We live in expensive times, and it only seems to be getting worse. The prices of some essential things like food keep rising, and it makes people look for ways to save their money in order to survive.
However, some are more ready for this than others, as those who have endured some kind of poverty before already know some great 'poverty meals' that are very tasty despite being pretty economical, and that is what people online shared on this online thread. Scroll down if you want to learn about some of these delicious money-saving recipes!
More info: Reddit
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Does cinnamon sugar toast count? Because it slaps.
Bread pizza.
Bread (toasted if feeling fancy) with cheap tomato/pasta sauce, bulk cheese (I dunno if dad went to Costco or not) and a few slices of pepperoni (dad always had that too for some reason)
Broil til cheese melted
If we were out of pepperoni...just cheese and sauce lol
Now that he's gone...that's dinner on his birthday.
Used to make English muffin pizza all the time. They taste like happiness
I used to cook and eat a can of ravioli and then cook ramen in the leftover liquid. I used to buy the ravioli when it was 10/$10 so I would be pretty full for only like $1.15 which was pretty good back in 2012/2013, but I told my ex this at one point and they never let me live it down. People gotta stop that struggle meal hate. Sometimes you do what you gotta do and it honestly was pretty tasty.
A 'poverty meal' is the kind of food that is made from ingredients that are as cheap as possible yet still provides all the needed nourishment that a person needs. It is usually something eaten in the more economically challenging times that some people have to endure.
Nostalgia could be another strong reason for people sometimes indulging in these foods, as they might have eaten stuff like this when they were younger if their situation wasn’t as fortunate back then as it is now.
Tomato sandwiches: tomato, mayo and white bread.
I’m British and was brought up in the 1970s. I no longer eat meat, but I was brought up by a Welsh mother who wasted nothing.
We had a meat grinder and anything not eaten in out Sunday roast was ground up and added to our slow cooker with barley, lentils and any leftover veg. Shortly before it was served my mum would drop in dumplings. It was amazing.
My favourite was a Bulgarian "poverty meal" staple in my house growing up - cooked macaroni in warm milk sweetened with sugar (and vanilla if you have it), then some crumbled brined cheese like feta to top it off. The sweet and salty just really works together. If you have any remaining macaroni, you can throw it in a baking dish with milk, sugar, and an egg and bake it into a custard-like macaroni dessert. Sounds strange to non-Balkan people but we all have our cultural poverty meals!
However, just because it’s called a poverty meal doesn’t mean that it can’t have an amazing taste. According to The Foodbank, quite a few of today’s delicacies first started out as the food of the poor.
One such example is lobster. Nowadays, it’s often considered one of the most desirable and fancy dishes, at least in America, but back in the day, it was something that capturers would feed to prisoners and what Native Americans used as bait for fishing.
We could also add the now-all-so-popular barbeque, which used to be what enslaved African-Americans made before the Civil War, or the Chinese-American and Mexican-American cuisines that were created by immigrants, displaced people, and working-class representatives.
Bread and butter simply slaps. We used to do sandwiches with just butter and radishes as well.
I've never done radishes as sandwiches but I absolutely get a bag of radishes now and then just to crunch on with some salt on them. Got it from my mother.
I would say "anything with ground beef," but it now costs about as much as cheaper cuts of beef (USD $4/lb).
When I as growing up ground beef meant chili, or spaghetti, or shepherds pie, or hamburger helper, or sloppy joes, or meatloaf, or just plain burgers. The only kind of beef not pre-ground was chuck roast for stew.
Similar experience - lots of mince-based meals interspersed with various casseroles and stews. We did have a roast on Sundays. Chicken was expensive back then and for special occasions. Wiener Schnitzel was a very special treat for birthdays. Everything made from scratch and home-grown vegetables.
Even the superfood quinoa, which you can find on the shelves of almost every supermarket today, comes from Peruvian farms that were much poorer not very long ago. In fact, according to statistics from Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture shared by Grace Livingstone of BBC, the price of this crop in the country rose by over 500% when compared from 2005 to 2014.
