If you liked this video, see how I make 20 CRAVEABLE meals in 1 hour. It's kind of like this one, only tastier: th-cam.com/video/dH0WAYgWAOE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Ma8TH7zYNQR4LC-A
.... You must not have looked up budget meal channels before. There's a whole army of them out there. Of course another channel covering cheap meals never hurt also.
@@jjdiner7862 The problem is that I have. And most of them are... disingenuous at best. My favourite shit one was one of the most overly-produced TH-cam cooking shows I've ever seen and had a special highly-organized drawer for take out sauce packets. Talk about idea/presentation mismatch. My actual favourite will always be Hand to Mouth, though.
@@jjdiner7862a lot of them are out of touch though. It’ll be like “eating cheap is easy. For this dish all you need is rice, a can of tuna, 14 exotic spices (we’re not counting these in the price since you definitely have them in your cupboard) and a $1500 specialized machine that is only useful for this one dish. Use the link in the bio for 3% off!”
@@someguy4262my favorite creator for budget meals is a lady on tiktok that always buys at dollar store or uses what you usually get with food stamps, she always counts every item in the final price (i hate when they use "10 cents of soy sauce" when you can't buy 10 cents of it), never assumes you have anything other than salt in your pantry and most of her recipes can be done with only a microwave for those without access to a stove!!
Hey man, I'm a sous chef in a fancy steakhouse in Las Vegas. I am following your lead for 3 reasons; inflation, high blood pressure, and easy clean up, something that very few culinary TH-camrs address!
Just finished the entire menu and both me and my wife agree that every meal was delicious. Other than having to purchase a few of the pantry staples, this cost me around $37-$40 total. And the great thing was that we even had enough to do a couple of breakfast items with the items left over, so no waste. Hands down, one of the best videos. Keep them coming.
Try purchasing from a local ethnic store. The groceries are often cheaper. For Mediterranean food, see if you can find middle eastern, turkish, greek, Bulgarian, Albanian markets. Italian markets are pricey in my opinion. Depending on what community you have around you, you can find cheaper and better quality there.
@@mericlre it lasted a good 7 days or more. I finally had to throw the rest of the rice out cause it made a lot. And I was able to eat chicken soup for days. And the good thing was if you buy the veggies, you have plenty to make more fried rice. Plus rice is cheap.
@Derek2001 You can save money by repurposing leftovers like rice instead of throwing away 🙂 For 2-3 people you only need about a cup and a half of leftover rice to make fried rice if you also add veggies, egg and other protein to bulk it up. You can resteam it with some veggie broth then mix with lime juice, fresh cilantro and other spices then add some black beans, meat, and cheese wrap it in a tortilla for a delicious burrito. The list goes on. It's fun to make leftovers into new yummy meals and great on the budget!
As a person who LOVES to cook but is getting pretty burnt out with life and choice fatigue (and also has an increasingly tight budget) I would be THRILLED to see this type of video repeated a few times over with different weekly plans Thanks Brian and Lorn!
AS A SINGLE SENIOR MALE ON AN EXTREME BUDGET I CANT THANK YOU ENOUGH I WILL BE MAKING ALL OF YOUR DELICIOUS MEALS I CAN'T WAIT I HAVE MY SHOPPING LIST READY .🎉❤🎉❤🎉❤
Yo, everyone please watch this video 20 times, like it, and post it everywhere. This is the kind of content we should be rewarding, not some dude cooking wagyu in the talo of some rare species of duck and then covering with gold. This is actionable, helpful content. I've legit been really stressed about the grocery budget lately. Was able to cut it in half this week, and I just made the first meal tonight and my wife loved it! Bri, a couple more videos in this vein and I'll be set! Thanks so much for the awesome content
try integrating tomatoes, carrots, celery, onion - can make minestrone (throw in a can of white beans) for 1st night dinner/2nd lunch. then make an easy spaghetti or bolognese sauce (add ground beef) for 2nd night. then make a frittata with eggs and veggies (any leftovers will do!) for 3rd night. then top it off with some fresh kitty kat your wife can provide =)
Try watching frugal fit mom and julie Pacheco, all their content is about being smart with your money when ut comes to groceries. They actually take u into tge grocery store then show u how to cook it.
My top low-budget survival foods: Dried beans Chickpeas Lentils Rice Potatoes Pasta Eggs Carrots Cabbage Onions Frozen broccoli Canned diced tomatoes Seasonings COFFEE 🤣 Broccoli quiche makes a great meal. Shakshuka is cheap and delicious. Curried lentils are SICK. 🤣 Pasta never seems to stick with me as long as legumes do. Potatoes are an underrated survival food.
I just wrote a long comment praising your good looks and appealing personality, then exited without posting. So, I will just say that I appreciate your videos because as a widow over 80 I've lost my interest in food and have just been eating junk. I watch food videos such as yours to try to jump-start my appetite. Thank you.
As a Brazilian, I cannot help but notice how similar this approach is to our traditional way of cooking and planning our meals throughout the week, though with the implementation of different techniques and ingredients (mainly spices). It really made me appreciate our food culture and resourcefulness!
Brasil é riquíssimo em termos de qualidade alimentar, sobretudo quando falamos de valor nutricional! Considerando a postura de preparar a comida para a semana - que, pelo menos aqui em casa, é bem comum - esse vídeo é quase uma cara de canal BR hahaha
I noticed a long time ago that the majority of South American cuisine is what Americans might call poverty food, South America is so ingenious with their recipes and really know hot so spice up simple but delicious dishes.
Morei no Brasil por dois anos maravilhosos. Ainda tenho saudades da culinária e aprendi a cozinhar muitas comidas diferentes para compartilhar com meus filhos.
Just bought my groceries home. My total cost was $37.38. (Part of the country plays a part) And I did substitute a few ingredients such as flour tortillas vs Tostada shells, for personal preference. The most expensive thing I bought was the frozen peas at $4.79 a bag. Crazy! I can't wait to start cooking!
Yes! I would LOVE this to be a series! Different ingredients different meals. It’s one thing to make a meal but trying to minimize costs and stretch your ingredients through out a week is so helpful to watch and get ideas for
Its embarrassing but i had a large change in my life the past could of days and need to keep all spending as low as possible and i have tears at my desk at work right now. This came at the perfect time as ive just been eating half the amount i normally qould and only once a day. Thank you❤
I'm not on a tight budget like this, but I really like the format of this video - the meal planning, leftover-using, and focus on simple recipes and basic techniques are all very useful to me as a very new cook.
My husband and I just LOVED these recipes. I made everything exactly as posted and, I must say, it was a wonderful week of truly delicious meals plus most nights were just so darned easy! We loved everything - the rice, refried beans and those crispy-skinned chicken legs were the highlights of the week BUT the tostados were just so darned delicious!....we can't wait to repeat this whole meal prep but with different veggies (roasted brussels sprouts and carrots for sure!) We are still talking about those tostados - I would have never thought of feta cheese and that squiggle of sriracha was perfection! Thank you, thank you!
I just did the kale as a side to hickory smoked pork shoulder (pulled pork) and must say it was simple and epic. My wife and I also pick something from Brian as like a weekend dinner date every weekend and last weekend we did his "Sheet Pan Apple Pie" and with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream I must say it to was epic!!!
I love these types of videos! Learning how to cook practically is such a huge skill and not always emphasized with the countless videos online showing regular recipes! I love how you show how to mix and match your leftovers to stretch out your food and leave minimal waste while also keeping your meals feeling creative and tasty. I personally would love more videos like these!
Do you throw out the paper outsides from onion and garlic? Put them in your oven as low as it can go on a cold day and keep it slightly open, dry them out and you can make your own onion and garlic powder, just need a $16 coffee grinder. You can make a lot of seasonings with a coffee grinder.
Just made Night 1's dinner-sooo freaking good. Can't wait to continue eating the beans and rice but also the next recipes. And my grocery bill (exclusively from Aldi) came out under $30. Thanks so much! More videos like this every so often would be greatly appreciated Edit: All of the meals were amazing, and this will be a recipe I come back to many times. My total came to under $30 because I made a few substitutions/omissions (I already had some ingredients, instead of buying a poblano from another store, I used green peppers and jalapenos, I used a mix of kale and spinach). I'd also recommend eating the roasted leg quarters over two days; for me, there's plenty of chicken to enjoy over multiple meals though it obviously won't be as fresh and crispy the second day. The soup also holds great in the freezer and is a great way to use whatever leftover ingredients are in the fridge (green peppers, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, etc.). I also don't have chicke buillon in my pantry, so I just made sure to include all the pan drippings from the roasted chicken in with the soup to compensate for more chicken flavor.
