Are These Restaurant Quality Meals Actually Affordable On A Budget? | Jamie Oliver’s Feasts For Less

I know that more than ever, you need incredible food that makes you feel good, that doesn't cost the world. With food prices still high, I want us to think differently about the ingredients that we buy. It's all about sticking to a budget and being clever, right? This is all about maximum flavor for minimum spend. Come on. It's about making everyday ingredients work really hard for you and bigging up the clever, money-saving cooking tips our grandparents swore by. An old-fashioned recipe brought bang up to date. Whether you're cooking for two, four, six, or eight, breakfast, lunch, dinner, even desserts, I'll be sharing loads of incredible feasts that you can make for less. I'm so excited. This is incredible food at incredible prices. Stick with me and together we will turn everyday ingredients into absolute epic feasts. That is what I call an incredible feast for less.

Homemade doesn't have to mean hard work. Sometimes it's just learning a nice little technique. So, my creamy broccoli and blue cheese made with mashed potato and topped with crunchy hazelnut and crispy sage is the perfect way to turn everyday ingredients into something restaurant-worthy. Homemade gnocchi. It is a delight and a joy. And when you're saving money and getting a luxury, that is the kind of cooking that I like. So, first up, 500 grams of floury potatoes. These are Maris Piper. Give them a little prick and whack them in the microwave for about 10 minutes until they're soft and cooked. A lovely source of protein. Hazelnuts working with sage and beautiful blue cheese. I've costed for a handful and this will be for a sprinkle at the end of the dish. So, we're going to toast up these nuts. Okay, couple of minutes max. So, I've got three sprigs of sage here. I'm going to just pick those leaves into the pan and give it a little bit of olive oil. So, when we've got that lovely steaming bowl of gnocchi, we've got crunchy sage that's really fragrant and nice toasty hazelnuts. While that's doing its magic, I've got two onions and two cloves of garlic. I'll start with the garlic. Just finely slicing it like that. So, in no time at all, we've toasted those nuts and made those sage leaves go nice and crisp. So, put those just into a pestle and mortar and we'll just crush those up a little bit later. This pan goes back onto the heat with a little olive oil. And then we'll go in with the garlic and the onions. I'm just going to finely slice it. We're going to make quite a rustic sauce. We'll just scatter those in. And we're going to cook these down. Keep it on like a medium heat. Let's season it with some salt and pepper. 10 minutes. Just moving them regularly. I think what's really nice about this dish, we're going to turn a potato into gnocchi. And then we're going to take everyday onions and we're going to cook them down and down until they're golden and sweet. So, I like that. I like that appreciation for two everyday ingredients that are very, very affordable. This is the other half of the sage. I'm going to put this into the sauce. Really, this is about TLC. Keep going back to the pan and give it a little shake. Ah, so in 10 minutes, you know you've cooked a jacket potato, so it's saving energy because the microwave is super efficient. And we're just going to mash that potato away from the skin. So the skin we're going to put to one side. I'm going to spritz some oil. We're going to season it up. Bang that in the microwave. If I get something really crispy, that's quite useful, but we'll see about that. Give them about 4 minutes. And then here, I'm just going to mash this up to make it nice and fine. So, season it nicely. Salt and pepper. And then a great little spice, nutmeg. So, quarter of a nutmeg, all grated in. So, mash that seasoning in and that nutmeg. Let's give the onions some love. So, as it's coloring now, I'm just going to turn the temperature right down. This dish is incredibly affordable. It's sort of like restaurant food that you can make at home. So having this technique in your repertoire, whether you're sort of home alone, a couple, got kids, like this is a really gold recipe. I'm going to go in with 40 grams of flour. Mix it up. And you can see it just comes together as a nice pliable little dough. Before we get on with the gnocchi, I want to get some vegetables into this story.

