Weeknight dinners that are quicker and cheaper than delivery – Food For Kids Podcast episode 45

Joanne Roach (00:14)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies.

Today's episode is to give you some ideas for those nights when you weren't intending to have a take out or ready meals, but you've come in from an activity late, or one of your kids has had a meltdown and by the time you've soothed them it's too late to start cooking, or you're just knackered and really don't want to cook that day.

On lots of those nights we might order something in or pick up some ready meals on the way home and there is nothing wrong with that some of the time. But while a ready meal or a take out for one person is very quick and cheap, by the time you've ordered take out for a family of four the price can really make your eyes water. And when it's just because you're in a bit of a bind rather than as a treat that you actually chose, it can seem like a lot of money. Ready meals for three or four people can really add up too, especially with side dishes for bigger appetites. And unless you manage to find choices for everyone that all go in the oven with a similar temperature, you can often find that you're microwaving three or four ready meals in a row, and that can take 20 to 30 minutes back to back. Plus the food isn't always hot at the same time, so you can't always eat together.

So while you will get zero judgement here for having ready meals or takeaways as an occasional treat or as a sanity saving convenience in a bind, I know that sometimes it can just get that life's had a really busy period and you've ended up with food that you're not keen on, it's costing you a lot of money and it's not actually even quicker than something you could have made.

I think everybody's got a couple of struggle meals in their idea bank, that's those foods that are cheap and low effort, but I wanted to pull some of them together here so that when you're feeling knackered and uninspired you don't have to be creative, you can just steal someone else's ideas. All of these should be things that you are either likely to have or you can easily make sure that you have in the store cupboard or freezer as a backup.

They should all be able to be done from scratch in less time than a delivery or fetching something from a takeout unless of course you live on the same street as a chippy in which case I'm not that quick and they should all cost less than several ready meals or even one or two.

So I'm going to run through a bunch of ideas. Loads of them won't work for your family, but some of them might. So stick them on your list for next time that you're overwhelmed or knackered. So let's get to the meal ideas.

Joanne Roach (02:28)

OK, so this first batch of ideas are using bready things that you might have in the house, either in the cupboard or in the freezer. So obviously you can have any kind of sandwich that you know your child likes, either with French fries on the side or a handful of crisps or a bowl of soup to dip into. That's the sort of thing cafes will usually give you a sandwich with something on the side and children can think that's quite fun, even though we think it's quite ordinary. So could have something like a classic grilled cheese that goes really nice dipped in like a tomato-y type of soup. BLT, children usually love BLT. A tuna sandwich or an egg sandwich or if you're vegetarian, you could have a tofu egg sandwich

Or you can have pita breads with something inside or a wrap with something inside and then bulk it out with salad, so you can have something like chicken nuggets or leftover chicken or those little mini meatballs that you can buy in the deli section or falafel. Can easily go in and you can bulk it out with some salad.

So secondly, we've got things that are on toast that are actually fairly balanced. So obviously the great British beans on toast is actually a decent meal. You can put cheese on top if you want. The grownups can have a bit of chilli sauce in the sauce if you want to. Put a sausage on the side if you like or use one of those tins that's got the sausages in if your child likes that. But actually beans on toast is a fairly balanced meal for a weeknight.

You could have an omelette with whatever you've got in the fridge inside it or just grated cheese if that's all you've got. Or you can make it into like an egg pizza by cooking a thin omelette and then putting things on top as if it was a piece of toast and popping that under the grill.  Scrambled eggs on toast is also quite a balanced meal. You can add some wilted spinach in if your children like that, or you can stick some tomatoes on the side. I'm also going to do some other breakfast things later.

The next batch are things that use wraps, either big ones or small ones, and some kind of wet sauce or some leftover chicken or tofu pan fried with a bit of sauce or salsa. So you could also use leftover bolognese from the freezer or a can of something like beans or mince or chilli. So the things that you can make with those are obviously burritos, tacos, fajitas or quesadillas. If you're not sure of the difference, burritos are the ones where all the fillings are inside and they're wrapped up into a roll. Tacos are usually using a corn shell that you pile stuff inside of. Fajitas are similar where you pile the stuff inside but it's usually using a soft wheat wrap and quesadillas is where you put your filling in between two pieces of wrap either a folded one or two separate wraps and then you pan fry it. But basically for all of them, you're taking some fillings that your child really likes and wrapping them up in some way, shape or form with either a flour wrap or a corn shell.