I loved this video! Yes, people may “not” have the capability to buy these things for $30 due to their location or inflation, but y’all can’t deny that he made BOMB food from inexpensive ingredients. There are too many people who need to save money for bills and this is an incredibly helpful guide. Thanks, Bri!
Right now, chicken thighs are almost $3 a pound but they go on sale for between $0.98 and $1.98 so when thighs go on sale, you have this menu plan ready. Then again if times are hard, you can shred the meat and only use 2 or no meat at all. I always save bones in the freezer to make stock. I used to separate pork from chicken but these days I don't bother.
tbh whenever i watch these videos the best part is getting ideas and then working with whatever ingredients i can get for my price range like here in ireland im not getting tostadas anytime soon xD, but i could probably get a ricecake and make something delicious
@@theresaanndiaz3179 I'm an old lady now ... I remember when I could buy chicken legs for 59¢ a pound at the Asian supermarket. Of course, incomes were a lot lower then, too. One thing you can do when chicken (or any meat) goes on sale is buy some extra to freeze. You need to re-package it ... I would wrap individually it in plastic wrap (clingfilm), then put the wrapped pieces in a large zip bag. You can re-use the bag, as it never touches the meat, but it does protect it from freezer burn. I'm not on a tight budget these days, but I still act like I am. I'll buy a rotisserie chicken, eat the meat and freeze the carcass. Later I'll make a chicken and bean stew.
Up to "tostada night" and it's all going really well; looking forward to the fried rice finale tomorrow. Hope we'll get another one of these. I'd be okay going up to $50 for five dinners + really good leftovers for lunch * 2 people = still not pricey. It's the menu design and fairly simple prep that's the big win in this. More please.
My wife and I decided to do this for meals this week. It's soup night tonight, and we are sold. This has made nightly meal prep so easy, and the food is great! I'd love to see another video like this. Thanks, Brian!
I'd like this to be a weekly series too. Give me a list of groceries and a handful of ways to use them. It makes meal planning a breeze and keeps me from eating the same thing every night.
basic chana masala is another cheap, easy, healthy meal with common ingredients and makes for good leftovers. the only additional ingredients are crushed tomatos (~$2) and canned chikpeas (~$2) for like 3 portions. you can also scale it up easily if you want more leftovers
My husband and I followed this video last week. Everything was delicious and easy! I'd love to see this become a series! Made planning and prep so much easier. Thank you!
This is exactly what I needed! I don’t want to eat the same meal prep every day for a week, and I don’t want expensive one-off ingredients and time consuming recipes to follow every night. This is PURE GOLD. Please make more! 😅
Man, I really gotta thank you for this. I’m a grad student, so cost consciousness is kinda critical for me. During the semester it makes sense for me to just get a meal plan (pretty cheap since I work for the university) but during the summer I need to rely on myself more. I’m good enough at the fundamentals, but planning more than 24 hours in advance is a struggle for me. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to the store, bought food for the week, and then ended up wasting half of it because I didn’t have a plan for all of it, forgot to do dishes on Wednesday, and then got too discouraged by the pile of dishes on Thursday to figure out what the hell I was gonna cook. ADHD makes stuff like this way harder than it ought to be. I’m definitely gonna be coming back to this roadmap in a few months. Thank you.
I liked that he showed how to reuse some of the leftovers - I particularly liked the chicken soup, nice idea. If you shop some staples and flexible ingredients that mix well with others - it should be fine. To get creative and find out what you like is part of being a student I think 🤗😎
I struggle so much with the same thing :/ I barely ever follow my own meal plans for the week. Like 25% or less of the plan. I just don't feel like the food I planned and I also can't plan ahead well for cooking itself. I don't wanna cook (or think about cooking) til I'm hungry.
Hey trace, fellow with the same problem here. What helps me a lot its to make the planning of this kinda things a whole activity and to write a step by step guide for myself. This kinda videos help a lot, just take some notes and do exactly what he does. You can improve it to better meet your needs later but the idea is to go back to the notes when you are lost. Take care bro
This is awesome. I’d love to see this as a series! I went over our budget recently and found we spent between $700-$800 just on groceries a month for two people 😳 so this came at the right time for us! Thank you!
@@Xolition I agree it can be challenging. What gets me is the fact that my husband and I, for the most part, don’t buy organic, grass fed etc. because it’s too expensive. We buy store brands, or whatever is on sale. Our main proteins are chicken and shrimp, eggs and beans. Once in a while for something special we’ll get maybe a ribeye or lamb. Even with those parameters it’s still really expensive
that is a lot! I’m not saying this in a judgy way at all because i completely get it, but Id suggest trying to shop at the cheapest store and eating more leftovers. Try to meal plan and it can help a lot!
I LOVE the fact that I can make these recipes vegan/vegetarian & it’s also healthy. Other videos show VERY UNHEALTHY cheap alternatives. You served this video it’s purpose. Thank you!
I just used tofu and added pasta. Made a nice Noodle soup and loved how the tofu became flavor bombs but the other day i got may hands on some jackfruit. I haven't tried with the jack fruit because i found it a day late but its something to consider.@progressiveheart1234
Excellent video! I would just add this tip for the chicken soup: Since you're shredding the chicken, do it BEFORE starting on the soup. Keep the bones and add them into your broth to release even more flavor, and just remove and discard before serving! 🍗 🍲
I love these recipes. They look super chill and gluten and dairy free for the most part. Also, anyone who has issues with digesting beans sprouting them and then cooking them works well. And hard water mixed with baking soda cooks beans without an instant pot. Still takes a while, but they actually soften, and bay leaves even the taste out. And vinegar after cooked.
How about a video 15 pantry staples, 10 produce items and 5 types of protein and how they can be used to make different lunches and dinners for one week?
This is actually legitimately the most useful video I have ever seen to just make healthy meals for cheap, and keep yourself from worrying about what you're gonna cook, I've been looking for this exact video for years it feels like and this is perfect. Thanks!
The world needs more accessible cooking videos just like this. Clear, concise, and without any of the frills that a lot of other cooking channels insist on. Great stuff, keep it up!!
First, I am glad to see a budget meal video from you. That cost per week is very, very affordable and healthy. Now, I prefer the Jasmine rice from Aldi, at around $5.75 a five pound bag. If you can't find Kale that you like, spinach is nice too. Save bones that have already been in the oven. Especially in winter, I have plenty of occasions to put some left over veggies and bones in a pot to make my own broth. I add a bit of tomato paste to beef broth to make it more savory and I do not put any salt in so I can salt it to taste depending on the application. For those without time but with an Instant Pot, there are lots of 45 minute recipes online. To save tomato paste for later use, I cut both ends of the can and push one side till I have portion like a small puck, then slice and repeat to make several of them and freeze them in any plastic wrap.
@@TokyoBlue587 It takes a time of two to get it right. I often snap a frozen puck in half for things like a simple, single serving, Italian pasta and bean soup.
Just saw 2 videos of Brian L. Definitely the only meal prep that is truly healthy. No mess and no fancy nonsense. Just the regular cooks who do not want to be in kitchen all week!❤ thanks Brian
With student loans starting back up these kinda of videos are super helpful. I already make fried rice at least once a week but the tostadas are not something I have thought of before! As always, thanks for the quality of what you do. Enjoy your pickleballin' !
As someone with an inability to process gluten or lactose, I love how accessible this video is to my health needs in addition to the obvious financial benefit! Thank you so much!
Being from an immigrant family, we bought most groceries on sale and we creatively cooked with what we bought. I still mostly shop this way because I love saving $. Shopping for deals does not deprive me - I have a varied diet because sale items rotate. Great video - I will consider finding ways to adapt previously cooked food. I generally cook extra for a varied selection of leftovers so I don't repeat the same meal for a couple days.
I made exactly these recipes last week for 51$ CAN. It was delicious and I had mooore than 20 meals. I hope to see more meal prep (maybe with more cooking on sunday) thank you and Bon appetit !!
I can vouch for garlic kale. Stir frying leafy greens with garlic is absolutely my favourite. There's no kale in my local market (unfortunately), but I've tried it with mustard leaf, spinach, water spinach, and bok choy. I like to add oyster sauce for a little bit of umami too.
I hope these videos are performing well for you! I feel like I remember you talking in a Q&A with your wife a while ago about how this is how y’all cook, but it doesn’t get as many views. I appreciate this!
