Turkey. Any cuts are yummy and cheap. Much cheaper than chicken and a leaner meat as well.
I make turkey and barley soup or turkey and vegetable soup. You can buy the giant drumsticks and bake them in the oven they are a real novelty with kids. My DS, who's only just turned 2 thinks he is eating dinosaur
Lentils - Makes yummy soup or dahl or just a stew with veggies. Good for you too.
Can you get bulk cuts and mince them yourself? I often see whole rump for about $8/kg (was actually $6/kg here yesterday) or gravy beef. You could mince these in a food processor after removing the majority of fat and still make meals that go a long way for a family (as opposed to just steak dishes).
Soups would also be a cheap meal with lots of bulky filling stuff like pearl barley or soup mix/risoni/rice/pasta and loads of vege. Very little fat.
Fried Rice
Pasta with pasta sauce with a diced chorizo sausage cooked in the sauce, gives a lovely smokey flavour, chuck in a handful of diced bacon to add meaty ness if thats what your kids want.
Dahl with sweet potato and spinach.
I made a super yummy diced ham and lentil soup the other day , not as gluggy as pea and ham, but mega filling.
Admittedly chorizo and bacon are not low fat, but its in the quantity, I am talking 1 sausage and 100gms of diced bacon between the whole familiy.
We are trying to cut down on our meat consumption and up our veges and am finding that, if you can make it meat flavoured, its really like having a meat meal.
We are also back eating veges with carbs in them, and this makes plumping out a meal soooo much cheaper.
Tuna is something I just found in my calorie king book (from years ago!). That and kangaroo. Kangaroo is really low in fat but I just don't know if I can bring myself to eat Skippy....
Yeah it was a suggestion in a healthy eating book I had/have somewhere - you boil it in water until the fat comes to the surface and then drain and brown it as normal. It doesn't smell real nice though to start with!
Simply frying off the mince like normal, but then straining it will serve the same purpose and leave you with a much more edible product at the end of it.
Fried rice here is a go to. It is seriously scarey how cheap and easy it is to make and how many veggies I can convince the girls to eat when I make it. You can put almost anything in it, but even just a bag of frozen, small dice veg like the carrots/corn/caps/peas mixes work well. Soy and oyster sauce on and it will last us days. A batch with fully fresh veg, ham and egg will cost me about $10, and probably serve 6-9 serves depending on how much the girls eat. If I can, I buy a few prawns for DD1, she lurves them, I can get a good 8 for only a couple of dollars.
There is a chowder recipe I posted a couple of years ago, I'll see if I can find the link.
Cooks in the microwave in about 20 minutes, is delicious and costs about $5 to make. Seriously cheap and awesome.
Look for any recipes that work with long slow cooking for meat - they will use whole cuts of meat, rather than mince or sausages, and they will be almost as cheap, like gravy beef. Less fat for you, more flavour for your food, and less fillers.
I've been loving rice noodles lately. Sometimes I make a salad with them with chicken or beef and whatever salad vegies I have in the fridge and I put the fat free balsamic mustard dressing from Coles over it. I also stir fry some vegies with some meat and chuck through the rice noodles at the end with some Ketjap Manis, honey, sweet chilli and lime juice. They're so quick and easy and cheap!
You can cook mince, then put it in a colander & tip boiling water over it, washes most of the fat off. Then you can cook it up with loads of veggies (grated if you prefer), add a jar of pasta sauce, it gives you a large amount of bolognaise with a very small amount of fat in it. Add to pasta with a sprinkle of Parmesan.
When I was having gallbladder problems, I bought a bulk tray of chicken breast, divided it into small portions, added some low fat marinades, and froze them in individual bags. Then I would cook them in a dry pan, and slice and serve in things like warm salads and tortilla wraps or enchiladas with lots of salad.
Fish is good, provided you don't choose oily fish like salmon (which is very good for you but might aggravate the gb). And spend a bit of extra time at the shops, I was able to find some relatively cheap low-fat versions of things, eg the local supermarket sold lowfat sausages that cost 50c more than the other ones.
I lost a lot of weight quickly eating like this and was quite hungry so adding in some no-fat yoghurt and low fat dairy like custard or rice pudding with a side of fruit helped fill the hole.
Thanks md. I stocked up on chobani yoghurts yesterday because Coles had them for $1 each. Although I tried to budget shop somehow my groceries came to $230! I only budgeted for $150 because it was only meals until Wednesday. Crikey.
And yes, I might lose weight, I did last pregnancy, gave birth at nearly 42 weeks 7kg lighter than I was at the start of my pregnancy. I could definitely lose weight though, so that might be a good thing lol
Fresh tofu is also a really cheap source of protein. I buy a kilo from our local Asian grocer for $4.60. I cut it into cubes and pan fry it and add it to dhal or to stir fry. Mmmmm.... Craving tofu!
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meal ideas - low fat and cheap
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