The classic fillings for all of these are some kind of meat sauce or beans. If you all like them, can have refried beans and spread those across. Tinned sweet corn, cheese, rice if you've got some already cooked. I usually keep some in the freezer. And really you're just assembling spoonfuls of those ingredients inside the wrap. If you want to and you've got the energy and you've got them in the fridge, you could do some pepper strips or some mushrooms fried for a couple of minutes. If you've got a younger child or a child that's little bit more and they don't like all of those soft textures mixing together, you can use the bit that they do like and bulk it out with something like shredded lettuce or tomato or cucumber. If you've got some guacamole or salsa in a jar or a bit of yoghurt or sour cream, great but most of the time they'll work perfectly okay as they are, or with a bit of grated cheese on top. This is a great way to use up leftover bolognese sauce because adults can add some chilli to it to make it a bit hotter and children can keep it plain and then adding the toppings that they like. It's a really nice one actually to put on the table and everybody can build their own.

You can also do the same thing as nachos. If you keep a bag of lightly salted tortilla chips in the house, not the ones with the thick flavourings on, you can pile whatever toppings you like on top of that, sprinkle some grated cheese over and grill them.

So those are just some different ways of combining quite a lot of things out of the fridge with some jars or cans and some wraps.

And the last section of sort of bready things is homemade pizzas, which obviously if you've got some ready-made supermarket margarita bases shoved in the freezer, you can start with those but we used to make ours from either naan breads, flat breads, pita breads, or tortilla wraps even at a push, or just even on toast, and we'd use a mixture of tomato puree and ketchup to spread over the top and then add whatever toppings everybody likes and you can stick them all in the oven together and whack some fries or some salad on the side.

And finally, in a similar way, you can do effectively a pizza, but using puff pastry, which you can either keep in the fridge for quite a long time or you can freeze it. You can either roll out a whole sheet and just put the fillings in the middle so that the side puffs up or you can make pinwheel rolls, which is where you put basically a pizza topping across the whole of it and then roll it up so that you get those beautiful wheels. I've mentioned that in a previous episode, so I'll link to that in the show notes.

So those are all the ideas that are combining something with some kind of bread to make something quick and easy.

The next little batch are taking inspiration from Asian or Middle Eastern quick ideas to use up quite a lot of those bottom of the fridge vegetables. The first one is if people in your house like this, you can make a fast Thai style curry where you basically stir fry up whatever vegetables you've got. If you've got some chicken or tofu or beef left over to go with it, brilliant. But you can just do a vegetable one in a push. And you add in a couple of spoonfuls of a jar of Thai curry sauce and a can of coconut milk. It's not in any way authentic, but it is quite family friendly and you can make it with not very much curry sauce initially and then take some of that off for people who don't like hot things and then add in another spoon or so of curry sauce, cook for another couple of minutes for those who do like it hotter. From start to finish, that never takes more than 10 minutes because you just stir frying up some veg and then cooking the sauce and the coconut milk through.

The next one is Asian style pancakes. Lots of different Asian cuisines have some variation of this, where basically you fry up some combination of vegetables and adding some kind of pancake batter made either with wheat flour, rice flour or chickpea flour. Some recipes do have eggs in, but some don't. They just have the flour and the water. And you just simply fry off a few bits of vegetables, little bit of cooked meats if you want to and then add the batter in and flip it and you've got quite a balanced meal of a pancake with some fillings. Traditionally these would then be eaten with a dip. You can either buy a dipping sauce and keep it in the cupboard or you can use a dip that you know your child already likes or you can make a quick one up yourself. I'll link in the show notes to a very easy one to make.

A very easy mixed bowl to make if your child likes it is couscous because you basically only have to put some vegetable stock or water on top of it and leave it to steam for a few minutes while you then prepare the things that are going to go in it, which again can just be some stir fried veggies from the bottom of the fridge or some leftover meats or like tinned sweet corn or frozen broccoli. It's ready in minutes and you only need the bowl to soak the couscous in and whatever pan you're using to heat the other ingredients up and lob them together.

One quite popular Korean easy meal that I really like is a fried egg rice with a splash of soy sauce and if you're being traditional you'll also put a splash of sesame oil but you don't need to and then if you want to you can add in something like peas or broccoli. Koreans generally also put spring onions on top and some sesame seeds, but again, you don't need to if you don't have them but mashing that gooey fried egg into the rice with that little bit of salty soy sauce is very comforting and tastes more complex than it is.

Another Asian inspired quick meal that you can have is frozen dumplings or gyoza. Most children can find a dumpling that they like and can air fry them, pan fry them or steam them. You can serve them with some vegetables and rice and a bit of sauce if you want to. The absolute easiest way is to have a frozen bag of steamed vegetables and a two minute packet rice. So by the time the dumplings are done, you've got your microwave rice and your steamed vegetables already done.

And then finally, something that's eaten the world over, including here, is ramen or what we would call super noodles. You can add anything you like on top. And I'm not going to go into detail with ideas here because there is a brilliant creator on YouTube called Beryl who does all kinds of food from around the world. And she's got a whole series where people send in different ramen recipes from around the world. So I'm going to link to those in the show notes because some of them are fantastic.