I love how easy this all looks. I am a full-time working mom of 4 year old twins and I have been at such a meal idea burn out, so it was really nice to come across this video. Just hope my picky kids and husband will have an open mind to try new flavors. I hope you make more videos like this, having easy budget meal ideas is great for anyone.
Just bought all of the pantry and core ingredients we didn’t have. It came very close to the 30$ budget! Day 1 meal is delicious! I imagine the rest of the meals will be as tasty. Thanks for so clearly explaining the recipes and schedules, and for including the list in the description. I just copy/pasted those ingredients into a google sheets spreadsheet, went to the Lidl near me and bought all the ingredients. So it is also a time saving venture! Day 1 prep took about 1.5 hours (on Sunday 👍) but if it means that the rest of the week is minimal prep, it will be so worth it. Go try this meal plan peeps!
I love (and subscribe to) this sort of cooking. It's great that you have the foresight to think of everything for a full 5 nights of dinner PLUS lunch leftovers! It's not just about frugality, but creativity! It's becoming a lost art and I'm grateful that you're introducing this style of food production to many, and keeping it alive for (plus inspiring) me and many others who try to cook this way for our families/selves.
I can only repeat what others have said, this is actually a realistic budget restricted video! And still versatile. As someone who really struggles with breakfast, I would love to see a breakfast meal prep of some sort that is maybe not too heavy on the carb side (like oatmeal etc, I need to watch out for my blood sugar). Thanks a lot!
I’ve been trying to simplify my cooking so I can spend more time out of the kitchen, and this is so inspiring for me. It would be easy to swap out ingredients for this too (some skirt steak would be delicious on top of those rice and beans, easy to add chicken or ground beef to the tostada, etc), but it’s the framework of thinking of simple meals that are nourishing, quick, and TASTY that keeps me from ordering another pizza. So glad I found your channel a year ago, almost everything I cook now is from your content!
This is actually a really good budget video that shows how you can prep for the next night without much extra effort Saving time and money with this one. It's also a bunch of stuff I actually enjoy and would eat, and familiar to my southwestern sensibilities.
I like trying new recipes, but it usually involves purchasing a bunch of new ingredients or specialty items when I should probably be spending less. Videos like this make me want to take on the challenge of cooking on a budget. Love it
This is excellent. I love eating good food for the cheap. I will definitely incorporate this into my weekly regimen. Thanks for the awesome video, Brian! I look forward to all of your videos. Cheers!
LOVE IT!!! I'd do a $5 chicken from the deli and have probably the same amount of meat, but can customize to preference AND have a carcass to boil for stock/broth! Also, quite a few of these items can be found at Dollar Tree or the .99 store. I'm doing this next week!!!
Following your video this week for meals for my husband, toddler, and I. It’s been working great with flavorful meals and lots of leftovers! Thanks! I appreciate you breaking things down in your video description. It’s made it easier to reference while cooking.
Hey Viewers! These recipes follow pretty simple formulas, where you pretty much have 5 different parts: Protein element 1, protein element 2, simple filling vessel, light veggie element, and bread vessel. So, get creative! Maybe you want an east asian week, so you get mongolian beef, miso paste, steamed rice, wasabi tomato salad, and homemade fluffy bread. How about Indian food? Butter chicken, chana masala, basmati rice, indian spiced yogurt, and garlic naan may be your choices then. How about a more European approach? Curry werst sausage, chicken cutlets, roasted potatoes, baby spinach salad, and italian focaccia bread may be your choice. All these different options can make this meal plan very versatile!! And when you make 5 simple meals in bulk like this, it’s spread out to about $6 a bulk meal, which is more than enough to feed yourself. Focus on buying basics, such as milk and eggs, and use these ideas as placeholders to widen your meal options!!! I seriously have been craving beans because of this video, just as a side note. Gonna make some bean tostadas like you made, because they looked delicious!
Love this! So nice to see a budget cooking video by someone who knows how to cook! We are keen home cooks, and often blow the grocery budget out each week. Would love to see more of these (a $50 one would be so great)
Whole chicken, per pound, is actually pretty terrible compared to leg quarters. At that point, might as well go to Costco and get a rotisserie chicken. Net result is usually around $2/lb of actually meet which is REALLY good.
Bone-in chicken legs have way more value per $ than a whole chicken. When it goes on sale I literally fill the freezer with it. I separate the meat and bones before freezing too, easy future meal prep and awesome stock bones.
Hey, Bri! Excellent vídeo! Thank you for showing that with some planning is possible to eat cheap AND healthy. By the way, that black beans, rice, kale and fried egg dish ressemble a lot a typical brazilian everyday meal. I suggest it could be a series of vídeos in your channel. Greetings from Rio, Brazil!
You can also use the leftover beans and rice to make "Tacu tacu", a peruvian dish. Mix both of them and heat up a pan with a bit of oil. Push the mixture onto the edge of the pan with the edge on top of the heat to brown. Then tap the handle of the pan with your wrist to turn your mixture and brown on the other side. You'll end up with a delicious mixture of beans and rice that has a nice browning and a bit of crunch on the outside, while creamy and moist on the inside.
Not being sufficiently motivated to go through all the comments to see if it has been brought up, I'll just drop this here. The bean recipe and pressure cooking time is specific to an Instant Pot, not a dedicated pressure cooker. I'm not trying to be nit picky, but I thought it should be mentioned. I have not used my pressure cooker enough to be versed in bean cookery (but will probably start using it more). Concern about the timing led me to look into it, and instant pots cook at a lower pressure and therefore take longer than a dedicated pressure cooker would. Just for comparison, my pressure cooker instructions indicates 8-10 min for black beans and I probably cooked them closer to 12 - 14, so they were pretty well done by the time I was finished. But that bean recipe is pretty sick, as is the sofrito rice.
Your videos have been a Godsend... I made the sofrito rice, beans, and garlicky kale tonight and I'm SO DAMN PROUD of myself... I was never taught how to cook growing up, so I wouldn't consider myself much of a cook (I am a great baker though so I pick up recipes easily)... I truly feel like I'm dining well tonight. Thank you Brian for teaching me this.I can't wait to see my husband's reaction!
Definitely one of your best videos, super useful in these times. Plus if you can get cheap parboiled brown rice then you also get a lot more fiber. Congrats, you hit the nail in the head!
For the first time of my life, I’m going to set a food budget . This month I tried to cook more but still spending around $1,000 for 2 adults and 1 child. I definitely need to learn to do more things from scratch. And I actually grew up eating similar to this. I’m going to go back to that! Thanks for this video!
This was amazing! I can’t wait to try out these meals. I’m not sure you planned this, but a lot of these foods are stuff I get from my food pantry. In fact, I have just about everything I need for this video in my home from my latest “shop”. These meals are not only cheap, I can feel confident sharing this video to some of my friends who also use our local pantry knowing that we will have most of the ingredients and options that we can substitute to make the meals. It might be nice to see more meals like this, possibly you could see what your local food bank hands out and see what other ways you could put foods together?
Yes! I am so impressed with all the people following his meal plan day by day. I usually watch other ladies who have TH-cam videos like these and I usually don’t read comments of people actually following the meal plans. It’s just usually comments of suggestions or comments of praises but never of people saying how they actually followed the steps for a week!
Followed this whole menu and all in all was very happy. The cost of everything was about $36. That is without any of the “pantry” items which I also had to purchase. Meal 1: very tasty, used a lot of pots/pans- tons of leftovers, very filling. Meal 2: easy, not my favorite to eat cheap chicken so I doused that bad boy in PeriPeri sauce. Meal 3: who knew tostadas were the bomb? Surprised how much I liked it, and the prep was incredibly simple. only downside is a month after making this I still have like 18 leftover tostadas. How long do those last? Asking for a friend?? Meal 4: soup was very tasty and made a ton of food which I froze. It was a little time consuming for a weeknight, but luckily clean up wasn’t too bad. Meal 5: fried rice. Tasty. Fried rice using the week’s leftovers is always yum. Thanks Bri!! Love this kind of content. Really enjoyed how ingredients would be re-purposed on different nights. Would love a shorter day series where leftovers from this go in that tomorrow kind of thing.
Thank you! This is wonderful and appreciated during these times of expensive groceries! It's really hard for me to figure out how to make meals/leftovers for the week while trying to save money for my family. I try to find recipe plans online using a simple grocery list to use on other recipes throughout the week that makes weeknights not too heaving on the cooking as I am usually not in the mood to cook an entire new meal after work. My intentions are always good, but end up spending too much and unfortunately, ingredients go to waste. :( ~ Being able to watch you do this is a huge plus! I would love it if you could do some more of these types of videos. :) Again, thank you so much!
