5 Tips for Quick Budget Meals

Cooking sometimes seems to be a hassle for today's young couples but for me, after staying abroad in Shanghai for 5 years (where the food tends to be oily and salty), I have always cooked. However, being a recently stay at home mom, I find it difficult to cook meals everyday yet ensuing that they meet the following criteria:
1. Quick - I got to be quick especially when my baby may cry anytime
2. Budget - loss of double income means everything is on budget
3. Warm - that's a minimum reward for my husband after a day's work
4. Hearty - it will be a great start to the evening if the dinner puts a smile on his face!

After flipping through cookbooks after cookbooks, I've compiled a list of recipes for soups, noodles, rice, potato-based dishes on my fridge. One thing I've gathered from reading so many cookbooks are that it will be a waste of money to actually buy one as many of the dishes such as desserts I will never have the time to make (finding time to enjoy one ice cream scoop is already a blessing!) or many of the ingredients I can never find at my local supermarket in Singapore. Therefore, what I have done is get inspiration from the cookbooks and below are my 5 tips for a budget and quick meal:

1. Staple like rice is a must and buy in bulk - I started off buying just 1 kg of the rice and found out that for the same brand, a 10kg pack is more than 50% cheaper. Better still, I switched to a house brand of the supermarket and the price drops a further 40%!

Rice is good for a quick meal like chicken porridge and I've discovered that my rice cooker can cook mixed rice (just throw in ingredients like sausages, baby corn, mixed beans, garlic and chicken broth) and even better still, the mixed rice can be left overnight in the refrigerator, then transferred to an over proof dish, mixed with ham and cheese and you have baked rice for the next day!

2. Canned/ frozen food is not necessarily expensive - Initially, I calculated that canned food is more expensive than cooking rice with say a simple chicken dish. That is true mostly for meat dishes, however, for vegetables, fresh perishable cost more than frozen mixed vegetable (chopped carrots, green peas, corn) for one serving portion. Canned/ frozen food can be stored, something which fresh vegetables can't store for long, thus usually forcing a bigger serving to be cooked or throwing away as they perished.

3. Stock is a blessing - Vegetable, chicken stock is cheap if bought the packing in cubes and then boiled with water to prepare the stock. Concentrate sauces such as mushroom sauce is even better as they are tasty and cheap and a small quantity can whip up a yummy chicken mushroom porridge or chicken mushroom noodle. The best part is I don't even have to buy the mushrooms which tend to be expensive and perish easily.

4. Chicken breasts are a staple protein dish - For the most economical choice, buying frozen in bulk is the cheapest. However, I've discovered that breaking up the frozen chicken can be a pain, especially when finding the time to thaw and defrost is difficult with a colic baby. Chicken breasts are the cheapest of all meat in Singapore and also, it is most economical considering that there is no throw away such as bones in chicken leg/wing that add to the weight. Chicken breasts can be stored in the freezer for a week, takes a short time to defrost and also easily cut and marinated.

Some ideas for cooking chicken breasts are wrapping marinated chicken in soy sauce and sesame oil with garlic in aluminum foil and bake for 15 minutes, grilling with marinated chicken in honey mustard, grilling with marinated chicken in thai sweet chili sauce, grilling with ham and cheese.

5. A big oven is essential - I bought a full pizza size oven wanting to make pizza sufficient for full day's serving. Turned out that pizza crust is expensive and I haven't got round to making my own pizza base. However, a big oven is essential as many easy to cook recipes use oven and you can cook a carbohydrate dish like baked potatoes along with a protein dish like honey mustard chicken.

So, bon appetit with the above 5 tips for quick, budget and hearty meal!