Welcome to episode two of my recap of ITV’s Save Money Good Food series two. If we are saving for a big goal, this programme shows us how to get better value for money on food by using up leftovers, and avoiding overbuying in the first instance.
My first posts were mainly property-focused, but I wouldn’t have been able to buy my first house without setting some spending priorities. Getting the best value for money from food was one of the areas that made a bear-sized difference.
I thought I was already the budget queen in the kitchen, but this show taught me lots of extra tips to last a lifetime. It’s also a good place to start if the only mixing you do normally is in a cocktail glass.
Here’s what I’ve covered below:
Episode Two
The Problems: “Healthy” Gourmet Ready Meals
Recipe #1: Chicken Corden Bleu
Recipe #2: Salmon Fishcakes
Recipe #3: Molten Chocolate Pudding
Recipe #4: Steak with Potato Gratin
How to Get Better Value for Money
Breakfast/Lunchbox Potential
Freezer Potential
Nutrition Potential
Taste Tests: Milk Chocolate
I explained the premise more in the episode one recap. Basically you should find this useful if:
- You want to spend less than £1 or £2 on each dinner
- You want to know how to batch cook, freeze, and reuse meals
- You want to know how to cook flexibly without exact recipes
- You don’t want to spend too long cooking
- You want nutritious food without getting a PHD in food science first
- You want variety without blowing a budget
I am not a nutritionist, or talented with a spatula, and I like to spend as little time as possible cooking. I’ve learned how to make quick cheap meals without having a death wish, so I don’t see why anyone else shouldn’t benefit from this knowledge. While the volunteers on the programme are families, we can use the same lessons if we’re only feeding ourselves or a couple. Good luck!
Want to save in other areas of food and fitness?
Try these recent posts:
Save Money Good Health Series 2 Recap
Save Money Good Food 2.2
The Problems: The Hudsons from Rotherham were only buying expensive brands in the belief that it’s healthier. These were mostly convenience foods. However, they were also forking out for fillet steak because they thought it had more nutrition than any other type of steak.
They were spending £186 weekly versus the average family of four’s spend of £83.60.
Recipe Ideas For Gourmet Ready Meal Lovers
Equipment Required
Baking dish
Frying pan
Chopping board and knife
Saucepans
Large bowls for mixing (or use a spare saucepan)
Tupperware
Recipe #1: Chicken Corden Bleu a.k.a. Oven Baked Rosti With Ham & Cheese-Stuffed Chicken
Ingredients
Potato
Onion
Butter
Chicken
Peas
Chicken stock
Lettuce
Method
- For the rostis, grate the potato and onion into a mixing bowl
- Melt butter in a pan then pour into the mixing bowl with a glug of oil
- Bake the mixture in the oven in a tray
- Slice into the chicken breasts to make a pocket and stuff with ham and cheese
- Fry in oil to brown
- Place on top of the potato with the cooking juices
- Put back in the oven to bake
- Cook frozen peas in chicken stock with lettuce to make peas a la francaise
Total costs: £4.57. The total saving for the Hudsons was £3.50 on the premium processed version they usually buy. Their average spend on a meal was £9.30. The rosti ingredients should cost around 50p for 4 servings. The peas a la francaise was 72p versus £2 to buy readymade.
Recipe #2: Salmon Fishcakes
Ingredients
Salmon
Potato
Greens
Flour
Egg
Cornflakes or similar
Method
- Mix the fish and potato and any green veg of your choice in a bowl
- Mould into shapes
- Dip in flour, egg, and then smashed cereal
- Bake
- Serve with buttered peas or veg
Total cost: £3.82 for 4.
Recipe #3: Molten Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients
Self-raising flour
Sugar
Cocoa powder
Milk
Butter
As usual, they didn’t go into detail about quantities, and winging it in baking can vary the results quite wildly. I would give the following measurements a go for starters:
50g for the flour, 75g for the sugar, 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 25ml milk, 150g butter.
You might want more milk, but it’s easier to make a sticky mixture thinner than it is to fix a mix that’s too liquid. I’d try no more than a cup of water to bake. You can reduce the sugar next time if you want it less sweet and see if it comes out as expected!
Method
- Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl
- Mix in the milk and butter and put in a serving dish
- Pour in the boiling water and bake
Total cost: £1.18 for four puddings. They were normally paying up to £6 per meal on premade individual desserts. It’s £1.25 per head to have fishcakes, buttery peas and dessert.
Recipe #4: Steak with Potato Gratin
Ingredients
Skirt steak
Root veg of your choice
Potatoes
For Yorkshire pudding
Flour
Eggs
Milk
Method
- Roast your veg
- Season and oil the steak and pan fry
- Rest to one side
- For the Yorkshires, mix flour,eggs, and milk as if making pancakes
- For the gratin, bake sliced potatoes with your gratin topping e.g. cheese, or buttered breadcrumbs
Total cost: £5.32 including homemade potato gratin and roasted veg (£3.45 for the meat). The Yorkshires were 22p homemade. The family were spending £30/kg to buy fillet steaks and £24 on their Saturday special meals. Skirt steak is more like £6.90/kg.