I love budget videos like this. Not just because they result is some insanely cheap meals for how they taste and their nutritional content, but also because THIS IS HOW BUSY PEOPLE CAN STILL COOK. Meal prep saves so much time by making multiple servings at once and putting most of the work out front that preparing and cooking like this still means I get a home-cooked dinner every night. It's why I love soups and stews. Most of the time, the ONLY cooking work is done up front on a weekend or unbusy weeknight. Bulk meal-prepping up front is both faster and (mostly) cheaper than cooking fresh every time. Most of the time, it even rivals the convenience of takeout for me. The combined time it would take for me to drive to get food even once a day would be more than the effort i put in to make a pot of chili on Sunday that lasts until Friday. Keep it up, Brian! You, Ethan Chlebowski, and Adam Rageusea are kings in this department of efficient cooking!
By no means being negative, just comparing: As of October 25/23 in Ontario, Canada, a 4-pack of chicken quarters is over $13. That is half the budget there. A single avocado is 1.99. Yes, this is still a terrific plan to keep it as cheap as possible and not have to eat 75% rice and noodles.
Thank you so much for making this video, I'm trying to find grocery lists that I can rotate every week since I get tired of eating the same foods easily, but I want to start saving money on food - this video was perfect! If you ever make another video like this, I'd love to see what a week planned out with lentils instead of rice would look like!! 😊
Hmm I would consider lentils to be more of a substitute for the beans rather than for the rice. Lentil carrot soup with ginger and rosemary instead of refried beans, naan rather than tostada shells.
I've seen multiple videos, but this is the one that made me subscribe. I generally spend more, and love cooking, but seeing an actual cook and the way you can prepare so little to taste so good is truly what I felt I was missing. I can make expensive ingredients taste great with no issue, something like this to save some money is awesome. I'll be trying this. Thank you so much!
Thank you for the transparency with the loan amount and grocery prices. As someone who's extremely anxious about my student debt it really helps to see how people live with it and conquer.
I'm planning to follow this for next week, but I think I'll add a couple more chicken legs so I can have chicken fried rice and some chicken on the tostadas. I absolutely love these meal prep videos and I'm joining the chorus that's asking for a whole series!
I think your plan is more realistic. One bean tostada for dinner followed by one bean tostada for lunch, seems like very small portion sizes that might leave people hungry and more likely to break the budget by supplementing with convenience food. Adding just a few more dollars to the budget to get slightly larger meals would probably save money in the long run.
One of the very few YT videos I've seen using real food, and not boxed, overly processed, illusion of food ingredients, to make budget-friendly meals. Thank you!
I love this menu and skills group! This is not too far off the cooking classes I taught for teens who were learning life skills with limited resources. A couple of things I think are worth considering: canned greens (I like Glory brand) are a good option and can make getting dinner ready a bit quicker and while they are different than the fresher steamed kale, they are already seasoned which can be helpful if you don't have a big pantry of seasonings. Speaking of seasonings, if you know of a spice blend you like (Tony Chachere, Badia etc) you can get by with buying fewer individual spices at one time and still have a well-seasoned meal. And last, dried onions are so good to have around because they are inexpensive, don't go bad, and don't need to be prepped. Anything you're cooking with liquid (rice, soup, etc) can rehydrate onions to where they are almost like fresh and otherwise, crushing them up makes them basically disappear into your food while bringing that aromatic element to the dish.
I ferment a bag of black beans for 3 days then freeze them in 2 cup portions. Put the beans in instant pot with 4 cups water or liquid and any seasoning you want. Pressure cook for 12-15 minutes. Depends if you are adding to say chili and they will cook again. Really quick and easy and doesn’t give you gas!
Please, please make more healthy budget friendly recipes for a week. I found this so helpful! I came up with a few variations to mix it up and use items on sale, but your inspiration would be greatly appreciated!
Thank for including beans. I usually use carb balance wheat tortillas with low fat cheese and a scoop of Greek yogurt for a delicious taco. It’s so fulfilling. ❤
2 quick hacks on Day 1: Set the chicken legs out on the rack as Brian has in the video and add your salt & pepper generously to dry brine for roasting Day 2? Put your avocado in a sealed container full of water and put in the fridge. This will prevent the flesh from going bad before Day 3 assuming you bought a ripe avocado on Day 1
Please do not put avocado in a container with water in the fridge, that is a health hazard! I really dont like to comment on things but this is just not a good thing, just put the avocado in the fridge as is, no water, that will slow the process for ripening
The budget-friendly meal ideas you shared are not only practical but also look incredibly delicious and nutritious. It's inspiring to see how creativity and smart shopping can result in such a variety of meals without breaking the bank. Thanks for sharing these fantastic ideas and proving that eating well doesn't have to be expensive!
I had a $20/week grocery budget in summers when I was a student. There are so many similarities between this video and how I cooked back then! Garlicky kale, dried beans, roasted chicken, soup from the chicken stock. But I didn't mind eating repeat meals more often, so I'd cook twice a week and eat leftovers more. My one tip would be to brine the chicken, salt is cheap and it adds good flavor
I made beans yesterday. Soaked all day and they cooked really quick. Made multiple dishes and made myself some chili no one in my house likes chili but I do.
might try this next week. I'm a bit intimidated by all the prep work but it doesn't seem TOO bad... of course it'll naturally be harder the first time but after you already know what to do, it won't seem as overwhelming. Everything looks great, thanks!!
If you liked this video, see how I make 20 CRAVEABLE meals in 1 hour. It's kind of like this one, only tastier: th-cam.com/video/dH0WAYgWAOE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Ma8TH7zYNQR4LC-A
you can aslo just make guacamole for your tostada and make beans + guacamole
Congratulations on being one of the only TH-cam cooks who actually seems to understand what a budget is for real people
.... You must not have looked up budget meal channels before. There's a whole army of them out there. Of course another channel covering cheap meals never hurt also.
@@jjdiner7862 The problem is that I have. And most of them are... disingenuous at best. My favourite shit one was one of the most overly-produced TH-cam cooking shows I've ever seen and had a special highly-organized drawer for take out sauce packets. Talk about idea/presentation mismatch.
My actual favourite will always be Hand to Mouth, though.
exactly !!! that kwoon guy is the other.
@@jjdiner7862a lot of them are out of touch though. It’ll be like “eating cheap is easy. For this dish all you need is rice, a can of tuna, 14 exotic spices (we’re not counting these in the price since you definitely have them in your cupboard) and a $1500 specialized machine that is only useful for this one dish. Use the link in the bio for 3% off!”
@@someguy4262my favorite creator for budget meals is a lady on tiktok that always buys at dollar store or uses what you usually get with food stamps, she always counts every item in the final price (i hate when they use "10 cents of soy sauce" when you can't buy 10 cents of it), never assumes you have anything other than salt in your pantry and most of her recipes can be done with only a microwave for those without access to a stove!!
Hey man, I'm a sous chef in a fancy steakhouse in Las Vegas. I am following your lead for 3 reasons; inflation, high blood pressure, and easy clean up, something that very few culinary TH-camrs address!
If you want some great advice on how to burn calories and lose weight I recommend you see my v logs. .
PLEASE MAKE THIS A BUDGET MEAL PREP SERIES!
Yes, please!! I need this!
I agree.
Yes, please! This was awesome!
I don’t understand grams
Yes!!!!
Just finished the entire menu and both me and my wife agree that every meal was delicious. Other than having to purchase a few of the pantry staples, this cost me around $37-$40 total. And the great thing was that we even had enough to do a couple of breakfast items with the items left over, so no waste. Hands down, one of the best videos. Keep them coming.
Try purchasing from a local ethnic store. The groceries are often cheaper. For Mediterranean food, see if you can find middle eastern, turkish, greek, Bulgarian, Albanian markets. Italian markets are pricey in my opinion. Depending on what community you have around you, you can find cheaper and better quality there.
@@mericlre it lasted a good 7 days or more. I finally had to throw the rest of the rice out cause it made a lot. And I was able to eat chicken soup for days. And the good thing was if you buy the veggies, you have plenty to make more fried rice. Plus rice is cheap.
@Derek2001 You can save money by repurposing leftovers like rice instead of throwing away 🙂 For 2-3 people you only need about a cup and a half of leftover rice to make fried rice if you also add veggies, egg and other protein to bulk it up. You can resteam it with some veggie broth then mix with lime juice, fresh cilantro and other spices then add some black beans, meat, and cheese wrap it in a tortilla for a delicious burrito. The list goes on. It's fun to make leftovers into new yummy meals and great on the budget!