Now here's some ideas if you've got a few oven chips in the freezer, or you've got some potatoes that you can whack into the air fryer or oven. Obviously fish in bread crumbs you can always have in the freezer, anything like a nugget, vegetarian, quorn, chicken, whatever you like. Most supermarkets now do some fantastic things in the freezer that can cook through in the same time with some oven chips. So why not experiment with some? We like things like the cauliflower cheese bakes, or you can obviously get a veggie burger and just have some rolls in the freezer. Don't forget that burger rolls freeze really well. But find something that you like that you can pick up and put in the freezer when you're doing your shopping and then it'll be a much cheaper option on the day.

For quick meals like this that all go on a tray in the oven, can add things like cucumber, tomato, carrot sticks on the side, tinned sweet corn, a bit of steamed broccoli, or there's no veg in the house that you want, can even just put some apple slices or orange slices on the side if you want to make it a bit less beige.

The next section is the one that I bet you thought of when I did the introduction, which is things to do with a bag of pasta. So obviously you've got pasta and a jar of red sauce if you try and keep those in the cupboard. Pesto pasta is a winner in lot of households and don't forget that you can freeze your half jar of pesto for next time so you can always have some on hand. Then a nice one is sausage pasta, where you toss the pasta into the pan that you cook the sausages in. And you can add in things like broccoli, peppers, tomato, sweet corn, and then a bit of cheese on top. The combination of the sausagey oil and the cheese tends to mean that you don't need a separate sauce.

If you can keep some meatballs in the freezer, you can obviously put those with a red sauce or you can do a Swedish style sauce, I'll link to one in the show notes, and put those with chips instead of pasta if you want to. Or as mentioned earlier, you can also put meatballs into a pita bread or in fact a lot of the supermarkets do their own version of a subway roll so you can also make a meatball sub if you want to.

Another great pasta meal is an easy carbonara where you basically just use eggs and cheese and cook the eggs at a low temperature so they don't scramble. I will link to something in the show notes but you don't need to have cream in the house to make a good carbonara. And if you want to add in that salty flavour with some ham or some bacon or some cooked sausage, great.

Don't forget tuna pasta. A couple of cans in the cupboard can go a really long way, especially with something like tinned sweetcorn or some broccoli. If you want to make up a quick sauce, can, but it'll work fine with just a bit of grated cheese.

And if you're desperate and on the way home, you really want to pick up something that you can cook in five minutes but don't want the job of having four ready meals after one another in the microwave. Don't overlook those fresh pastas. Two packs will usually feed a whole family and they cook in like four minutes. You can pick up the fresh sauces that are kept next to them or you can just use a jar of sauce that you like.

And lastly, I'm flagging up the fact that children really quite like to have breakfast for dinner. So there's things like French toast, a bacon or sausage or egg sandwich, pancakes either flat or scotch, ⁓ cereal and a yoghurt or something like waffles with peanut butter and banana on. If you wanna make it fun with little kids, can call it Opposite Day. And it's quite a nice novelty to have breakfasty things at tea time.

And last but not least, of course we all know jacket potatoes are a great tea time saviour. You can cook them in the microwave. If you like the crispy skin, you can cook them in the microwave and finish them off in the air fryer or oven if you want to. And if your family really likes jacket potatoes, consider one of the times when you're planning jackets to buy a big bag of baking potatoes, cook several and put them in the freezer. I'll link to one of Kate's videos about how to use baked potatoes from the freezer. And you can put any of the toppings on that we've discussed earlier.

And if in doubt, don't feel bad about having some picky bits or what my family used to call bits on a plate. You might feel like it's not a proper meal, but kids really enjoy it because it feels a bit like a picnic. And if it's been a very long and tiring day, if people get to eat them on the floor on a blanket or watch some telly while they eat them, then it will still feel a little bit special and a bit of a treat.

Joanne Roach (14:17)

I'm pretty sure none of those ideas will be a surprise or a revelation or maybe one or two, but I just wanted to put them all together in one place because I know that when I have one of those evenings, I just can't think straight. So I'll put them all in the show notes. And if I get feedback that it's helpful, I'll make them into a blog post with a printable pullout list so that you can have it handy when your brain's not in gear.

Hopefully if you have a look through you can get a few bits into the store cupboard or the freezer ready and then you'll have quite a few things that should save you quite a lot of money and not take much more effort than the more expensive alternatives.

I will put up a social post for this episode, so please come and tell me in the comments what your go-to last-minute meal is as well.

Well, that's the last episode of October. Have a fun time with your Halloween events this week and I'll be back on Monday to start off November with our November seasonal foods. So I hope to see you then. And in the meantime, happy, cheap eating!