Before we get on with the gnocchi, I want to get some vegetables into this story. And I'm going to use a great frozen vegetable. Actually, frozen broccoli. So just four lovely florets. Currently frozen broccoli is half the price of fresh. Snap frozen when they're at their best. So nutritionally brilliant, convenience brilliant, waste brilliant, and price brilliant. So it's a handy thing to have in your freezer. Into the boiling water they go just for a couple of minutes. We're going to take our little bowl, roll it. Just try and be even with your palms. Kids make this in Italy. Grandmothers make it all the time. It is just a beautiful, beautiful thing. Cut it in half. I'm then going to cut it one and a half inches, 3 cm in length. And then all we do is we pinch it. And that's the kind of shape that we're going for. These will be bouncy and light and very delicate. Texturally and flavor-wise, they will taste nothing like what we buy when we buy the pre-bought ones. They're very convenient, but this is a different level. And this is the kind of joy of cooking, right? We're saving money and getting a better product. Let's have a look in the pan. And we've turned that big pile of onions into a small pile of golden onions. It's reduced in size. It's almost doubled in flavor. How nice does the frozen broccoli look? Take it over with a little bit of that water. So, we're just going to break it up and stir everything together. Prepare yourself for big flavor. This just needs two more ingredients to kind of finish it off. One is a little hack that I do if I've ever got odds and ends of cheese. I will always put them in a little container, whack them in the freezer. And one of the things I've put in the freezer is blue cheese. And by having blue cheese in the freezer, it's firmer, right? And you can grate it. I've allowed 50 g of this cheese. So, this is creamy. This is delicious, but it's also got a tang to it. It's a really nice hack because sometimes like blue cheese can be too much. So, just a little kind of snowing. Let's have a look at these potato skins. Well, they actually look pretty good. Let it cool down. It should go crisp. So, the cheese has gone in and then I've got budget for 4 tablespoons of double cream. And this will just make the most simple sauce. That's on the lowest heat. Now, just let the cheese and the cream just sit there. So, when you're boiling, don't have it rolling, boil, lid on top. You'll break them up, right? So, we'll plop them in. They'll sink straight away. And when they're cooked, they'll float. Give them about 3 minutes. I might steal a little bit of this water just to loosen this cream sauce. And this is going to be the perfect landing pad for these lovely pillowy soft. And then over here, push some of these beautiful sage leaves to the side. And then I'm just going to crack some of these hazelnuts and sage leaves. This little sprinkle will make this dish. Imagine creamy sauce. And then that herby crunch on the top. So I'm happy with the consistency of the sauce. I'm now going to go in with a slotted spoon and just pull out these gnocchi. Look at those. Be delicate with them. You can use a spoon. I just like to shake it and just move it around like that. Just delicious. We can take some of our sage leaves, place them around. We take some of these nuts, sprinkle those on top. And then a little bit of that blue cheese on top. For me, this feels like real restaurant quality food. You know, we've got humble ingredients, but yet we've put it together in classic Italian style with a bit of glamour. Really comforting, gorgeous little clouds that are just taking on all that flavor. The balance of blue cheese in that is amazing. It's got tang. It's creamy. But then with the sweetness of the onions and that sweetness actually of the broccoli, but with that little bit of bitterness and the crispy fragrant sage, it's truly delicious. And when you get that little pop of toasted hazelnut, it is just texturally unbelievable. Last but not least, the skins. That's pretty good. Little bit of chili on there. Cold beer. We have a use.

So, the next recipe is an absolute classic, a legendary recipe that was the original packed lunch. Now, I'm going to give it some love and some care so I can get those prices down and make you a delicious meal. My beef and potato pasties are a wallet friendly spin on the British classic. Made with super convenient minced meat and vegetables and flavored with a cheeky store cupboard hack, they're a proper tasty lunchtime treat for two. So, inspired by the great Cornish pasty, there are very specific rules and regulations on how you make it. The original would have skirt steak. Now, when I looked around the supermarkets, only a few sell it. Then I kind of thought, well, how can I make this affordable and get it in on budget? So, I settled on minced beef. So, I thought, can I do it even cheaper? So, I looked at frozen mince. And actually, the frozen minced beef was more expensive than the fresh. So, you've got to stay vigilant. This is the spirit of saving lots of money. Right, let's make some pastry. If you think about it, the original recipe was for miners. They'd eat it with their hands. You want something that's a beautiful little edible package. Right now, the difference in a Cornish style pastry is they would use strong flour. It's got more kind of gluten. It's more elastic. So, it was clever cooking. It's still half fat to flour. So, we have that richness there still. So, 200 g of strong flour to 100 g of butter. Cut that into little cubes. This butter is cold. And then I'm going to do a pinch of salt to season it. Then I'm going to use my thumb and forefinger to rub the butter into the flour. Just do that for 30 seconds. Nice and quick. Normally, you would probably put an egg in at this stage, but we're saving pennies. So, I'm going to use just like 20 or 30 ml of milk, and we'll use that just to bring it together. In no time at all, you've got your dough together. So, I want to cut it in half as accurately as I can to make two little balls. And then we can press it down, flatten it out. I'm just going to put it in the fridge for like 30 minutes just to relax and just chill down a little bit. In it goes. Okay, so mince meat for this recipe for two lovely pasties. I've got 200 g of beef in my budget. And of course, mince meat is never going to go to waste in any home. You can use it for so many different things. So, this can go back into the fridge. Now, the original Cornish pasty would have sliced up onions, potatoes, and swede. So, I'm going to do my version of adding veggies to this to add more value and stretch the meat. I'm going to take one onion. The brown onion is the cheapest one that you can get. And then I've got a similar amount of potato. So, skin on potato. The cheapest way to get that at the moment is in a little bag and they normally call them all rounders. And then a humble carrot. I'm going to grab a box grater and I am going to grate these in there. So, I'm going to start off with the onions. And I feel that that kind of works in harmony with the minced meat a little bit better. The carrot, just giving it a little wash and leaving the skin on. I think you get more flavor and nutrition. And that's the same for the potato. Nice long strokes. So really, really important is we've got to get the seasoning right now because once it's in that pastry, you can't do anything. So a nice seasoning of sea salt. I love it with white pepper. I just think it tastes amazing. When you think you've put enough white pepper in or black pepper, put the same in again. So, be generous. Have that little hum of heat. And then two more pops of flavor that are genius. First one is a dried herb. I'm using thyme. Teaspoon is all you need. With dried, you seem to get kind of deeper, more savory, hearty flavors, which I absolutely love. And then the curveball is some brown sauce.