Rice can actually be frozen for later use.
As a person who LOVES to cook but is getting pretty burnt out with life and choice fatigue (and also has an increasingly tight budget) I would be THRILLED to see this type of video repeated a few times over with different weekly plans
Thanks Brian and Lorn!
Right there with you, Flynn!
You got this Flynn 💛
Yes!!!!
Choice fatigue - great way to put it! I am also tired of coming up ideas and the food prices are killing me 😢
@c.salerno5201 omg..same. especially when I have to think about and take into consideration the different pallets of my 2 little girls 🤣🤣
AS A SINGLE SENIOR MALE ON AN EXTREME BUDGET I CANT THANK YOU ENOUGH I WILL BE MAKING ALL OF YOUR DELICIOUS MEALS I CAN'T WAIT I HAVE MY SHOPPING LIST READY .🎉❤🎉❤🎉❤
Good luck !!!! You can do it
Yo, everyone please watch this video 20 times, like it, and post it everywhere. This is the kind of content we should be rewarding, not some dude cooking wagyu in the talo of some rare species of duck and then covering with gold. This is actionable, helpful content. I've legit been really stressed about the grocery budget lately. Was able to cut it in half this week, and I just made the first meal tonight and my wife loved it!
Bri, a couple more videos in this vein and I'll be set! Thanks so much for the awesome content
try integrating tomatoes, carrots, celery, onion - can make minestrone (throw in a can of white beans) for 1st night dinner/2nd lunch. then make an easy spaghetti or bolognese sauce (add ground beef) for 2nd night. then make a frittata with eggs and veggies (any leftovers will do!) for 3rd night. then top it off with some fresh kitty kat your wife can provide =)
I want a whole cookbook of these budget recipes!
"cooking wagyu in the talo of some rare species of duck and then covering with gold" lmao I know exactly what you mean
Try watching frugal fit mom and julie Pacheco, all their content is about being smart with your money when ut comes to groceries. They actually take u into tge grocery store then show u how to cook it.
My top low-budget survival foods:
Dried beans
Chickpeas
Lentils
Rice
Potatoes
Pasta
Eggs
Carrots
Cabbage
Onions
Frozen broccoli
Canned diced tomatoes
Seasonings
COFFEE 🤣
Broccoli quiche makes a great meal.
Shakshuka is cheap and delicious.
Curried lentils are SICK. 🤣
Pasta never seems to stick with me as long as legumes do.
Potatoes are an underrated survival food.
I just wrote a long comment praising your good looks and appealing personality, then exited without posting. So, I will just say that I appreciate your videos because as a widow over 80 I've lost my interest in food and have just been eating junk. I watch food videos such as yours to try to jump-start my appetite. Thank you.
As a Brazilian, I cannot help but notice how similar this approach is to our traditional way of cooking and planning our meals throughout the week, though with the implementation of different techniques and ingredients (mainly spices). It really made me appreciate our food culture and resourcefulness!
As soon as I saw the fried egg on top of the “prato feito” I went to the comments looking for other brazilians. Só faltou a farofa
Brasil é riquíssimo em termos de qualidade alimentar, sobretudo quando falamos de valor nutricional! Considerando a postura de preparar a comida para a semana - que, pelo menos aqui em casa, é bem comum - esse vídeo é quase uma cara de canal BR hahaha
I noticed a long time ago that the majority of South American cuisine is what Americans might call poverty food, South America is so ingenious with their recipes and really know hot so spice up simple but delicious dishes.
Morei no Brasil por dois anos maravilhosos. Ainda tenho saudades da culinária e aprendi a cozinhar muitas comidas diferentes para compartilhar com meus filhos.
please share some dish names! especially any recipes you have for brazilian black rice and beans (and pork i think it is). so good!
Just bought my groceries home. My total cost was $37.38. (Part of the country plays a part) And I did substitute a few ingredients such as flour tortillas vs Tostada shells, for personal preference. The most expensive thing I bought was the frozen peas at $4.79 a bag. Crazy! I can't wait to start cooking!
Switch for canned or dried peas, which are a bit cheaper!
@@SuperIce6374 I was about to say the same thing. Just rinse the canned peas and they are comparable to the frozen variety.
Yes! I would LOVE this to be a series! Different ingredients different meals. It’s one thing to make a meal but trying to minimize costs and stretch your ingredients through out a week is so helpful to watch and get ideas for
a SERIES... YES... Great Idea...
Are you listening Brian?
Yep, I third this!!
Whole chickens also have less salmonella
Its embarrassing but i had a large change in my life the past could of days and need to keep all spending as low as possible and i have tears at my desk at work right now. This came at the perfect time as ive just been eating half the amount i normally qould and only once a day. Thank you❤
You got this!!
It will get better. Hang in there friend.
I'm not on a tight budget like this, but I really like the format of this video - the meal planning, leftover-using, and focus on simple recipes and basic techniques are all very useful to me as a very new cook.
Yes! Use and resuse
They need to teach this in school!!!
My husband and I just LOVED these recipes. I made everything exactly as posted and, I must say, it was a wonderful week of truly delicious meals plus most nights were just so darned easy! We loved everything - the rice, refried beans and those crispy-skinned chicken legs were the highlights of the week BUT the tostados were just so darned delicious!....we can't wait to repeat this whole meal prep but with different veggies (roasted brussels sprouts and carrots for sure!) We are still talking about those tostados - I would have never thought of feta cheese and that squiggle of sriracha was perfection! Thank you, thank you!
I just did the kale as a side to hickory smoked pork shoulder (pulled pork) and must say it was simple and epic. My wife and I also pick something from Brian as like a weekend dinner date every weekend and last weekend we did his "Sheet Pan Apple Pie" and with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream I must say it to was epic!!!
I love these types of videos! Learning how to cook practically is such a huge skill and not always emphasized with the countless videos online showing regular recipes! I love how you show how to mix and match your leftovers to stretch out your food and leave minimal waste while also keeping your meals feeling creative and tasty. I personally would love more videos like these!
this was actually a real cooking video that is extremely useful for your own cooking! lovei t!
hear hear
Agree, I would love a wholes series of these!
Do you throw out the paper outsides from onion and garlic? Put them in your oven as low as it can go on a cold day and keep it slightly open, dry them out and you can make your own onion and garlic powder, just need a $16 coffee grinder. You can make a lot of seasonings with a coffee grinder.
@@heruhcanedean for real!!?! And the skins alone have enough flavor?
Just made Night 1's dinner-sooo freaking good. Can't wait to continue eating the beans and rice but also the next recipes. And my grocery bill (exclusively from Aldi) came out under $30. Thanks so much! More videos like this every so often would be greatly appreciated
Edit: All of the meals were amazing, and this will be a recipe I come back to many times. My total came to under $30 because I made a few substitutions/omissions (I already had some ingredients, instead of buying a poblano from another store, I used green peppers and jalapenos, I used a mix of kale and spinach). I'd also recommend eating the roasted leg quarters over two days; for me, there's plenty of chicken to enjoy over multiple meals though it obviously won't be as fresh and crispy the second day. The soup also holds great in the freezer and is a great way to use whatever leftover ingredients are in the fridge (green peppers, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, etc.). I also don't have chicke buillon in my pantry, so I just made sure to include all the pan drippings from the roasted chicken in with the soup to compensate for more chicken flavor.
I loved this video! Yes, people may “not” have the capability to buy these things for $30 due to their location or inflation, but y’all can’t deny that he made BOMB food from inexpensive ingredients. There are too many people who need to save money for bills and this is an incredibly helpful guide. Thanks, Bri!
Right now, chicken thighs are almost $3 a pound but they go on sale for between $0.98 and $1.98 so when thighs go on sale, you have this menu plan ready.
Then again if times are hard, you can shred the meat and only use 2 or no meat at all.
I always save bones in the freezer to make stock. I used to separate pork from chicken but these days I don't bother.
tbh whenever i watch these videos the best part is getting ideas and then working with whatever ingredients i can get for my price range
like here in ireland im not getting tostadas anytime soon xD, but i could probably get a ricecake and make something delicious
@@jamescanjuggleYou can make your own tortillas and fry them or use tortilla chips.
@@theresaanndiaz3179 I'm an old lady now ... I remember when I could buy chicken legs for 59¢ a pound at the Asian supermarket. Of course, incomes were a lot lower then, too.