Total savings: £1963 if they started cooking the Save Money Good Food way.
How To Get Better Value For Money On All The Recipes
Don’t be afraid of browning lettuce, or any leafy vegetables on the turn. It doesn’t mean the whole thing has gone bad. Just take the brown off and put the rest in cold water and it will revive. Fading lettuce is ideal for peas a la francaise.
They said keep the onion skins to throw in gravy if you make Sunday roasts (but I’d add that if you’ve got gravy granules that have been sat in the cupboard for months, you can put gravy with lots of other meals too! Use it up instead of buying something new).
The family also had a fridge full of Innocent smoothies. It can be £3 for a 750ml Innocent smoothie versus £1.50 for 1l of supermarket own brands. Nutritionist Claire Baseley said these had a negligible difference in sugar content, so the only reason to pay more was for taste.
She said expect banana-based smoothies to be higher in sugar than apple/strawberry flavours (but check the label).
Branded Petits filous generally costs £1.50 for six yogurts. These were 50p in Tesco and Sainsbury’s for their own brand equivalents. Claire said the sugar difference was 0.5 grams, so there was no added nutritional benefit to buying branded.
Make your own “poison”
Making your own smoothies should be even cheaper than own brand. They predicted a £1.90 saving to make your own smoothie.
They said expect to pay £2 per breast for premade stuffed chicken. They costed it at £3.34 to make four of your own at home.
It’s also much cheaper to make our own fishcakes. Premium premade cost £2+ each. Tinned salmon is much cheaper than fresh fish and works fine for fishcakes. This family were paying £7 for fresh salmon.
Smashing cornflakes in a bag also works as an alternative to buying breadcrumbs, or making breadcrumbs if you’re without bread anyway.
Making Yorkshire puddings should work out cheaper than frozen the majority of the time, plus the ingredient mix is exactly the same as pancake batter, so if you have too much batter, you know what to do!
The potato gratin from the same meal is an easy go-to because there’s no one rule for making the topping. You can use milk and cream, or some other dairy if that’s all you’ve got to hand.
Where your poison is something you love that’s killing you financially, making your own turns it into something positive all round.
Breakfast/Lunchbox Potential
No breakfasts, but definitely some lunches. Recipe #4’s roasted veggies are an easy lunchbox saviour.
Freezer Potential
Knock yourself out, although I don’t expect there’ll be any steak to freeze.
Nutrition Potential
For a week’s meals, I didn’t find this episode as easy on the waistline as some of the others, but then this was dictated by the family’s usual habits.
They would still get more nutrition from making these meals themselves instead of paying over the top for gourmet ready meals though.
It doesn’t matter how much you pay, ready meals have a lot of sugar and salt added to compensate for them having to travel a long way to a dinner plate.
The salmon fishcakes would take care of the weekly recommended portion of oily fish. The show’s nutritionist Claire has a post here about omega 3 alternatives for vegans.
Taste Tests
Milk Chocolate
2/3 of Greenwich market testers liked Aldi best versus Asda and Lidl. These were the three cheapest bars out in the world compared to Dairy Milk and retailed for 30p/100g. Cadbury is regularly £1.36/100g.
56% of testers chose Cadbury in the second test against Aldi only.
However, all these testers changed their preference when told the price difference. Aldi also has the cheapest sugar free chocolate I could find at 79p (Choco-Low).
Save Money Good Food Series 2 Episode 2
That’s a (stuffed chicken) wrap! (Don’t worry, I’ll show myself out).
So the big savings in this episode were:
- Quitting ready meals of any kind!
- Using up faded greens instead of throwing them
- Switching to cheaper cuts of meat
- Making a sharing dessert instead of buying individual puddings
- Taking advantage of tinned fish
Was this episode still over budget for you? What’s your Achilles heel when it comes to supermarket shopping? Let me know in the comments.
I’ve seen the Save Money Good Food book priced at £5 before, but I think recipes from other episodes make it quicker to make back any investment there.
Episode three is about quitting takeaways and recipes include Strata, Fish and Chips, Chicken Chow Mein and Szechuan Pork-Filled Lettuce Cups.
If you want to go back episode one was about picky eaters and included recipes for Salmon Carbonara, Hidden Vegetable Meatballs, and Chicken Nachos.
This page has all the series one recaps too.
I’ll be recapping the rest of the episodes, so join the mailing list if you want to keep up with all the Save Money Good Food series 2 recipes. I’m also sending out other tips to rocket your savings and earnings in the emails at the moment.
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