, we’d all rather put any spare change at the end of a week towards a bottle of vodka than have to spend it on an expensive trip to One Stop, for yet another boring and unfortunately necessary dinner. After a while you get so used to beans on toast and microwave meals that even a pizza you shove in the oven is a nice change. Well, here are some crafty money saving tips on student meals and a set of recipes for a luxurious two course meal for under £3 per person.
Top 5 Money Saving Tips:
Use meat substitutes. Ok, so nothing beats the smell of Bacon in the morning, and maybe it’s not quite the same, but it is significantly cheaper, and served with other food, you really can’t taste the difference.
Buy food in bulk. Yes, the one off spend will dent the bank balance, but buying a whole chunk of bacon will be cheaper than the measly six slices you might get for two thirds the price.
Share food with house mates. Communal meals are a god send. Just get together with some friends, and all bring along one ingredient, you get a full meal (and probably tastier meal than anything you would have made for yourself) for the price of a bag of pasta.
Buy Tinned, not fresh, fruit and veg. If you want to avoid fresher’s flu, you need at least one of your five a day – each week! It’s so cheap and so easy to cook, who can say no? Tinned fruit make great deserts, and the veg is fine with a bit of gravy slapped over it. If nothing else, it lasts a lot longer than the fresh stuff, which means less wasted food – and money!
Eat in. Yeah, a takeaway pizza might only be £4.99, but it adds up! Comparatively, you could maybe even have a nice sit-down meal for not much more, but you can cook so much more cheaply at home.
We all know being a student and eating out doesn’t really work, and on the odd occasion you might go out, it’ll be a budget trip out with housemates at ‘Spoons. This recipe will recreate the modest Gourmet Burger for even less, and teach you how to make a delicious cake in less than 5 minutes.
Chicken Burger
What you need:
Chicken breast (per burger)
Red pesto
Salad
Mozzarella
Bread rolls
Breadcrumbs
Preparation
>Make breadcrumbs: this is the simple part, just tear apart some stale bread or crusts and put them in a blender for a few seconds, and lay them out on a plate when they’re finely blended. If you don’t have a blender, you can always use a cheese grater – but stale bread is recommended.
>Take the chicken breasts; you’ll want them to be as flat as possible, so flatten them out by hitting them with the palm of your hand.
>use the red pesto to coat one side of the chicken. Oil is a common alternative so not only is this ultimately tastier, but is a lot healthier too. Coat one side of the chicken with pesto, place it on the plate of breadcrumbs and then repeat on the other side.
> make sure to coat the Chicken breasts in bread crumbs on both sides, making sure the bread crumbs stick to the pesto.
>Put them into a pan on a high heat to crisp slightly. You could cook the chicken entirely in the pan, to save on washing up and electricity, but cook them at a lower heat to make sure the chicken is entirely cooked. If, like me, you’re terrified of food poisoning, the oven might be a safer bet: a heat of about 180-200 degrees or gas mark 6 for about 25 minutes, or until there is no pink in the chicken.
Serving
For the proper Gourmet look you need to do this bit properly. You can add some Mozzarella as it works really well with the Italian style of this chicken burger.
By mixing a few tablespoons of red pesto and mayonnaise you have a great dipping sauce.
You could also shove a few chips in the oven, or even make your own to save even more, just chop up some potatoes, boil for twenty minutes, until soft and pop them in the oven with your burgers. If you’re really going to recreate the Wetherspoons classic, pop some onion rings into the oven too and make your meal that bit more filling. No one said it had to be good for you!
5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake
What you need: (per person)
4 tablespoons of self-raising flour
4 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder (alternatively, you can use a tablespoon less sugar and use hot chocolate powder)
2 tablespoons of a whisked egg
3 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of melted butter
You can also add chocolate chips, chocolate spread or melted chocolate for extra flavour.
Preparation
Add and then mix all the dry ingredients into a mug or into a bowl if you are making a larger one for more people.
Whisk an egg in a separate bowl, put 2 tablespoons into the mixture of dry ingredients and mix well (you can leave the egg out if you want a more fudgy cake).
Melt the butter and add to the mixture, along with the three tablespoons of milk and any other extras.
Cook for three minutes, do not take it out of the microwave and put it back in again. It will rise over the mug but will collapse once it has been taken out.
You can eat it straight from the mug, or turn it upside down and plate up. Enjoy!
(Alternatively to the chocolate mug cake you could always try peanut butter, lemon zest or other flavouring or even try and make a madeleine with a strawberry jam concoction).