One thing you can do when chicken (or any meat) goes on sale is buy some extra to freeze. You need to re-package it ... I would wrap individually it in plastic wrap (clingfilm), then put the wrapped pieces in a large zip bag. You can re-use the bag, as it never touches the meat, but it does protect it from freezer burn.
I'm not on a tight budget these days, but I still act like I am. I'll buy a rotisserie chicken, eat the meat and freeze the carcass. Later I'll make a chicken and bean stew.
His method of using the previous dish to build off of was amazing. Definitely something worth applying.
Up to "tostada night" and it's all going really well; looking forward to the fried rice finale tomorrow. Hope we'll get another one of these. I'd be okay going up to $50 for five dinners + really good leftovers for lunch * 2 people = still not pricey. It's the menu design and fairly simple prep that's the big win in this. More please.
Thank you. You're the Real-MVP. Even added the grocery list. This is the content we all need right now.
My wife and I decided to do this for meals this week. It's soup night tonight, and we are sold. This has made nightly meal prep so easy, and the food is great! I'd love to see another video like this. Thanks, Brian!
I'd like this to be a weekly series too. Give me a list of groceries and a handful of ways to use them. It makes meal planning a breeze and keeps me from eating the same thing every night.
basic chana masala is another cheap, easy, healthy meal with common ingredients and makes for good leftovers. the only additional ingredients are crushed tomatos (~$2) and canned chikpeas (~$2) for like 3 portions. you can also scale it up easily if you want more leftovers
I'd never thought of making my own channa masala but you're right! I can hardly wait...yum!
💯💯💯 this is sooooo good.
My husband and I followed this video last week. Everything was delicious and easy! I'd love to see this become a series! Made planning and prep so much easier. Thank you!
This is exactly what I needed! I don’t want to eat the same meal prep every day for a week, and I don’t want expensive one-off ingredients and time consuming recipes to follow every night. This is PURE GOLD. Please make more! 😅
Man, I really gotta thank you for this. I’m a grad student, so cost consciousness is kinda critical for me. During the semester it makes sense for me to just get a meal plan (pretty cheap since I work for the university) but during the summer I need to rely on myself more.
I’m good enough at the fundamentals, but planning more than 24 hours in advance is a struggle for me. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to the store, bought food for the week, and then ended up wasting half of it because I didn’t have a plan for all of it, forgot to do dishes on Wednesday, and then got too discouraged by the pile of dishes on Thursday to figure out what the hell I was gonna cook. ADHD makes stuff like this way harder than it ought to be.
I’m definitely gonna be coming back to this roadmap in a few months. Thank you.
Half way through your comment I thought “poor homie has ADHD” so yeah that tracks!! We out here with a fridge full of groceries on shuffle!
I liked that he showed how to reuse some of the leftovers - I particularly liked the chicken soup, nice idea.
If you shop some staples and flexible ingredients that mix well with others - it should be fine. To get creative and find out what you like is part of being a student I think 🤗😎
Make it habit to dedicate just 30 minutes a night cleaning the kitchen
I struggle so much with the same thing :/ I barely ever follow my own meal plans for the week. Like 25% or less of the plan. I just don't feel like the food I planned and I also can't plan ahead well for cooking itself. I don't wanna cook (or think about cooking) til I'm hungry.
Hey trace, fellow with the same problem here. What helps me a lot its to make the planning of this kinda things a whole activity and to write a step by step guide for myself. This kinda videos help a lot, just take some notes and do exactly what he does. You can improve it to better meet your needs later but the idea is to go back to the notes when you are lost.
Take care bro
People ain't watching stuff like this cause it's entertaining anymore they're watching it cause they need help.
Im so poor lol
This is awesome. I’d love to see this as a series! I went over our budget recently and found we spent between $700-$800 just on groceries a month for two people 😳 so this came at the right time for us! Thank you!
Same. It's ridiculous trying to eat healthy. Grass Fed Beef, happy chickens, organic veggies, etc.
@@Xolition I agree it can be challenging. What gets me is the fact that my husband and I, for the most part, don’t buy organic, grass fed etc. because it’s too expensive. We buy store brands, or whatever is on sale. Our main proteins are chicken and shrimp, eggs and beans. Once in a while for something special we’ll get maybe a ribeye or lamb. Even with those parameters it’s still really expensive
damm thats quite a lot
that is a lot! I’m not saying this in a judgy way at all because i completely get it, but Id suggest trying to shop at the cheapest store and eating more leftovers. Try to meal plan and it can help a lot!
12 bucks a day isn't bad for food expenses, but you can definitely cut that in half easy.
I LOVE the fact that I can make these recipes vegan/vegetarian & it’s also healthy. Other videos show VERY UNHEALTHY cheap alternatives. You served this video it’s purpose. Thank you!
What was your chicken replacement, if I may ask (mostly vegan here)?
I just used tofu and added pasta. Made a nice Noodle soup and loved how the tofu became flavor bombs but the other day i got may hands on some jackfruit. I haven't tried with the jack fruit because i found it a day late but its something to consider.@progressiveheart1234
Excellent video! I would just add this tip for the chicken soup:
Since you're shredding the chicken, do it BEFORE starting on the soup. Keep the bones and add them into your broth to release even more flavor, and just remove and discard before serving! 🍗 🍲
Good tip.
I love these recipes. They look super chill and gluten and dairy free for the most part. Also, anyone who has issues with digesting beans sprouting them and then cooking them works well. And hard water mixed with baking soda cooks beans without an instant pot. Still takes a while, but they actually soften, and bay leaves even the taste out. And vinegar after cooked.
How about a video 15 pantry staples, 10 produce items and 5 types of protein and how they can be used to make different lunches and dinners for one week?
This is actually legitimately the most useful video I have ever seen to just make healthy meals for cheap, and keep yourself from worrying about what you're gonna cook, I've been looking for this exact video for years it feels like and this is perfect. Thanks!
The world needs more accessible cooking videos just like this. Clear, concise, and without any of the frills that a lot of other cooking channels insist on. Great stuff, keep it up!!
Chef Jack Owens is pretty good with meal prep ideas. Possibly not as cheap but still affordable most;y I think
we all poor out here! friggin inflation and our money being sent overseas!
First, I am glad to see a budget meal video from you. That cost per week is very, very affordable and healthy. Now, I prefer the Jasmine rice from Aldi, at around $5.75 a five pound bag. If you can't find Kale that you like, spinach is nice too. Save bones that have already been in the oven. Especially in winter, I have plenty of occasions to put some left over veggies and bones in a pot to make my own broth. I add a bit of tomato paste to beef broth to make it more savory and I do not put any salt in so I can salt it to taste depending on the application. For those without time but with an Instant Pot, there are lots of 45 minute recipes online. To save tomato paste for later use, I cut both ends of the can and push one side till I have portion like a small puck, then slice and repeat to make several of them and freeze them in any plastic wrap.
That’s a great idea for the tomato paste!
@@TokyoBlue587 It takes a time of two to get it right. I often snap a frozen puck in half for things like a simple, single serving, Italian pasta and bean soup.
I freeze tomato paste as ice-cubes or in a freezer bag.
@@An_Gold same and to protect them from freezer burn I wrap them in aluminium foil pieces. If you are careful, you can even reuse the foil :)
@@AquariumRandomVideo2 That's nice, thank you.
Just saw 2 videos of Brian L. Definitely the only meal prep that is truly healthy. No mess and no fancy nonsense. Just the regular cooks who do not want to be in kitchen all week!❤ thanks Brian
With student loans starting back up these kinda of videos are super helpful. I already make fried rice at least once a week but the tostadas are not something I have thought of before! As always, thanks for the quality of what you do. Enjoy your pickleballin' !
As someone with an inability to process gluten or lactose, I love how accessible this video is to my health needs in addition to the obvious financial benefit! Thank you so much!
Being from an immigrant family, we bought most groceries on sale and we creatively cooked with what we bought. I still mostly shop this way because I love saving $. Shopping for deals does not deprive me - I have a varied diet because sale items rotate. Great video - I will consider finding ways to adapt previously cooked food. I generally cook extra for a varied selection of leftovers so I don't repeat the same meal for a couple days.
Ht😮 5 sa
I made exactly these recipes last week for 51$ CAN. It was delicious and I had mooore than 20 meals. I hope to see more meal prep (maybe with more cooking on sunday) thank you and Bon appetit !!
This format of meal prep videos really is incredible, keep up the great work
I can vouch for garlic kale.