With the country-wide production grew from roughly 32,500 to nearly 115,000 tonnes a year, the once-poor Peruvian farmers who ate quinoa through generations turned their fortunes around when they started selling it. Now, thanks to the sky-rocketed popularity of this magnificent grain, these people are able to enjoy electricity and send their children to good universities, all while continuing to manage their now-successful businesses.
I can relate. I made Haluski - cabbage and egg noodles. I added Italian sausage that I found on sale. My partner was horrified. She likes the hamburger soup though. I ate a lot of Haluski last week!
Doesn't sound so bad. Then again, I was a garbage can in the previous life...
My mother used to make something called rice and eggs when I was very young. I asked her recently for the recipe and she laughed and asked why I would want to make it, she only did because times were tough. I remember a frying pan, cooked rice, and her tossing it with beaten eggs. It came out like creamy rice, something like a risotto but firmer. It might have been the last time she made it when the oil in the pan splashed onto the back of her hand causing a gnarly burn.
I still would like to have it again, poor people food or not. It's one of those memories that is burned into my brain and after 40+ years I can still taste it.
As a starving college student (back before ramen was a thing) we would make a HUGE skillet of "swill". rice a riso (roni if you're American) made in the skillet then when most of the liquid was gone throw in some chopped up fried sausage, make holes in the rice mix and crack in an egg. cook until the whites were firm and serve making sure each person got an egg.
Canned tuna is a pretty divisive place to start. As for poverty meals, I eat lots of beans and lentils, partially because of cost, partially because it's shelf stable and easy to stock up on without having to worry about spoilage.
Tuna Casserole. Tuna, Egg Noodles, and a can of debiously named 'Cream of' something soup.
In the end, this goes to show that just because some food is cheap, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be tasty or nutritious, just like expensive meals aren’t necessarily of high quality.
So, if these expensive times have struck you, just know that eating healthily and deliciously is definitely not out of the question. And if you need inspiration, threads like this one are there for you.
What is your favorite poverty meal? Do you know of any other foods that have had their popularity turned around and become delicacies? Share all of them in the comments below!
My kids called this "Mexican goo". It's similar to a 7 layer dip , but made into a casserole.
Bottom layer is refried beans that you heat up and season. Second layer is rice, I generally used leftover Spanish rice. Or leftover rice that I seasoned. 3rd layer is whatever meat that you have, already cooked. Ground beef, ground turkey or chicken, leftover rotisserie chicken, leftover pot roast, pork that you chop up, whatever it is.and season that with either cumin and chili powder, salt and pepper , enchilada sauce, taco seasoning, whatever you have on hand or can afford. Next layer is vegetables. Generally Rotel, pico de Gallo, or canned diced tomatoes and jalapenos if you have them. Next layer is cheese, whatever you've got. Bake it at 350-400 until the cheese on top is starting to brown and bubble.
Eaten over tortilla chips (in a bowl) or made into tacos with any combination of hot sauce, salsa, sour cream, pickled jalapenos, more pico de Gallo, cilantro, chopped onions with a squeeze of lime, chopped up tomatoes that have seen better days, or whatever you have.
If you use corn tortillas, and don't use packaged seasoning, it's also gluten free. If you skip the meat, it's vegetarian.
If you want the crispy burned rice, then oil your pan and put your rice as the bottom layer.
Edit: if you skip the rice and top it with cornbread batter and bake it, you have a tamale pie.
Edit: season every layer. Otherwise it's just an awful bland mess, and hot sauce wasn't invented to be a main flavor.
I used to heat up a can of refried beans and then top it with sour cream and shredded cheese. If I was feeling fancy I'd get out some tortilla chips. But mostly I just ate it with a spoon. :)
Mac n cheese with hotdogs. Or,
Elbow noodles, Hunts tomato sauce, butter, and salt.
I’m old so this is probably very 1950’s, but we would have fried bologna sandwiches. On white bread. I wonder if they would still taste good to me?! Sure not very healthy!
