Budget food/living

That is very cheap for gruyere! Even the swiss would probably just use the cheaper raclette.

i thought rasclette was jamaican

There are some cheeses that are cheapish and good.

Pecorino is unpasturised ewes milk cheese and I think it's fantastic for shaving/grating (poor man's Parmesan). It's about £1.60 per 100g usually.

Pecorino is not poor man's parmesan if you prefer it.

i thought rasclette was jamaican

repped

Pecorino Romano is delicious and every bit as good as Reggiano lMHO...

I've cooked Mexican carnitas in Coke® before (Aroogah's recipe), absolutely lish...

...took me a while to find that thread / recipe, but wow, that's some serious stuff!
[INDENT]*Take the pork out of the oven and then add the following liquids to the pan

• *
  1/2 Can of full on Coca-Cola - Not diet, caffeine free water substitute - you need the sugars
  1/2 Can beer
  1/2 cup milk
  Juice of 3 Oranges & 2 limes
  *[/INDENT]Wait, wut? Not sure if 'interesting' or 'plain crazy'.
  And normally I would not ever put *milk *in any hot food, but maybe I'll make an exception when I'll be cooking this.
  
  
  

Also, that thread is a fucking gem, like popcorn deluxe -

Eggs

1. Get eggs - either take them from others who have them or force them from a chicken.

2. Get some water and cook it in a pan until it produces small spheres of heated air at it's meniscular edge.

3. Hold the egg above the turbulent water and let your hand slightly give in to the Earth's gravitational pull - you will feel your hand move towards the water - when it is around an inch or so from the surface, release all tension in your hand and watch the egg kind of 'walk' (but with neither leg nor foot) towards the water and then climb in.

4. Watch it all go off for some minutes.

5. Stop it all.

6. Force the egg out of its carapace, you will find inside a white soft body.

7. Make a loud continuous sound, as loud as you can, use your hand to feel around your head until you locate the hole that this sound is coming from - once located, push the egg at the hole until it takes (in might fall out the first few tries but persevere even if you feel there is little or no prospect of success).

8. Once in it is pretty much a clear run to the stomach although you may have to mash the egg up a little in your mouth, try using a pen or a finger or a telephone.

And concearning the knuckles in Coke -
yes, it worked out really nice, meat nice & tender, neat caramelised crust.
It just tastes a bit too sweet for me all in all.
Will go for half / half Coke and beer next time I think.

Pecorino is unpasturised ewes milk cheese and I think it's fantastic for shaving/grating (poor man's Parmesan). It's about £1.60 per 100g usually.

Poor man's parmesan? Are you thinking of grana padano - very similar to parmesan but without the PDO and associated quality control.

Pecorino is absolutely delicious; my favourite hard cheese. I could eat a whole one.

DJ, if there's ever a loaf of banana bread going wanting I'm sure there's something I could trade you for it.

Poor man's parmesan? Are you thinking of grana padano - very similar to parmesan but without the PDO and associated quality control.

Grana Padano has it's own wider PDO but is IMHO just a rubbish Parmigiano Reggiano. Unlike young/cheap/awesome Pecorinos, it doesn't really tickle my tortellini.

I'm not too keen on it either.

I have a shameful liking for that awful powdered 'Italian hard fat cheese'. I think this stems from eating it as a kid - Italian grandparents couldn't get real parmesan back in those days (well, they could, but it was prohibitively expensive) so this is what was sprinkled on my pastasciutta.

it smells like dried vomit in a tub

about the only way to use it is for adding to the breadcrumb when making escalope milanese

I wouldn't know, the only time I have eaten it is on my granddad's pasta... other than licking some off my finger and making a puke-face. I think my liking is emotional rather than visceral.

edit - rice pudding on its way... must be nearly ready now...

Just finished a huge pot of soup that I started cooking on Sunday, it's lasted all week. I had no idea what I was doing and just improvised, pulling at stuff that was laying about or up to no good in a cupboard. This is the recipe for random soup:

1 chicken carcass left over from a Sunday roast
1 bulb of garlic
2 onions
2 handfuls of red split lentils
1 smallish bag of aduki beans
1 small handful of thyme
4 teaspoons of mixed herbs
4 bay leaves
7 large chunks then finely chopped of chorizo
1 chopped up chicken breast just for kicks
1 reasonable lump of butter
2 litres of water

Add everything to the 2 litres of water (aduki beans have to be soaked overnight then washed and boiled for 10 mins - however this is the only preparation involved apart from chopping / slicing) then just simmer the hell out of it on a low heat for about an hour.

Pick the chicken bones out.

Put in a bowl.

Nom.

^ It's Wednesday. Cooking on Sunday is not all week.

And...

^ This is currently as far into the week as we've got and it's lasted me all of it. Budget - 1 chicken breast, a chicken carcass left over from a roast and not thrown away as I'm guessing they mostly are. The chicken was about £3.50 from Asda plus chorizo about a third of a ring that you can pick up in Morrison's for £1.99 makes food for 3 days...

You've thought too much about this without thinking :)

No I haven't.

Cheap chicken isn't budget chicken. It's just shit chicken.

£3.50 for a bird? Really?

Budget food doesn't mean the most cheapest ingredients.

A £3.50 chuck isn't budget. One roast with everyone fighting for the breast? A £10 chuck lasts a surprisingly long time and the dark meat is far better.