Stir frying leafy greens with garlic is absolutely my favourite. There's no kale in my local market (unfortunately), but I've tried it with mustard leaf, spinach, water spinach, and bok choy. I like to add oyster sauce for a little bit of umami too.
I hope these videos are performing well for you! I feel like I remember you talking in a Q&A with your wife a while ago about how this is how y’all cook, but it doesn’t get as many views. I appreciate this!
I love how easy this all looks. I am a full-time working mom of 4 year old twins and I have been at such a meal idea burn out, so it was really nice to come across this video. Just hope my picky kids and husband will have an open mind to try new flavors. I hope you make more videos like this, having easy budget meal ideas is great for anyone.
There's a ton of great food-tubers (papa Kenji, Chlebowski etc) but damn if Bri-man don't consistently put out recipes I'll actually make
Just bought all of the pantry and core ingredients we didn’t have. It came very close to the 30$ budget!
Day 1 meal is delicious! I imagine the rest of the meals will be as tasty. Thanks for so clearly explaining the recipes and schedules, and for including the list in the description. I just copy/pasted those ingredients into a google sheets spreadsheet, went to the Lidl near me and bought all the ingredients. So it is also a time saving venture!
Day 1 prep took about 1.5 hours (on Sunday 👍) but if it means that the rest of the week is minimal prep, it will be so worth it.
Go try this meal plan peeps!
I love (and subscribe to) this sort of cooking. It's great that you have the foresight to think of everything for a full 5 nights of dinner PLUS lunch leftovers! It's not just about frugality, but creativity! It's becoming a lost art and I'm grateful that you're introducing this style of food production to many, and keeping it alive for (plus inspiring) me and many others who try to cook this way for our families/selves.
I can only repeat what others have said, this is actually a realistic budget restricted video! And still versatile. As someone who really struggles with breakfast, I would love to see a breakfast meal prep of some sort that is maybe not too heavy on the carb side (like oatmeal etc, I need to watch out for my blood sugar). Thanks a lot!
I’ve been trying to simplify my cooking so I can spend more time out of the kitchen, and this is so inspiring for me. It would be easy to swap out ingredients for this too (some skirt steak would be delicious on top of those rice and beans, easy to add chicken or ground beef to the tostada, etc), but it’s the framework of thinking of simple meals that are nourishing, quick, and TASTY that keeps me from ordering another pizza. So glad I found your channel a year ago, almost everything I cook now is from your content!
This is actually a really good budget video that shows how you can prep for the next night without much extra effort
Saving time and money with this one.
It's also a bunch of stuff I actually enjoy and would eat, and familiar to my southwestern sensibilities.
Please, keep these types of videos coming. With the cold weather months on the way, more ideas and different recipes are a must. Thanks Brian!!
I like trying new recipes, but it usually involves purchasing a bunch of new ingredients or specialty items when I should probably be spending less. Videos like this make me want to take on the challenge of cooking on a budget. Love it
This is excellent. I love eating good food for the cheap. I will definitely incorporate this into my weekly regimen. Thanks for the awesome video, Brian! I look forward to all of your videos. Cheers!
LOVE IT!!! I'd do a $5 chicken from the deli and have probably the same amount of meat, but can customize to preference AND have a carcass to boil for stock/broth! Also, quite a few of these items can be found at Dollar Tree or the .99 store. I'm doing this next week!!!
besides costco (whose membership fee is not affordable/cost-effective for everything), where else can you get a decent deli chicken for $5?
Following your video this week for meals for my husband, toddler, and I. It’s been working great with flavorful meals and lots of leftovers! Thanks! I appreciate you breaking things down in your video description. It’s made it easier to reference while cooking.
In Canada, same ingredients and grocery list is a minimum of 75$. You are so lucky to have cheaper prices.
Found this channel just recently but I already love your no BS style videos. Thanks for producing hight quality videos that are actually useful.
Hey Viewers! These recipes follow pretty simple formulas, where you pretty much have 5 different parts: Protein element 1, protein element 2, simple filling vessel, light veggie element, and bread vessel. So, get creative! Maybe you want an east asian week, so you get mongolian beef, miso paste, steamed rice, wasabi tomato salad, and homemade fluffy bread. How about Indian food? Butter chicken, chana masala, basmati rice, indian spiced yogurt, and garlic naan may be your choices then. How about a more European approach? Curry werst sausage, chicken cutlets, roasted potatoes, baby spinach salad, and italian focaccia bread may be your choice. All these different options can make this meal plan very versatile!! And when you make 5 simple meals in bulk like this, it’s spread out to about $6 a bulk meal, which is more than enough to feed yourself. Focus on buying basics, such as milk and eggs, and use these ideas as placeholders to widen your meal options!!!
I seriously have been craving beans because of this video, just as a side note. Gonna make some bean tostadas like you made, because they looked delicious!
Love this! So nice to see a budget cooking video by someone who knows how to cook! We are keen home cooks, and often blow the grocery budget out each week. Would love to see more of these (a $50 one would be so great)
I love budget maintaining ideas. Groceries are expensive in my area and I appreciate your ideas for using ingredients in more than one way.
You could have bought a whole chicken. People tend to overlook them in favor of split chicken, but there's such a value there.
yes and it makes wonderful broth too
And can use for stock !
whole chickens are usually almost double the price per pound of leg quarters
Whole chicken, per pound, is actually pretty terrible compared to leg quarters. At that point, might as well go to Costco and get a rotisserie chicken. Net result is usually around $2/lb of actually meet which is REALLY good.
Bone-in chicken legs have way more value per $ than a whole chicken. When it goes on sale I literally fill the freezer with it. I separate the meat and bones before freezing too, easy future meal prep and awesome stock bones.
Hey, Bri! Excellent vídeo! Thank you for showing that with some planning is possible to eat cheap AND healthy. By the way, that black beans, rice, kale and fried egg dish ressemble a lot a typical brazilian everyday meal. I suggest it could be a series of vídeos in your channel. Greetings from Rio, Brazil!
You can also use the leftover beans and rice to make "Tacu tacu", a peruvian dish.
Mix both of them and heat up a pan with a bit of oil.
Push the mixture onto the edge of the pan with the edge on top of the heat to brown.
Then tap the handle of the pan with your wrist to turn your mixture and brown on the other side.
You'll end up with a delicious mixture of beans and rice that has a nice browning and a bit of crunch on the outside, while creamy and moist on the inside.
I watched this whole video just for the soup
Not being sufficiently motivated to go through all the comments to see if it has been brought up, I'll just drop this here. The bean recipe and pressure cooking time is specific to an Instant Pot, not a dedicated pressure cooker. I'm not trying to be nit picky, but I thought it should be mentioned. I have not used my pressure cooker enough to be versed in bean cookery (but will probably start using it more). Concern about the timing led me to look into it, and instant pots cook at a lower pressure and therefore take longer than a dedicated pressure cooker would. Just for comparison, my pressure cooker instructions indicates 8-10 min for black beans and I probably cooked them closer to 12 - 14, so they were pretty well done by the time I was finished.
But that bean recipe is pretty sick, as is the sofrito rice.
Instant ots can cooker high or low pressure.
So much good information in this video. You have quickly become my favorite cooking channel on youtube.
Your videos have been a Godsend... I made the sofrito rice, beans, and garlicky kale tonight and I'm SO DAMN PROUD of myself... I was never taught how to cook growing up, so I wouldn't consider myself much of a cook (I am a great baker though so I pick up recipes easily)... I truly feel like I'm dining well tonight. Thank you Brian for teaching me this.I can't wait to see my husband's reaction!
Definitely one of your best videos, super useful in these times. Plus if you can get cheap parboiled brown rice then you also get a lot more fiber. Congrats, you hit the nail in the head!
For the first time of my life, I’m going to set a food budget . This month I tried to cook more but still spending around $1,000 for 2 adults and 1 child. I definitely need to learn to do more things from scratch. And I actually grew up eating similar to this. I’m going to go back to that! Thanks for this video!
This was amazing! I can’t wait to try out these meals.
I’m not sure you planned this, but a lot of these foods are stuff I get from my food pantry. In fact, I have just about everything I need for this video in my home from my latest “shop”. These meals are not only cheap, I can feel confident sharing this video to some of my friends who also use our local pantry knowing that we will have most of the ingredients and options that we can substitute to make the meals.