Oh, it has been absolute ages since I have had a good fried bologna sandwich! I ate loads of them as a child in both Pennsylvania and Maryland. At least I can get scrapple, and have it periodically—-I even turned my British husband on to it. He was skeptical, and a little appalled, at first (I kept reminding him he grew up eating blood pudding to counteract that). But he tried scrapple, liked it, ate some more of it, and now he loves it.
Once in a blue moon, I’ll get a craving for S**t on a Shingle (aka, chipped beef gravy on toast). I have the gravy over popovers instead of toast, but the spirit is the same 😉.
Papas con chorizo, cubed boiled potatoes scrambled with egg and chorizo.
Soup. Just soup. My most consistent one is onion, celery, carrots, cabbage/kale, whatever herbs I find and a small pasta. Can cook up a protein separately to add in or add white beans/whatever you have.
Did something like that last night - I had just 2 chicken thighs but with the addition of carrots, celery, onion, frozen spinach, stock, milk, and tiny pasta I made a delicious soup. It provided dinner for 3 slightly greedy adults plus several servings I could freeze for my very elderly mother.
Red beans and rice. Ham hock, some andouille sausage, some beans, some rice, spices, you've got a big pot of a good meal that can feed you for a few days. Ditto for chili.
Edit: Don't forget an onion, green pepper, and celery stalk or two.
My mom finds it disgusting that to this day, my brother and I, in our 50s, love the occasional bowl of plain macaroni and canned stewed tomatoes. We ate that a _lot_ lol.
Never added the tomatoes but we often, and still do, eat things like rice, or spaghetti plain with butter and garlic salt.
Instant ramen is one of the worlds great food inventions. I have recently rediscovered Maruchan Cup O Noodles shrimp flavor.
My husband who came from the middle class was also disgusted by the food I grew up with. Hamburger helper, tuna casserole, etc.
Apparently frozen burger patties cooked in a frying pan and eaten on white bread is a sin.
Most meals growing up would consist if a carb and a sauce and if you were lucky meat.
But it was ALL one pot meals. We didn't have sides, snacks, or salads. We had rules about how much food everyone got too. Like with stoufers lasagna it was deliberately portioned into 12 pieces and everyone was entitled to only 2 pieces so we all had equal. We never opened a high value food and we NEVER were allowed to finish it, the last of anything good was reserved for mom.
It was really weird going to college and learning what it was to not be food insecure. Like most people just eat when they are hungry. They don't have to worry about being yelled at for having the last mac N cheese box.
Ghetto chicken parm. It's just frozen chicken nuggets on spaghetti with prego sauce and the green bottle parmesean.
My mom used to make a tomato base stew with oxtails...can't even afford poverty meals anymore.
Growing up we had a lot of Campbell's soup casseroles, tuna casserole, chicken casserole etc. Creamed tuna on toast ( béchamel and tuna), sloppy joes, anything hamburger helper like etc. Butter tortillas were also a favorite snack. It was kinda like noodle, meat, soup can, cheese, topping and go.
We make american goulash now pretty regularly. I can't get my kids to like tuna so I rarely make tuna casserole now, but maybe I will make myself some tuna on toast! I love it.
I used to make tuna mac as one of my standard backpacking meals because of how easy it it to pack in ingredients. Nom.
My mom's version of tuna on toast she called a "tuna bunwich." Creamed tuna on half hamburger buns for an open-faced sandwich, topped with a slice of American "cheese" (Kraft singles or generic equivalent), and toasted in the oven until the buns are just crisp at the edges and the cheese melty. I've been a vegetarian for 30 years now and can no longer stomach even small amounts of accidental seafood ingestion, but this is one of the few non-veg foods I still occasionally crave.
Open face hot turkey. Slice of toast, shmear of leftover mashed potatoes, sliced turkey lunch meat, spoon of simple gravy (chicken bouillon, water and corn starch). Serve hot. Side of canned green beans.
