Broke-Ass College Student Recipes

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Lago PARANOIA
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Broke-Ass College Student Recipes

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Ramen becomes much more tasty when you add in diced brussel sprouts.

Adding some bacon bits to canned chicken rice soup is oddly delicious.

If you're having trouble eating oatmeal without sugar and butter (say, you're on a diet), if you make it watery it goes down a lot easier.

Canned tuna + rice + some lemon juice = win.
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Post by Crissa »

If you let it sit longer, the oats will puff up more, which lets you feel like you're eating cross-cut with rolled quick oats, too.

If you want gravy for your potatoes or chicken, mix soy sauce and pepper with butter or shortening and flour. It makes a great white gravy with milk. If you change the spices or the density of flour you can make brown, as well.

We often have pasta on quick nights. You can throw lots of things in with the noodles being boiled - like dried shiitake mushrooms or fresh garlic (our favorites) - that are cheap but need to be cooked to eat.

Buy dry cheese in bulk to save enough money to actually have fat and protein in your diet. A 2lb loaf is much cheaper than getting it in an 8oz or grated portion, and lasts longer in a fridge, too.

I ate lots of canned fruit in university and lots of milk and yogurt, because if you bought it in large portions, it would be cheap, and while it didn't keep long, it could add alot of calories to a diet.

And always check the calories/minerals on bread. You can actually increase your calorie or nutrition per dollar by looking at the $2-$5 loafs instead of plain white or the dollar loaves.

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Post by ubernoob »

The walmart Mac n Cheese generic brand (Great Value) is righteously cheap.
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Post by MGuy »

Tuna. Cheap, easy to turn into some filling dip, always good with a few chips.
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Post by shadzar »

Learn not to waste money on the booze, and use it for food instead.
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Post by Crissa »

ubernoob, every store has the same stuff in a generic version at that price. Even Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) has cheap mac 'n cheese.

And he said tuna in the first post.

At that point you've got dried beans or canned soup over some sort of protein mass and it's kinda a generic duh and on the list.

But what to do with it after is what's important.

Avoid canned prepared food; it'll cost five to ten times as much as making it yourself and have far more calories and less nutrients (due to being canned). But canned stuff is generally cheap and stores easily, look for sales and stock up then.

Heck, we do that with tofu and other fresh foods, check the seasonal price and make some tomato based dishes when it's tomato season. Right now it's citrus season, and the beginning of mushroom season. Look for cheap prices there. And squash should be in good price this year - it was wet and cold, not good for pumpkins, but good for some other hard squashes.

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Post by Maxus »

Cheese crackers, if you have access to a toaster.

As in, buy crackers, like saltine or the round kind or whatever. Slice cheese into whatever thing shape you want and put a slice per cracker.

Toast until the crackers brown and cheese melts.

Eight or twelve of those make a good snack.
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Post by ubernoob »

Crissa wrote:ubernoob, every store has the same stuff in a generic version at that price. Even Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) has cheap mac 'n cheese.
This is true. I just really enjoy that I can get a box of Mac n Cheese for 50 cents (not counting milk or cheese, which go a fairly long way) to cover two meals. Not as cheap as ramen, but DAMN CHEAP for how edible it is.

I'm a starving college student and I eat a lot of it, so I figured it was worth pointing out.

Edit: I didn't address your point well. Yeah, there's more than just walmart. I referenced walmart because it's where I tend to get groceries and can actually speak for that. If there's one thing I do well, it's restricting my statements to shit I actually do know something about. Generic brand = awesome the vast majority of the time.
Last edited by ubernoob on Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by deathdealingjawa »

Eating Cheap: idea 1: the big box of Zatarain's Jambalaya rice mix + 1 pound of meat (a sausage link works fine) costs around 5-7 bucks depending on where you are shopping. generally had enough to feed 5 people really well, 7 people if you have something to go along with it (those were college guy servings).

Eating for Free: on college campuses. here are a few of the ways I survived college.
1. Find Religion, Find Food: Baptist, and Methodist centers seem to be pretty dependable for lunch at some point in the week, though it changes where you are. walk into the place and ask if they provide free food at some point during the week, or if they know of any places that do. some times you will get odd looks, other times you will get information for a free meal.
2. student organizations/events: they want you to be there figure out which groups are giving away. figure out what a big public event is and you should be able to get some free food out of the deal, or some crappy t-shirt at least. (if the shirt is a color be careful those suckers bleed like a *insert vulgar example)
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Post by virgil »

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Stir together the following:
...1 cup uncooked rice
...1/4 cup butter
...1 can sliced mushrooms (drain can first)
...1 can beef broth (I'll look into whether bullion cube broth could work)
...1 can condensed french onion soup (or chicken, or cream of mushroom)
3. Pour mixture into casserole pan (preferably 8"x8")
4. Leave in oven for 1 hour

Costs four dollars at the outside, and should be able to feed four people.
Last edited by virgil on Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Koumei »

Tofu tastes pretty bad, right? Wrong. Just chop some vegetables up to add to it when making it. Best done in making "tofu burgers". But I suppose that one's obvious.