It might be nice to see more meals like this, possibly you could see what your local food bank hands out and see what other ways you could put foods together?
that is so adorable that people really followed this plan!!!! i usually watch things just to get ideas. i love you people💕
Yes! I am so impressed with all the people following his meal plan day by day. I usually watch other ladies who have TH-cam videos like these and I usually don’t read comments of people actually following the meal plans. It’s just usually comments of suggestions or comments of praises but never of people saying how they actually followed the steps for a week!
this is perfect. A lot of your videos are more fancy, and as a student this helps a lot!
I would have loved this as a student. But I'm thinking Brian was not around 30 years ago😂
Followed this whole menu and all in all was very happy. The cost of everything was about $36. That is without any of the “pantry” items which I also had to purchase. Meal 1: very tasty, used a lot of pots/pans- tons of leftovers, very filling. Meal 2: easy, not my favorite to eat cheap chicken so I doused that bad boy in PeriPeri sauce. Meal 3: who knew tostadas were the bomb? Surprised how much I liked it, and the prep was incredibly simple. only downside is a month after making this I still have like 18 leftover tostadas. How long do those last? Asking for a friend?? Meal 4: soup was very tasty and made a ton of food which I froze. It was a little time consuming for a weeknight, but luckily clean up wasn’t too bad. Meal 5: fried rice. Tasty. Fried rice using the week’s leftovers is always yum. Thanks Bri!! Love this kind of content. Really enjoyed how ingredients would be re-purposed on different nights. Would love a shorter day series where leftovers from this go in that tomorrow kind of thing.
Thank you! This is wonderful and appreciated during these times of expensive groceries! It's really hard for me to figure out how to make meals/leftovers for the week while trying to save money for my family. I try to find recipe plans online using a simple grocery list to use on other recipes throughout the week that makes weeknights not too heaving on the cooking as I am usually not in the mood to cook an entire new meal after work. My intentions are always good, but end up spending too much and unfortunately, ingredients go to waste. :( ~ Being able to watch you do this is a huge plus! I would love it if you could do some more of these types of videos. :) Again, thank you so much!
I love budget videos like this. Not just because they result is some insanely cheap meals for how they taste and their nutritional content, but also because THIS IS HOW BUSY PEOPLE CAN STILL COOK. Meal prep saves so much time by making multiple servings at once and putting most of the work out front that preparing and cooking like this still means I get a home-cooked dinner every night. It's why I love soups and stews. Most of the time, the ONLY cooking work is done up front on a weekend or unbusy weeknight. Bulk meal-prepping up front is both faster and (mostly) cheaper than cooking fresh every time. Most of the time, it even rivals the convenience of takeout for me. The combined time it would take for me to drive to get food even once a day would be more than the effort i put in to make a pot of chili on Sunday that lasts until Friday.
Keep it up, Brian! You, Ethan Chlebowski, and Adam Rageusea are kings in this department of efficient cooking!
More BUDGET meal prep videos like this please!
By no means being negative, just comparing: As of October 25/23 in Ontario, Canada, a 4-pack of chicken quarters is over $13. That is half the budget there. A single avocado is 1.99. Yes, this is still a terrific plan to keep it as cheap as possible and not have to eat 75% rice and noodles.
Thank you so much for making this video, I'm trying to find grocery lists that I can rotate every week since I get tired of eating the same foods easily, but I want to start saving money on food - this video was perfect!
If you ever make another video like this, I'd love to see what a week planned out with lentils instead of rice would look like!! 😊
Hmm I would consider lentils to be more of a substitute for the beans rather than for the rice. Lentil carrot soup with ginger and rosemary instead of refried beans, naan rather than tostada shells.
I've seen multiple videos, but this is the one that made me subscribe. I generally spend more, and love cooking, but seeing an actual cook and the way you can prepare so little to taste so good is truly what I felt I was missing. I can make expensive ingredients taste great with no issue, something like this to save some money is awesome. I'll be trying this. Thank you so much!
I love that you use fresh vegetables. Most budget videos use canned and while that’s ok once in a while, not night after night.
Thank you for the transparency with the loan amount and grocery prices. As someone who's extremely anxious about my student debt it really helps to see how people live with it and conquer.
That's an amazing selection of meals, respect for the amount of work it must have taken to compile all that.
I'm planning to follow this for next week, but I think I'll add a couple more chicken legs so I can have chicken fried rice and some chicken on the tostadas. I absolutely love these meal prep videos and I'm joining the chorus that's asking for a whole series!
I have to say the same. A series please.
I think your plan is more realistic. One bean tostada for dinner followed by one bean tostada for lunch, seems like very small portion sizes that might leave people hungry and more likely to break the budget by supplementing with convenience food. Adding just a few more dollars to the budget to get slightly larger meals would probably save money in the long run.
One of the very few YT videos I've seen using real food, and not boxed, overly processed, illusion of food ingredients, to make budget-friendly meals. Thank you!
7:18 “Anyone can make steak taste good, it takes a real cook to make a plate of rice and beans sing”
I love this menu and skills group! This is not too far off the cooking classes I taught for teens who were learning life skills with limited resources. A couple of things I think are worth considering: canned greens (I like Glory brand) are a good option and can make getting dinner ready a bit quicker and while they are different than the fresher steamed kale, they are already seasoned which can be helpful if you don't have a big pantry of seasonings. Speaking of seasonings, if you know of a spice blend you like (Tony Chachere, Badia etc) you can get by with buying fewer individual spices at one time and still have a well-seasoned meal. And last, dried onions are so good to have around because they are inexpensive, don't go bad, and don't need to be prepped. Anything you're cooking with liquid (rice, soup, etc) can rehydrate onions to where they are almost like fresh and otherwise, crushing them up makes them basically disappear into your food while bringing that aromatic element to the dish.
FYI to anyone recreating this - you DON'T have to pre-soak the black beans. Our dry beans got plenty soft after 45 minutes in the Instant Pot.
I cooked an old bag of dried black beans, no soaking, for 22 minutes and they were perfect!
I ferment a bag of black beans for 3 days then freeze them in 2 cup portions. Put the beans in instant pot with 4 cups water or liquid and any seasoning you want. Pressure cook for 12-15 minutes. Depends if you are adding to say chili and they will cook again. Really quick and easy and doesn’t give you gas!
Please, please make more healthy budget friendly recipes for a week. I found this so helpful! I came up with a few variations to mix it up and use items on sale, but your inspiration would be greatly appreciated!
Healthy/balanced diet is the 🔑
Nice job Brian 👍
Thank for including beans. I usually use carb balance wheat tortillas with low fat cheese and a scoop of Greek yogurt for a delicious taco. It’s so fulfilling. ❤
2 quick hacks on Day 1:
Set the chicken legs out on the rack as Brian has in the video and add your salt & pepper generously to dry brine for roasting Day 2?
Put your avocado in a sealed container full of water and put in the fridge. This will prevent the flesh from going bad before Day 3 assuming you bought a ripe avocado on Day 1
Please do not put avocado in a container with water in the fridge, that is a health hazard! I really dont like to comment on things but this is just not a good thing, just put the avocado in the fridge as is, no water, that will slow the process for ripening
The budget-friendly meal ideas you shared are not only practical but also look incredibly delicious and nutritious. It's inspiring to see how creativity and smart shopping can result in such a variety of meals without breaking the bank. Thanks for sharing these fantastic ideas and proving that eating well doesn't have to be expensive!
Perfection!!!!!! I LOVE budget meals!!! ❤
I had a $20/week grocery budget in summers when I was a student. There are so many similarities between this video and how I cooked back then! Garlicky kale, dried beans, roasted chicken, soup from the chicken stock. But I didn't mind eating repeat meals more often, so I'd cook twice a week and eat leftovers more. My one tip would be to brine the chicken, salt is cheap and it adds good flavor
This is great. You could really do more of these because they're kind of in touch with day-to-day cooking.
Very few cooks address leftovers, which is of prime interest to those of us who live alone. Ever try making rice for one? Not possible.
@@monkeygraborange just make 1 Cup :D but yes.
I'm currently struggling through the last year of grad school and ohhh man am I glad I found this video/channel
I'm amazed by your creativity in combining such unique ingredients. You've truly elevated this dish to the next level.👌👌🥰🥰
I made beans yesterday. Soaked all day and they cooked really quick. Made multiple dishes and made myself some chili no one in my house likes chili but I do.
Gotta take care of yourself, especially if you're the cook!
As a broke guy I am surprised that potatoes are not being utilized
might try this next week. I'm a bit intimidated by all the prep work but it doesn't seem TOO bad... of course it'll naturally be harder the first time but after you already know what to do, it won't seem as overwhelming. Everything looks great, thanks!!