Those were our "days after Thanksgiving (in america) sandwiches". Sometimes some cranberry sauce was added to sandwich. Best school lunch ever. Not open faced and heated.
As a kid, my brother and I would make bologna roll ups (fried bologna and scrambled eggs rolling the bolonga around the eggs) a lot.
Bigger family meals from childhood:
- Chop salad (lunch meats, hard bolied eggs, a head of iceberg, and your dressing of choice)
- Spanish spaghetti (fry spaghetti noodles like Spanish rice, add liquid, tomato paste, and spices good until spaghetti is soft. If you're feeling extra, add cut-up hot dogs)
- Bum food (potatoes cubed and fried with bacon and eggs)
- Summer dinner for those hot days (kielbasa, cheese, we like pepper jack, and triscuts)
- Peanut butter and banana toast
- Cinnamon sugar toast
- Tips and noodles (cheap meat normally beef chuck in small cubes fried, then add cream of mushroom soup a can of water or beef broth and egg noodles)
Something else we have been doing more (only 2 or 3 of us at my house often). Make a cheap roast (slow cook or instant pot), and the next day, make shredded meat tacos or burritos.
The other day, we did a ham (bone in), next day ham sandwiches, and then 3rd day pork and beans using the bone with the beans and leftover ham and some kielbasa.
mmm, peanut butter and bananas. Sometimes I would put those little marshmallows if we had any in the house. Also good with generic rice krispies.
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Many years ago, following the violent end to a seven year relationship, I found myself penniless because the ex stole everything from me. I would have been completely homeless but a friend allowed me to stay in a tiny trailer he was keeping in a storage yard. I was so hungry, and my friend had left town for two weeks. I was so weak with hunger and heartache, I could only lay in the trailer, pretty much resigned to starving to death until I remembered a box of cake mix in the trailer. For one week I ate a little dry cake mix every day. The greatest part of this experience? The cake mix was Angel Food. I kid you not. I had the strength to approach another homeless person, living in a storage unit across the street from my locale, to ask him if he could spare a bagel. I had heard an early morning delivery driver at a market next to the storage give him day old bagels, so decided to ask for one.He pulled a bag out that was stuffed w/ bagels and almost as tall as I am! He shared. A kind man
mom had to raise 3 kids on two job b/c dad didn't pay support in cash but would drop off a case of this and that from time to time. once it was a case of tuna. tuna for dinner; tuna sandwiches for lunch. once had a field trip & told mom to skip my lunch b/c i didn't want to eat a stinky tuna sandwich on the bus. woke up to a chicken salad sandwich in my sack. turns out mom drained & rinsed the tuna, added chicken bouillon, celery & spices. tasted delish! mom was great and i miss her so much but love sharing her stories.
Many years ago, following the violent end to a seven year relationship, I found myself penniless because the ex stole everything from me. I would have been completely homeless but a friend allowed me to stay in a tiny trailer he was keeping in a storage yard. I was so hungry, and my friend had left town for two weeks. I was so weak with hunger and heartache, I could only lay in the trailer, pretty much resigned to starving to death until I remembered a box of cake mix in the trailer. For one week I ate a little dry cake mix every day. The greatest part of this experience? The cake mix was Angel Food. I kid you not. I had the strength to approach another homeless person, living in a storage unit across the street from my locale, to ask him if he could spare a bagel. I had heard an early morning delivery driver at a market next to the storage give him day old bagels, so decided to ask for one.He pulled a bag out that was stuffed w/ bagels and almost as tall as I am! He shared. A kind man
mom had to raise 3 kids on two job b/c dad didn't pay support in cash but would drop off a case of this and that from time to time. once it was a case of tuna. tuna for dinner; tuna sandwiches for lunch. once had a field trip & told mom to skip my lunch b/c i didn't want to eat a stinky tuna sandwich on the bus. woke up to a chicken salad sandwich in my sack. turns out mom drained & rinsed the tuna, added chicken bouillon, celery & spices. tasted delish! mom was great and i miss her so much but love sharing her stories.