Take a look at "rich people" groceries. They seriously tend to have cheaper vegetables (or better quality ones for the same price) and I have no clue why. Or maybe that's just around here.

I like to make a stir-fry with:
Hokkien noodles (cheap)
Any random vegetables and leafy things* (cheap)
Beef (though you could also use lamb, pork or chicken. Get the cheap stuff.)
A combination of mirin, sweet chilli sauce/plum sauce & soy sauce, added randomly in splashes throughout the process (cheap)

The finished product is delicious, filling and healthy. Though I tend to over-stress the sauces, and I end up being the only one who can eat the sauce-absorbing vegies (besides the dog), as everyone else complains it's too spicy.

*Standard is carrot, capsicum, cucumber, lettuce, radish. Sometimes mushrooms, beans, peas, pineapple or your mum.
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Post by tzor »

I never really was into Ramen in college; I’m not sure why, just never was into it. My favorite college recipe (and indeed one of my fanciest) was “Butterfly Tube Steak served over Linguini.” Here is what you need. One pot to boil a small amount of linguini (it’s dried, it lasts a long time, use only what you need) and one frying pan. Take the hot dog (you get them in groups but they can last a few days also. You can also con other friends into the meal as well) and cut it almost in half, so you can split it apart while remaining a single piece (that’s called butterflying). Get a little olive oil and a nice chunk of butter. Start to boil the water for the linguini. (Once it boils put the linguini in and cook it.) Melt the butter with the olive oil and sauté (that’s a fancy term for fry really lightly) the hog dog with the meat side down and the skin side up. Once it looks nice and has started to curl a little, remove, lower the heat and add a small amount of garlic from the small jar of chopped garlic you have in the fridge. Strain the linguini, drizzle the butter/oil/garlic/hotdog drippings, on top of the linguini, top with the hot dog grab a few slices of whatever bread you have on hand and lament that even if someone did come up with a suitable wine with this dish, you are too lazy or cheap to go out and get it.

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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Always get whole milk.

I ate a lot of french toast (even $2 bread is tasty that way) and "banana panckakes" (2 bananas, 2 eggs, some honey and cinnamon; blend it and cook on low heat in butter).

Toasted refrigerator bagels with cream cheese can be spiced up with black pepper. Or put hummus & sliced tomato on the bagel instead.

If you have access to a blender and inexpensive basil, pasta with pesto is pretty cheap and also delicious. Buy 1/3 of a cup pine nuts in bulk (that's the 'expensive' part), then lightly toast them and blend with 1/2 cup olive oil, two cups of basil, and a few cloves of garlic. Boil up some fettuccine and toss with some of the pesto mixed 60|40 with parmesan cheese + some salt & pepper; freeze the rest of the pesto.

A pot of chili with beans can make a little meat go a long way, and make saltines a lot more palatable in large quantities.

But the absolute best thing you can do is pool your resources with some other people. You can eat a lot better when you're doing a fraction of the work of cooking for 2-4. You can actually do things like home made pizza. Just make sure you can actually trust the others to keep their end of the deal.
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Tue Nov 17, 2009 2:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I can get a box of Mac n Cheese for 50 cents
Then you really need to move to somewhere where Wal-Mart has not eliminated all the competition. I never pay more than 3-for-a-dollar for the generics around here.

But I advise getting a job at one of the many campus restaurants (or a roommate with such a job) Bakery-type places are probably the best for getting loads of leftovers free without having to resort to anything underhanded - Bruggers, Panerra and Au Bon Pan have all been known to literally throw away heavy-duty garbage bags full of edible bagels/muffins/etc just because they were one day old. But in even the most penny-pinching kitchen I ever worked in, the head chef outright told management to "Stuff it, nobody in my kitchen goes home hungry"
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Post by Cielingcat »

Ramen tastes very good drained of water, sprinkled with the flavoring, and doused in butter and teriyaki sauce.
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Post by shadzar »

Cielingcat wrote:Ramen tastes very good drained of water, sprinkled with the flavoring, and doused in butter and teriyaki sauce.
Would you like anything to drink with that bowl of heart-attack?
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Post by Cielingcat »

Yes, in fact, I would. It generally goes well with cheap coffee.
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Post by shadzar »

You want Waffle House for that, you cannot get much cheaper.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

When I feel ravenous at college, I grab one of the nearby Safeway's massive two-dollar store-brand loaves of "artisan bread". If I am feeling like eating vaguely healthily, I'll grab a medium-size carton/bottle of whole milk and maybe some vegetables I can eat right off, such as carrots.

My default packed lunch is three slices of bread with a ridiculously thick layer of homemade blackberry jam and peanut butter between each. Combined with a reused plastic water bottle of whole milk (refilled later at water fountains), it will get me through the day until dinner.

