How I Save On Groceries (and still eat well)


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Here are a few of my go-to tips for saving money on groceries (while still eating well!). What strategies did I miss? Let me know in …

42 replies
  1. DiscoChixify
    DiscoChixify says:

    Tip here, I know she mentioned substituting one vegetable out for another but I think it’s also good to make your meal stretch by adding an extra serving of vegetables to a dish. If you’re a person who likes meat and tends to get a broccoli beef dish as a side, you can make the same dish at home and double the broccoli to make it stretch. The amount of sauce called for in many recipes is often more than enough for the dish at hand and adding an extra serving of vegetables will only gone down the intensity of the end flavor by a little bit. I like to get the steamer bags of mixed veggies when they’re on sale and use those to stretch a fried rice dish or a pasta dish I might be planning to make. I’ve also used refried beans to thicken minestrone into a hearty stew and done a homemade garlic bread on the side from a sale at the bakery. If you take the time to brown your butter and roast the garlic you can turn it into a real garlic bread worth craving. Preparation makes a big difference. Also, getting a slow cooker to set on a 10 hour timer for beef, ham, or chicken that you can set up and turn on before you leave for work can help you to take care of the more time consuming parts while you’re away. That way you can just come home from work, warm a few tortillas and throw together some quick wraps for dinner in a pinch. Slow cooking softer meats like chicken or fish and veggies with a bit of water can help them melt down into a rich soup stock base. You can also make bone broth in your slow cooker while you’re at work or use the less exciting parts of animals like liver and kidneys etc with herbs like rosemary and onions or garlic and oregano to make a broth with cheaper animal bits. You can make broths and soup stocks with a slow cooker using lentils, rice and other grains, nuts and seeds, or mushrooms, or avocado, olives or olive oil and so on by putting them with herbs, spices and other vegetables and a bit of water and letting them cook down on the ten hour setting. Then run the mix through a strainer and put any vegetable, nuts, seeds, or other vegan ingredients in a blender with a bit of the broth to break them up as fine as possible and add them back to the stock.

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  2. Cyd1057
    Cyd1057 says:

    Lots of great tips – thank you! One thing I do with fresh cilantro and parsley that I may not use right away, is to chop them up and lay on a tray in the freezer (on waxed paper or parchment). When the herbs are frozen, I transfer them into a container and they're ready to go into a soup or stew. Not so great for garnish, but this works well for cooked dishes.

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  3. Nirwanda
    Nirwanda says:

    Another little tip for the herbs is grow your own that you use most common. They can be grown in window boxes that get a bit of sun so don't need a lot of space and it can help bring cost down on ones you buy frequently, you can even dry them yourself to store them.

    Its like i often make Tabullah and my local store isn't very big and they don't always have fresh parsley and mint so now i have a couple of pots with them growing so whenever i want to make one i know i have the herbs to hand.
    Growing Garlic is quite easy too and can be done if you have a little more space and the leaves can be used in salads and 'wet garlic' is an amazing ingredient for salads and cooking as it has a more delicate flavour.

    The rest of the tips were actually useful and well thought out which is always refreshing to discover on youtube. Off to go buy your book as well as i need more vegan cooking recipes 😁 oddly i prefer to follow from a book than videos haha but your recipes are always really nice whenever i've made them.

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  4. She'sCrafTea
    She'sCrafTea says:

    I think we're homies, I recognizes some of those places! I freeze garbanzos in humus recipe portions. Hummus is so expensive now! And I try to stick things in the freezer if I think I wont use them in time. I like your idea of having 4 recipes built around 2 main ingredients. I also do 'bowl' type meals with leftovers. Almost anything can go on a salad.

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  5. Nicole
    Nicole says:

    The price for fresh turmeric, sold at ethnic grocery stores, is mind blowingly cheaper! It's so much less expensive there than at a regular grocery store.

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  6. Sam
    Sam says:

    This was a superb video. I'm pretty tight on money lately for this exact same reason and I've been doing the first half of the video, but I'm going to start applying the second half. Unfortunately where I live, buying in bulk is more expensive than buying packaged and there's a monopoly in terms of supermarkets, only 2 very popular ones and 2 smaller ones. One thing I like to do is check online which ingredients are cheaper in which supermarkets and get them from there. I'm extremely jealous you have so many options, it's almost overwhelming!

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  7. Sofia Palmeiro
    Sofia Palmeiro says:

    Amazing video! One tip for hard bread: cut in and put in a pan with a little bit of water, with the lid on. The bread will rehydrate and taste very good again πŸ™‚ I think you can also put water on it and toss it in the oven, if it's already on!

    Love from Portugal (and Italy!)

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  8. MAC
    MAC says:

    Great video! So many good ideas. And yes, please do a video about how to best store food. I'm trying very hard not to waste food and sometimes how I store food is a problem. Thanks!

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  9. Stephen Townsend
    Stephen Townsend says:

    This was brilliant. And I love the idea of freezing fresh herbs in cube of oil. I am going to do that anyway regardless of the money saving. The storing tips much appreciated. Eat first bin great idea. πŸ‘ Planning and sticking to it is my biggest problem. But will do better.
    Asian stores are the best especially for tofu, spices and herbs.
    Thank you

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  10. Peace
    Peace says:

    Heya Nisha, the main thing that I got out of this as I did not even think about it was to buy dried mushrooms at an indian grocery store! Dried mushroom are extortionate (Β£3.00 for 30 grams where I live) but haven't looked at the price in an Indian Grocery store so i'm right on that.

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