Cheap & Nutritional – Spag Bol

• Cost Aprox: £1.65 per person
• Calorie Count Aprox: 400 per person
• Fruit & Veg portions Aprox: 2.5 per person (as per UK NHS guidelines)
• Serves 4 adults

Hi All, and thank you for clicking on this post.

I have decided to create some posts dedicated to cheap and nutritional foods. This is my first post on this subject and I have eased myself in with a dish I am used to doing, albeit this time with less costly produce, and with much healthier meat!

In conjunction to this page, I also have a more explanatory post which will have links to every recipe I create with cheap and nutritional foods in mind. Click here for that post.

I have brought packs of three onions and peppers, and divided the cost so for instance, 3 onions cost 50p, I only used 2 so for the costing of this meal the onions cost 33p. I have done the same for all ingredients used, including herbs, stock cubes etc.

So without further ado, let’s get on with some info!

This is my second attempt at this recipe, last weekend I found my first attempt to not be as tasty as I would expect. There was no real depth of flavour, so a bit of tweaking and swapping brought me to this recipe.

My local supermarket is Tesco, so that is where I went to compare prices and nutrition on lots of things. There are Lidl and Aldi relatively close, and they are known to be even more cost effective than Tesco and the like.

I’ve found fresh produce in Tesco from Redmere Farm, this was cheaper than other goods in the store, and nutritionally still the same. Interestingly, you’ll see some of the mushrooms are joined together, and that one of the onions is oddly shaped (there were two onions growing side by side like twins!) I guess that’s why this produce is cheaper – it doesn’t look as pretty – but as it’s being chopped up, I really don’t care.

The dried herbs I used are Tesco own and is a 30g cylindrical tub of mixed herbs – I found this on the top shelf so not in eye line – but it contains exactly the same herbs as in the more expensive brands – so absolutely no difference other than cost.

The stock cubes are Tesco own reduced salt, and as they were also a lot cheaper than my usual brand (Oxo) I was willing to give them a go. I like them, I will continue to use them.

As for the garlic, I broke my own rules with this, I hate peeling garlic, and the sticky hands that come with it, so I did spend more money on the large cloved garlic.

Oddly the wholewheat spaghetti was the cheapest of all the pastas.

There were only two of us eating today, me and my daughter, so I cooked 100g of spaghetti, but the mince mix is for four. Once cooked I’ll leave half the mix to go cold then freeze it for another day. I don’t own a microwave, so I’ll just leave it in the fridge the night before I want to use it.

Ingredients

• 500g turkey mince 2% fat
• 500g Growers Harvest Tomato Passata
• 2 brown onions (Redmere Farm)
• 1 pepper (Redmere Farm)
• 2 tbsp Tesco mixed dried herbs
• 20 squirts of 1cal spray
• 1 Tesco reduced salt chicken stock cube
• approx 10g garlic puree
• 0.5 bulb of garlic
• 200g Tesco wholewheat spaghetti – I promise no one will know it’s wholewheat – I’ve tricked kids loads of times!

Recipe

• Add about 7 squirts of 1cal to frying pan and put on medium heat
• chop onions to your liking (I like chunky) and add to frying pan
• Chop mushrooms and add to frying pan
• peel garlic cloves, crush using flat of a knife, or chop up, add to frying pan
• chop pepper and add to frying pan
• add 1 tbsp of dried herbs to frying pan
• cover and leave on medium heat, stirring occasionally
• Add a about 7 squirts of 1cal to large saucepan and put on medium heat
• add mince to saucepan, stirring up and breaking up clumps every minute or so
• Add water to another saucepan for spaghetti and bring to boil
• When turkey mince cooked through, crumble 1 stock cube in and 1 tbsp of mixed herbs, mix together,
• add a big squirt of garlic puree (I use about a tenth of a tube but that might be too garlicky for you)
• Tip vegetables into pan with turkey mince
• Add passata
• stir, cover and switch to low heat, stirring every minute or so
• add 50g of spaghetti per person to pan with water and cook as per instruction
• when spaghetti is cooked, drain and dish up into bowls
• ladle mince mix on top of spaghetti
• serve
• enjoy

Both my daughter and I really enjoyed our dinner, and it just goes to show we can eat well on a budget. I wish I’d had this info many years ago when I was as skint as anything!

If you feel this post might be of any help to anyone, please, please share it, print it out, anything.

Many thanks for reading and I do hope you enjoy!