Some (frugal) cooking hacks

Cooking from scratch for 20 years surely teaches one a thing or two. No matter how much recipe books you own, the most you'll learn by experience. It takes practice and time and really is a matter of trial and error! You'll likely have to adjust to your spouses and children's preferences, adjust to what's available (especially when, like us, emigrating to another country) and perhaps even more challenging, stick to a budget which makes being creative even more important. 

Here's some of the things I learned along the way: 

When using garlic in dishes, the later you add it, the more garlic-y your dish will be. For a subtle garlic flavour, it's best to afford the garlic from the beginning, and for a strong garlic flavour, add it towards the end of your cooking time. 

Plain cooked beans go bad quickly, usually faster than I'd anticipate. If you're not planning on eating the beans within 48 hours, or have leftovers, you better freeze them. Beans cooked in a sauce/stew of some sort keeps well a bit longer in my experience. 

Another bean hack: most legumes are quite a pain to cook. Even though we eat a lot of legumes, I admit I don't like to cook them (let alone thinking of soaking them on time...). You have to wait for hours (ok, slightly exaggerated!) until they actually cook so you can stand right there to get the foam off. I've noticed, however, that cooking them with plenty of seasonings massively reduces the forming of foam. So then it's only the annoying long cooking time that remains. 

Soft carrots can be easily rescued by letting them soak in water for a few hours. The softer the carrots, the longer the soaking time. It really works, but you just need some patience. 

Onions are another vegetable I sometimes soak in water. Not necessarily to firm them up, but it does reduce the amount of tears involved in peeling and cutting them! 

Batch cooking saved my sanity. (LOL) However, some dishes taste better the 2nd batch, and some don't. There are just a few dishes that I only make a single batch of. 

The smaller the pasta shape, the further it stretches- I know this sounds a bit strange, but when we're eating a pasta made with "bigger" shapes such as penne or fussili, we never have leftovers and it sometimes even feels like it's barely enough. Whereas there's usually leftovers when using ditalini/elbow macaroni etc. Even when the quantity in weight is the same. This is the same for spaghetti by the way, that stretches much better as well. Weird but true! 

Thawing meat or just anything is best in the fridge. It does take a bit long, but it's best for the foods to thaw slowly, plus you'll use less electricity- win win. 

Speaking of pasta, obviously not all pastas are alike; there are literally hundreds of shapes. However, not each sauce suits all shapes. What I've learned (from experience... dear Italians, if this isn't accurate please be nice ok 😉) is that the bigger the shape, the thicker your sauce needs to be, and the other way around. So if my sauce is a bit on the runny side, and I was planning on using a bigger pasta shape, I usually use either a small shape or spaghetti instead. 

Soups are the solution for almost every food problem- not having quite enough on hand, not knowing what to make, not feeling like cooking an elaborate meal, having tons of leftovers and having to recreate a new dish out of those. 

Leafy greens go bad rather quickly, so I usually use them on the grocery shopping day or the day after. Alternatively, you can stretch the leafy greens shelf life somewhat by wrapping them in a damp cloth towel. It may sound a bit contradicting, but it really works. 

But when it comes to getting the most vegetables for your money, you might reconsider buying fresh leafy greens. After all, leafy greens shrink big time! Vegetables that don't shrink and don't need peeling (or just the bare minimum of peeling) are usually the most economical. That's why I love cooking with carrots, turnips and onions during the winter (seasons are changing obviously and it's summer now, but carrots are pretty much available all year long). Contrary to what many people think, frozen and canned vegetables are as healthy as fresh ones and depending on where you live, can be much cheaper than fresh. Where we live they're much more expand therefore not a frugal choice. But I know for many people it's the other way around and buying canned saves a lot of money. You just have to know how to prepare them to avoid that "canned vegetable taste". 

You can bake a muffin batter in nearly every shape of dish, just make sure to adjust the cooking time. This is something I found out quite recently! 

No need for a lot of condiments as long as you have a decent collection of dried (or fresh) herbs and spices. My stack of fridge condiments is quite basic: garlic paste, mustard, mayonnaise, homemade mock soy sauce and tomato paste (if that counts as a condiment...). Most other popular condiments are easy to make yourself as long as you have those on hand. For example, salad dressings, BBQ sauce, sweet chili sauce, and even ketchup. 

Don't be afraid to not follow a recipe to the letter- especially cooking/main dishes recipes. No need to buy an exclusive, expensive ingredient that you end up only using once for that particular recipe, that's just a waste of money and food.

To thicken soups and sauces, my go-to is cornstarch. However, no need to panic if that's not something you have on hand: there are many ways to thicken up liquid dishes. I've literally used anything as thickeners: from ground oatmeal to potatoes to stale bread. 

There's almost no end to what you can freeze. I mean, it's quite obvious that meat and ice cream can (should) be kept frozen, unless consumed immediately, but there's just so much more to freeze. Think of milk, bread (very logical to me but apparently in some countries it isn't), tomato paste, peels and bones (for future broth making), condiments (such as my homemade soy sauce which doesn't last too long in the fridge), leftovers, etc. At the moment, I have a freezer drawer full of pancakes, muffins and portion sized baked oatmeal, as well as one drawer full of dates. And my freezer doors are full with broth. They're in fact that full, not all broth I had did fit in there so I had to freeze some broth in "regular" containers instead of plastic bottles.

By freezing leftovers you can really avoid so much food waste. And during the weeks when money is a bit more tight, just clear out the freezer of all the leftovers 🙃 Or have one "left over buffet" once a week. It really does add up. During those times when I'm clearing out the freezer it seems like there's tons of leftovers, even though it might look like there were just a few. It's amazing how far that stretches. 

Something we all should try is to step out of the box and try not to cling tight to certain "food rules". Wether it's because of cultural practices or other- we're all guilty of it at some point. Who said we can't eat soup for breakfast, for example? We once stayed at a hotel where lentil soup was being served for breakfast, as the majority of the guests were Turkish. I certainly wasn't familiar with that but I really liked the idea! I assume it's common in a lot of other cultures as well, and why not- it's fast (especially when it's leftovers) and nutritious ar the same time. I remember when we first got married, my husband and I disagreed completely about what time pancakes should be eaten. I was raised with pancakes for dinner only, whereas he ate them for breakfast only. Eventually he did convince me of eating pancakes for breakfast and to be honest, I'm so used to it now thar pancakes for dinner seems to be a bit odd. Some people might consider eggs breakfast food. For me, it's usually for lunch or dinner and we rarely have them for breakfast but it's just so versatile I think we can have them at any time (or some boiled eggs as a snack... yum!) What I'm sometimes struggling with is my own food rules (because of pasta eating disorders, being autistic and some other factors...). For example, combining dairy and an iron source is something I really struggle with- even though a lot of people would see it as accomplishing their "protein goals", but since there's more to life than just protein, and as a former vegetarian, I was always taught to NOT.combine.dairy.and.iron... it's a bit hard to letting go of that. Even when it means I'm avoiding food waste by that. So that's definitely something I try to work on. 

Food doesn't need to be elaborate to be delicious. That's a grave misconception. And to be honest, I also think that over varying of dishes is quite overrated. I've talked about this before and I think I'm a bit repetitive, but I don't see the point of variation if that means that there are dishes that we'll eat only once and then forget about it completely.