Eating well can be a challenge, particularly when you’re trying to do so as a student on a budget. But I think I’ve solved how to make cheap student meals, so now I want to help you also maximise what you can eat for your money!
Last month we covered the benefits of cooking meals for yourself: Save money as a student: cook delicious & nutritious meals on a budget! Now I want to share with you how I’m able to eat really well, really cheaply.
My meals typically cost well under £1.50 per portion, while being really tasty, good quality, well balanced, super nutritious and easy to prepare – even in a shared kitchen!
I hope you find this method a useful starting point for your own cooking!
This is the second in a three part series:
- Part 1: Introduction to cooking delicious, nutritious meals on a budget
- Part 2: My simple method for creating cheap and healthy meals (this post!)
- Part 3: My favourite cheap and healthy student meals on a budget
My method to create cheap student meals
The key I’ve found to conveniently create meals is to not get hung-up on following a specific recipe.
Rather than following recipes requiring specific ingredients, the majority of my meals consist of assembling components from different categories together to create a tasty meal.
The perk of avoiding recipes is that the ingredients for each component are all things you can use interchangeably and buy in advance.
This means you can avoid having to go out shopping to buy certain things for each individual meal: saving both time and money.
Let’s breakdown each of these components in the next section.
Meal components
Bases
Brown rice, wholewheat pasta, couscous etc.
Purpose:
- Cheap and filling
- Quick and simple to cook
- Source of protein, fibre (and carbs of course)
Tips:
- Use wholegrains for more fibre
- All these bases have really long shelf lives so can be stored long term. I suggest buying in bulk and ensuring you always have some of each in your cupboard.
Cost:
- Wholewheat pasta 7.5p per portion, with Tesco Wholewheat fusilli £1/kg
- Couscous 10p per portion, with Tesco couscous £1.35/kg
- Brown rice costing 11p per portion, with Tesco easy cook brown rice £1.50/kg
If you buy in larger quantities, the price per portion gets even lower!
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Vegetables:
Seasonal fresh organic produce and frozen greens
Purpose:
- Full of macro and micronutrients, fibre, minerals and other good stuff to keep you healthy!
- Very filling
Tips:
- I get a weekly fruit and veg box from Abel and Cole shared with my partner. These are organic and seasonal. You can cut the price further if you chose to get non-organic. If you fancy trying Abel & Cole, you can use this affiliate link to get £10 off your first box (and third too, if you fancy sticking with it). Read my affiliate policy here.
- I supplement this fresh seasonal produce with frozen veggies such as broccoli, peas, green beans and brussel sprouts. Frozen veggies are cheap and last ages.
Costs:
- Our fruit and veg box costs £27.50 a week and is the source of the bulk of the veggies we eat. Split between two people and assuming 2/3rds of the box are vegetables (rather than fruit), the cost split between lunches and dinners for 7 days averages to 65p per portion.
- Frozen: Eg Brocolli is £0.66/kg from Tesco. Assuming a serving size of 150g works out at 10p per portion!
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Tinned pulses:
Lentils, peas and beans
Purpose:
- Source of protein, fibre and other good stuff!
Tips:
- My favourite legumes include: black beans, green lentils, kidney beans and chickpeas.
- I mostly use tinned legumes, but you can often buy them dried. Why do I use tins? They’re much more convenient and aren’t that much more expensive given how long some dried legumes can take to cook.
Costs:
- You can often get offers such as 3 tins for £1.50 (or less). Splitting a tin into three servings works out at 17p per portion.
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Sauces, spices & seasoning
Purpose:
- Adds flavour, making the meal much more enjoyable!
Tips:
- Experiment with spices to liven up a dish.
- A sauce can be as simple as mixing soy sauce & peanut butter or lemon juice & olive oil.
Costs:
- Usually easily under 10p per portion. Every so often I’ll use a pre-made sauce like the vegan basil pesto shown in the pasta recipe which works out at about 21p per portion.
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Optional toppings:
Chopped nuts, veggie meatballs, seitan, falafel, hummus etc.
Purpose:
- Provides extra nutrients (eg fat from nuts, protein from chickpeas in hummus/falafel).
- Livens up the dish.
Tips:
- A sprinkle of chopped nuts such as cashews can quickly spruce up an otherwise simple meal.
- Instead of cheese try nutritional yeast, I now eat it all the time and it’s a good source of vitamin b12.
Costs:
- Usually less than 10p per portion. The sky is the limit though if you buy ready-to-eat branded products which could be upwards of 50p per portion: still much cheaper than going to a restuarant!
- I bulk-buy toppings such as cashews and nutritional yeast from buywholefoodsonline*. *These are affiliate links, read my affiliate policy here.
Total meal cost
Now we’ve covered all the components of meals, let’s put them together:
Base: 10p per portion
Vegetables: 75p per portion
Tinned beans: 17p per portion
Sauces/seasoning: Usually under 10p, but this one was vegan pesto for 21p per portion.
Toppings: Less than 10p per portion
Total: £1.33 per meal
I’m very happy to pay £1.33 for super nutritious, tasty meals which can be cooked in under 30 minutes.
Want to add some meat to the dish? I don’t eat meat anymore but used to cook a whole free-range chicken and divide it amongst my meals at a cost of approximately £1 per portion. Consider reducing your meat intake to reduce your food bill.
Notice how vegetables make up over half the total cost of my typical meals. I’m fine with paying for these vegetables and usually get much more than five portions of fruit and veg a day. It’s worth pointing out that this is the total price for both cheap frozen veg and much more expensive posh organic veg.
You could eat really well just with portions from frozen veggies such as broccoli, broad beans, peas, green beans and cauliflower. This would easily halve the cost of vegetables, bringing the cost down to under £1 per meal.
I really hope that you find this framework for creating meals useful. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements.
Next in this cooking series I’ll be sharing some example meals I cooked throughout my PhD. Subscribe for further content here:
