Seasoned Advice
Seasoned Advice

Questions tagged [budget-cooking]

Questions about cooking on a low budget: cheap ingredients, removing or replacing expensive ingredients, inexpensive cooking equipment.

40 questions
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13 answers

Should I rinse canned beans before using them?

Certainly, if I were making a salad with canned beans, I would thoroughly rinse them first. But if I'm making soup or chili with canned black beans or kidney beans, should I drain and rinse them first? Goya brand beans have recipes on the side of…
Josh
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49
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5 answers

Never ending soup; is it actually safe?

In the poor student or youth worker days it was popular to have never ending soup; a large pot on the stove that was topped up with new and leftover ingredients when available. Normally the pot was stored in the fridge overnight. Food items added…
TFD
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13 answers

How do we escape the cycle of bad college eating?

Mouseover text: And yet I never stop thinking, 'sure, these ingredients cost more than a restaurant meal, but think how many meals I'll get out of them! Especially since each one will have leftovers!' Randall Munroe really hit the nail on the head…
Ricket
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2 answers

Can you re-use parchment paper when baking batches of cookies?

I just finished making cookies. The dough was enough to make multiple batches. I only have one baking sheet. Every time a batch was ready, I used new parchment paper on the baking sheet. Is this necessary or could I just re-use the same piece of…
Mien
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18
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4 answers

Is there a way to make delicious donuts with a small amount of oil?

I like donuts but I don't make them at home because for a bowl of donuts I consume a lot of oil. The oil gets a sweet taste to it afterwards and can't reuse it for cooking something else than cakes. I also don't cook sweets very often and if I…
John
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5 answers

A cheap piece of equipment/appliance that can help with reducing stock in a room that is not suited for cooking

I've just reduced a 4l of stock in my "kitchen" to 0.5l by boiling it over an hour. I wrote "kitchen" with quotation marks, because that room might have been designated as a kitchen when the apartment was being built, but I'm pretty sure I see a lot…
Reverent Lapwing
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Are 'premium' spices worth the expense?

I have done some calculation. And I think that if I buy a jar of spice from the supermarket, it is about 25 times more expensive (it costs more and you get a fraction of the amount) that getting a bag from my local Asian store. I am perfectly happy…
Jeremy French
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13
votes
2 answers

Homemade salad dressing with raw garlic not safe?

I just went on a well recognised cooking website for a salad recipe and it said that the salad dressing can only be stored for 48hrs as it has raw garlic in it and keeping it any longer can have disastrous results. I looked it up and google tells me…
Mich
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Cheap sources of protein?

Soy meat, flax seeds and peas are probably the best known such sources. Are there other cheap sources of protein?
user2954
9
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8 answers

How can I make cheap, smooth homemade Alfredo sauce?

I've tried making Alfredo sauce several times based on a few online recipes. It generally comes out pretty tasty, but also with one flaw: the sauce is grainy or gritty because the grated Parmesan cheese doesn't fully melt. Doing searches online,…
Walter Mundt
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9
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5 answers

How to cook insects?

I love touring and I am trying to cut my dependency on my protein sources such as soy powder, beans and other supermarket stuff. Touring is a bit like camping but with longer distances and a bike. So how do you cook insects? How can I know whether…
user2954
8
votes
5 answers

How can I know whether a potato is too old?

I have many kilograms of potatoes that are turning bad, I don't want to throw them away. The term "turning bad" means that the best-before days on the products vary between 1-4 weeks i.e. they are old from 1 week to 4 weeks. Some of them taste…
user2954
7
votes
8 answers

How can I be more frugal with salt when cooking (dried) pasta?

When cooking pasta (from dried), I currently need to add a significant amount of salt to the water to add flavour. As the pasta itself is extremely cheap, and the water is completely free - it can at times feel like throwing money down the drain as…
Bilkokuya
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What is a cheap but good cut of beef for grilling?

If I grill filet mignon it comes out tender and easy to cut and delicious of course but no matter what other cut of beef I grill it's like eating leather. I've read about "salting" the meat for about an hour before I grill and wanted to try that…
tooshel
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Cheaper alternative to parmesan cheese?

The parmesan cheese in pasta recipe is quite expensive.....do we have cheaper alternative?? Are there are cheddar cheese which can replace parmesan cheese?
lamwaiman1988
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