At home 1:
Take several slabs of tofu.
Bake for a while. Put down foil and olive oil on the pan first.
Eat. With a fork, ideally.

At home 2:
Put spaghetti, peeled and sliced carrots, sliced sausage, and whatever else might make decent soup ingredients that's handy in a pot.
Add lots of water.
Boil for a while.
Eat. Probably after it cools a while.
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Post by Draco_Argentum »

Find a good brand of curry paste and follow the recipe on the bottle. Its a couple bucks for a jar that does several pans worth. A can of coconut milk is under a buck, some vegies are cheap. The only expense is meat so you need to shop for something on special. 500grams of chicken will get you 3 serves (4 if you're stingy or use a lot of veggies) from one pan of cooking, thats about 10 bucks.

You can cook a pan full and freeze the rest for great microwavable meals.

Prices in vague approximate AU.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Draco_Argentum wrote:Find a good brand of curry paste and follow the recipe on the bottle. Its a couple bucks for a jar that does several pans worth. A can of coconut milk is under a buck, some vegies are cheap. The only expense is meat so you need to shop for something on special. 500grams of chicken will get you 3 serves (4 if you're stingy or use a lot of veggies) from one pan of cooking, thats about 10 bucks.

You can cook a pan full and freeze the rest for great microwavable meals.

Prices in vague approximate AU.
Seconded, although the recipe on the bottle isn't always the way to go. If you have a big pot or wok, 1/2 to 1 lb of chicken, 1 or 2 large potatos, 1/2 to 1 onion, a small handfull of frozen peas, and 1 to 2 cans of coconut milk make a great curry. To make it spicy enough you'd have to use the whole bottle of curry paste, so use 1/3 to 1/2 have the bottle and then flavor with sriracha, fish sauce, and a little sugar.
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Post by TOZ »

I'll have to get my friend to type up his tofu beef stew trick. Something to do with pressing the water out and cooking it in beef broth or something. Not sure how cheap it is, since I don't cook much. I really need to man up and learn, especially reading this thread.
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

I'm making a stir-fry right now out of left over veggies from the fridge, a couple of onions, and a head of garlic.

I'll cook up a couple cups of rice;

Ingredients:

-2 medium sized onions minced
-1 head of garlic; peeled and pressed with a garlic press

-a bunch of button mushrooms
-2 peppers (red, green, yellow, whatever you can get)
-green onions (not needed; I like variety in my stir-frys though)
-snow peas (say 1/2 lb; you can't really go wrong with lots of snow peas)

Steps (vaugely)
  1. mince the onions, the finer chopped, the better they will taste. You will seriously be best using more onions than less. Always. If you are cooking your onions, you can seriously never have too much of them. The upper limit is if there are more onions than every other veggie combined. Half your stir-fry could be onions, and half could be other veggies and meat, and it will be fine. The trick is that you will cook the onions until they are delicious and tender.
  2. How to get Garlic ready: Fast Garlic, is a bitch if you don't know what you're doing. Me? I do the following
    • pull apart the cloves
    • put the cloves on a cutting board, or a clean kitchen counter
    • take a nice solid, flat-bottomed glass
    • press the glass firmly onto each clove, maybe 2 or 3 at a time if you can flatten them down. When you get the hang of it, you'll be able to slam the glass down.
    • the garlic is now seperated from the peel, you can pull them apart with your fingers. No knife-peeling needed
    • cut the stem parts off
  3. cook up the garlic and onions up slowly; use the lowest setting on your range
  4. chop up the rest of your veggies while your onions cook
    -The snow peas need the ends chopped off, cut them into 1/2's or 1/3'rds
    -The mushrooms you can just slice
    -The peppers you should mince
    -Green onions just need to be sliced thinly
  5. take the onions out of the pan; put them aside
  6. put your other veggies in
  7. cook up some rice up, or rice noodles, or noodles
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I sometimes make meatballs using ground meat. Turkey is apparently both cheaper and healthier than beef, so I use that. First I spread the meat into a bunch of flat portions of roughly equal mass, then dribble soy sauce onto each. I roll various spices into the meat as I mould the actual meatballs, then stick them onto a metal tray with tin foil that's had olive oil smeared on it to prevent sticking. I bake it in the oven for the amount of time it takes to play 4 Cortex Command missions using an unregistered copy of the game (generally around 18-20 minutes).

EDIT: I should note that the tin foil usually has excess fat all over it that ran out of the meatballs by the time I extract the tray from the oven. The tin foil is reasonably important if you don't want to regularly wash the metal tray.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Kobajagrande »

When buying shitloads of cheap wine, buy cheap sweet white wine, because there's the least chance of being absolutely horrible.

If you are a smoker, smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, unless you live in Russia or Canada or someplace similarly cold.

Also important: after some 24 hrs, you're not that hungry anymore.

And of ultimate importance: do not feel sorry for spending money on good booze. Couple of monetary units make a big difference toward having no hangover the next day.
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