To Stimulate Your Kitchen Economy, Make the Most of Your Meat

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

There is no question that these are uncertain economic times. And there is no category where that is more evident than in the price of things we need every day like gas, diapers, and food. Rationing rice purchases at Costco may be an extreme measure for preventing a run on staple food items, but the fact is that even food we take for granted for its frugality, such as rice, is starting to lighten the wallet.

Fortunate as we are that we live in country where rice is affordable to most people, the rising cost of food is making cooking wholesome meals from scratch more of a challenge for the average family with every passing day. Whether your SUV is guzzling gas or you are laughing all the way to the bank in your Prius, there is no harm in looking at our daily dining choices and finding ways to make that weekly grocery budget stretch a bit farther.

Part of the problem is that our typical concept of an American meal is so standardized it could almost come with its own diagram. This diagram would look something like a round, 9-inch plate divided into three quadrants. From 12 to 3:30 is a starch: mashed potatoes, French fries, rice, and so on. On the upper left hand quadrant, from 8:30 to 12, there is likely something green resembling a vegetable: peas, green beans, maybe a nutrient-less iceberg lettuce salad. Front and center, from 3:30 to 8:30 is a nice, big slab of protein: steak, chicken breast, maybe fish, if you are lucky.

The problem with cutting costs is that slab of meat. Outside of meat-and-potato countries, such as ours, meat is almost never served in such quantities, or with such prominence in the meal. It is that huge slab of meat that ultimately is putting a strain on the wallet.

This is not to say you need to take up a vegan diet to save your food budget from economic failure. But a little creative re-working of one’s dining habits can make your dollar, and dinner, stretch a lot further.

To take a thing from the vegans, beans are an incredibly inexpensive form of protein that is widely available and requires little prep. The quality of canned beans has been improving over the years such that the over-night soaking of dried beans is a thing of the past. Add chickpeas to a vegetable curry, or white beans to kale and fettuccine pasta and you have a healthy meal, to feed a crowd that can almost be paid for with the loose change in your pocket.

It is not necessary to keep meat entirely out of the picture to save money; just give it a supporting rather than starring role. If the meal is steak-and-potatoes, you are going to need a minimum of 4 ounces of meat per person. Switch it to potatoes-and-steak, and the quantity of meat needed can drop by 1-2 ounces per person. Sheppard’s pie with mashed potatoes and ground beef, noodles with chicken, fried rice with shrimp: more starch and veggies in the dish and a little meat can go a lot further.

As married as we are to boneless skinless chicken breasts, be willing to do a little more work, or buy a cheaper cut of meat, and you are guaranteed to get more for your money. A whole chicken can feed a family of four. Make the butcher do the work for you to remove the skin and the bones and the price goes up to such a degree that the same money that fed four can now only two. Or, substitute boneless skinless thighs for the breasts, and you instantly up the flavor and drop the cost, if only because thighs are less popular than breasts.

I once read that in Asian countries meat is treated as a condiment, rather than the focus of the meal. Considering the developing prominence of many of those Asian nations, and the current economic climate of our own, we could do well to take a cue from the cooking philosophies of those countries. Don’t expect the government to bail out your grocery bill more than once every few years or so, so act now by making your meat stretch a bit, and what’s left in your wallet will last a bit longer too.

Serves/Makes: 8

• 1 package whole wheat spaghetti pasta
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 3 tablespoons rice wine
• 1 pound chicken tenders
• 2 shallots
• 1/2 bunch medium asparagus
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds