Kathy Hamilton Is it possible to eat well for less? I set a £20 food budget for a work week to find out. The challenge was, to make five days worth of relatively healthy meals for two people and stick to my budget. Here’s what happened.
Goals for the Challenge
As self-confessed foodie, I love to try new recipes all the time. However, speciality ingredients are just that- speciality and they usually come with a hefty price tag. As a result, I’ve noticed that the money I spend on my weekly shop was creeping up and up.
So, my main intention was to drastically tackle that. I wanted to see what two people could eat on a £20 food budget. That being said, another thing that I wanted to reduce was food waste. I generally do manage to use up most of the ingredients I buy- but there’s always room for improvement right?
Luckily, all the work of meal planning a £20 food budget was done for me in the shape of a ready-made meal plan from the June/July 2019 Tesco Magazine (not sponsored!) and I liked the sound of all the recipes.
The £20 Food Budget Menu
- Zesty Meatballs with Couscous Salad
- Tomato & Pesto Pasta with Chilli and Garlic (V)
- Bang Bang Chicken Noodles
- Courgette, Pea & Lemon Pilaf (V)
- Loaded Fish Burritos
Since Tesco’s £20 Menu was designed for a family of four, I decided to use leftovers from each meal for lunches too. I was surprised to see that after adding everything to my trolley, I had enough spare change to cater for breakfast too. Most days I just have coffee with a piece of fruit so I grabbed a bunch of bananas.
Day One: Zesty Meatballs with Couscous Salad
Turkey Meatballs with Couscous. Packed with spinach, radishes, peas, mint and lemon topped with a citrus and mint yoghurt dressing.
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Thoughts:
The £20 Food Challenge definitely began with a bang! The meatballs were absolutely the star of the show in this dish. They were juicy, flavoursome and moreish. The only thing that stops this dish getting higher marks is that although the lemony couscous was a good accompaniment to the meat, it was slightly bland on its own. Honestly, it was hard to pack two portions up for lunch the next day, we could have eaten it all in one go instead!
This was the most time-consuming dish out of all five to make, taking about 50 minutes in total. However, I think the extra time was worth it. I was particularly interested in trying this recipe because it included a lot of ingredients I wouldn’t usually cook with or buy but I can safely say that after this meal I’m a convert to turkey mince and radishes! I would definitely make it again…soon!
Verdict: 9/10
“Delicious, Light and Fresh”
Day Two: Tomato & Pesto Pasta
Spaghetti tossed in tangy pesto and topped with sweet cherry tomatoes, garlic and chilli
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I’ll be honest, of all the recipes in the £20 Food Challenge, this was the one I was least looking forward to. Pesto is one of those sauces I always keep in the back of the cupboard and only bring out when I’m really desperate for a quick meal. So it has never really impressed me too much. Not this pesto pasta! Mixing lemon juice and some of the pasta water into the spaghetti transformed the sauce into a tangy, summery dish bursting with flavour.
Oh, and let’s not forget the tomatoes! We loved that you cook the cherry tomatoes until they start to caramelise a little, then add lemon zest, garlic and chilli. Each tomato seemed filled with this delicious mixture and added a burst of intense flavour with each bite. This meal came together super fast and would be the perfect midweek meal. But it still felt like a treat too; which I wasn’t expecting.
Verdict: 7/10
“A Totally New Way to Eat Pesto”
Day Three: Bang Bang Chicken Noodles
Crispy chicken thighs with sweet peppers, courgette ribbons, and egg noodles in a spicy chilli soy sauce
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While the bang bang chicken noodles tasted delicious, I wasn’t a fan of having to de-bone chicken thighs to use in this recipe. I have a feeling quite a few of you might feel the same? I do totally appreciate that on a £20 food budget chicken thigh is a great way to incorporate meat. However, if I were to make this again, I’d either go for boneless thighs or opt for chicken breast instead.
If we were going by taste alone, this dish would have ranked much higher. Using lime with the soy sauce and sugar made the sauce feel light and zingy and complemented the amount of garlic and chilli used (which was a lot!). Given that I was expecting to have these noodles blow my head off- I was pleasantly surprised at their slow-building heat. Like I said, judging by taste alone this was probably a favourite, it’s just that tricky prep!
Verdict: 8/10
“A great stir fry sauce“
Day Four: Courgette, Pea & Lemon Pilaf
Veg-packed rice with courgette, peas, spinach and onion with a tangy citrus taste.
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What a curiously named dish. When I saw Pilaf my mind instantly defaulted to South Asian cuisine. But thanks to the pesto and lemon juice, this dish was definitely indebted to Italy for its flavour profile. In fact, this was more a risotto made with long grain rice instead of arborio. On a £20 food budget, expensive speciality rice would not be an option so I was pleased to discover this recipe.
Risotto is my go-to “bung it in the pan and hope for the best” meal. It’s great for using up a host of vegetables that lurk at the back of my fridge. However, after a few days of chilli-infused dishes, this one did feel a little bland in comparison. When I was trying to think of a way to describe it, the word “nice” was the best fit. A nice, no fuss, okay sort of dish. That being said, I think this made the best leftovers- so perhaps giving the flavours time to melt together helped.
Verdict: 7/10
“A tasty alternative to risotto”
Day Five: Loaded Fish Burritos
Cost Saving Fish Fingers and Mexican Tinned Beans mixed together with rice, peppers and onion
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Sadly the £20 Food Budget Challenge ended on a dud. Which is a shame! These Fish Burritos had great potential, but in the end they tasted a bit bland. The recipe relies on tinned taco beans for nearly all of its flavour- and I think this is where it falls down. In fact, this was the only dish we felt that we had to add to in order to improve it. Here we opted for hot sauce and mayonnaise on the wraps. If I were to make this again (unlikely) I’d opt to create the bean mixture from scratch.
This meal was also the least filling. If we’d stuck to the recommended portion size, a single wrap each, it wouldn’t have been filling enough. Instead we had to eat both portions and this left nothing for lunches the next day. A shame, because with a few tweaks I think this could be an excellent mid-week meal option.
Verdict: 3/10
Overall Thoughts: Can You Really Eat Well on a £20 Food Budget?
This was a fantastic experiment and I was genuinely shocked how far my money could go with a little planning. However, I did have to supplement my shop throughout the week with “necessities” like milk and eggs as well as a few treats too. So, I do think that for a Two-Person shop, £25 would have been more realistic.
Pros & Cons
An unexpected pro to the challenge was always knowing what I was cooking for dinner. I loved having my meals planned ahead of time, it saved a lot of time and effort. It also minimised my food waste since I used the same ingredients in multiple recipes. Going forward, I definitely want to try meal planning more.
Perhaps the biggest pro for this foodies was the amount of variety that this meal plan provided. Each meal felt different from the last and most of them contained 2 out of 5 portions of fruit and veg and were relatively healthy.
However, the biggest problem with the £20 Food Budge shop was the amount of single-use plastic it contained. Only the lime and the garlic came without some form of packaging which was surprising! So although I used up the food itself, I was still left with quite a lot of waste.
Final Words
I’m in a very lucky position that I can afford to indulge a little when it comes to food, but I’m aware that this isn’t the case for everyone. Did you know that an estimated 8.4 million people in the UK struggle to get enough to eat? That’s crazy. This challenge has given me a new perspective on how hard it is to meal plan on a tight budget.