Also the stock from a 'proper bird' will actually become jelly not some evil smelling liquid.

No I haven't.

Cheap chicken isn't budget chicken. It's just shit chicken.

£3.50 for a bird? Really?

Budget food doesn't mean the most cheapest ingredients.

A £3.50 chuck isn't budget. One roast with everyone fighting for the breast? A £10 chuck lasts a surprisingly long time and the dark meat is far better.

Also the stock from a 'proper bird' will actually become jelly not some evil smelling liquid.

Horseshit, you're just trying to pick a fight as your original post to my recipe post showed. And because I challenged you you've got all self righteous. Of course budget food doesn't mean the cheapest ingredients, do you think I'm retarded?

Budget food means the best possible food within your budget. And if you're thinking about what you can or can't afford then you're obviously considering a budget.

A £3.50 chuck from Asda as one of their butcher's choice (whatever that means) british birds did very well for 2 people and made plenty of stock. It was just as good as similar size chucks I've had from Sainsbury's for 2 or 3 quid more.

The stock left from the chicken was a rich brown colour and was used in the soup. There was nothing foul about it. I hope this is OK with you. Sincere apologies for telling the truth about a meal I made that lasted several days and including a recipe that people on a budget (within their means) might like to try.

But I kind of thought this might be the spirit of the thread. You know, people sharing tips about how to make food last longer, special deals and recipes for quick easy meals.

You can totally make stock with cheap chicken, there is still collagen/gelatine around the joints and marrow in the bones.

The flavour in a free range bird (typically grown for longer and fed a more varied diet) tends to slightly be richer/better (more mineralisation?)

But the thing which is MASSIVELY superior on free range chicken is the fat, which is plentiful and delicious. When I roast a cheap chicken heaps of water keeps coming out, just end up with a soggy practically boiled chicken which is relatively bland.

The free range birds dont seem to expel and water at all, but a decent amount of rich tasting fat which really absorbs and intensifies the flavours of herbs like rosemary.

This takes nothing away from "cheaper" chicken though. It is still a wonderful food which used to be a wonderful little animal. Trying to diss it as some worthless, tasteless junk is baseless snobbishness and rather disrespectful I think.

Whatever. Cheap chicken is shit chicken.

A £3.50 chuck from Asda as one of their butcher's choice (whatever that means)

Hoisted by your own petard...

But I kind of thought this might be the spirit of the thread. You know, people sharing tips about how to make food last longer, special deals and recipes for quick easy meals.

Maybe you should read the entire thread from the first page?

I've made stock from cheap chicken and I've made stock from decent chicken over the years.

I know which I prefer and I know which lasts longer.

I guess its up to you to figure that out. I'm not playing some sort of 'I'm a more foodie than you are' game here.

In terms of the price of chicken and how it cooks/tastes, the main component your money is buying is time.

Back before the advent of the cornish cross variety which grows extremely fast. There was a huge variety of birds with different cooking and eating properties. You also had to castrate the cockerels to get them to grow, a complicated and expensive process (caponizing) which was worth it at the time. Because there was no other option, poultry cost more back then. You would get different types for frying, stewing, roasting, stock etc.. Different Breeds & sexes of Birds raised for different times for different purposes.

(I shall dig out a detailed article about this when I find the time)

This all died out though with the cornish cross, and now you can pretty much only get one kind of chicken in the shop whether it is intensively farmed, free range or "woodland". So the variety you will get in cooking/eating properties will be limited regardless.

DFP, I'm sure that is true. However I'm not talking about individual breeds, I'm talking about battery chicken vs free range (or even 'organic').

The supermarkets have bowed under public pressure to stock free range eggs so why not the poultry that produces them?

Also when did you last see cockerels for sale?

Commercial mass produced chicken is mixed sex. The Birds are too young for their to be a noticeable difference. I regularly buy chicken liver which is from conventional mass produced "cheap" birds and it often has hearts and the odd testicle in there.

The indpendent article you linked seems to have some innacuracies (I havent read it all). It suggests that meat birds are raised in a "battery" system and even shows a photo of it. But meat birds are raised is large open plan sheds with bedding on the ground and space for the birds to walk around. Its not idyllic, but not terrible either.

I do think that the baseline standard for chickens should be improved a little though, purely for welfare standards. Perhaps co-ops elmwood standard should be the baseline? http://www.co-operativefood.co.uk/food-and-drink/food/meat/chicken/

On a side note Battery egg production was supposed to be banned/phased out by this year in this country. But it has failed rather miserably!

Cheap meat is only as good as you make it. The base difference between an expensive chicken and a cheap one is far, far smaller than the difference between cooking it with care and just throwing it in the oven.

I've made stock from cheap chicken and I've made stock from decent chicken over the years.

I know which I prefer and I know which lasts longer.

I guess its up to you to figure that out. I'm not playing some sort of 'I'm a more foodie than you are' game here.

No that's exactly what you're doing just by sniping at my post about some soup I'd made on the cheap (part of the point of it being that with soup you can use lots of things that are hiding in the cupboards and still make something tasty while saving money on ingredients).

Plus I know James who started the thread pretty well and the essence of it from the first page is this in my mind:

"We were agreeing that there can be some fun in living on a tight budget, and that saving a few pennies now will prolong our ability to keep heads above water."

Sorry chap but you're just looking for a silly squabble over nothing.

Believe what you will.