This is a fun bit. Super easy. So, two little pasties. Flour a clean surface so it doesn't stick. And we want to basically make it about the size of a plate. If you roll away from you, you've got a better chance of keeping it nice and even. So, it's the same thickness everywhere. We're going to go about 4 mm thick. Look at that. You can see we're just slightly bigger than the plate now, which is perfect. This is a 24 cm plate. Then I'm going to get this filling. You've naturally got that shape of the pasty, which is great. I'm going to take some milk. And the milk will also give you a nice golden exterior. So, it's a nice little hack. Then you can just take that little piece of pastry. Just trim off your little bit of rim here. Like that. And what I want to do is show you how to crimp it. You could just use a fork like that. But what I love to do is just take a little corner like that, fold it over. It's just a kind of pinch and a crimp, but it gives you a nice visual appeal. And that essentially seals the pastry. So get yourself a baking tray, bit of greaseproof paper, put a little bit of flour over the top like that to stop it sticking. The only thing I would do now is just a little cut across like that just to let the steam out. So, a little scoring. I'll give it one last little milk wash. And then that goes in an oven at 180°C, which is 350 Fahrenheit, for 40 minutes until golden. And that filling is really nice and cooked on the inside. My oven is ready and raring to go. So, in we go.

While those beauties are cooking, I want to make a very simple salad. So, I've got a gem lettuce or two that I've costed in. And I've got an apple and I've got some celery. So, I've got three sticks. I love that sound. With the gem, I'm going to take the outer leaves off, and I'll save that for another dish. We'll give these a quick wash. These outer sticks are quite fibrous and stringy. So, we'll simply get the speed peeler and run it all the way down the length like that, revealing that kind of much more sort of cucumbery interior there. With the gem, I'm going to take the stalk off. We'll cut it in half and then we'll cut the halves into quarters. With the celery here, I'm just going to cut it at a slight angle into chunks. And then a nice apple which has been washed. I think I'm going to go into eight. So, into a little bowl, we're going to go in with 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and a nice pinch of salt and pepper, and I've got budget for a teaspoon of English mustard. English mustard, that heat is really good with the sweetness and the crunch of the apple. We can make a nice little emulsified dressing. Look at the color. And then I won't dress it until the last minute. So salad, nice little pasties. That is a lovely little combination. So these are done. These have had 40 minutes. Have a look at those. So I would just let those sit for 5 minutes. Hot or cold, they're going to be amazing. Let those cool down while we dress this beautiful salad. Do it thoroughly. We've got the English mustard that's emulsifying the oil and vinegar. It's giving me memories of lovely ploughman's lunches in pubs. So, look, two generous pasties and portions of salad. That's a really, really nice thing to do for someone that you love. Let's get amongst it. Come on. I'm actually going to just tear it. Oh, utterly delicious. The pastry, it's more flaky than crumbly. What is genius is the level of pepper and that brown sauce, the tamarind, the spices, working with those humble ingredients, the potato, the carrot, the minced meat. It can be a portable meal. Take it on a picnic. Love it. This is a great low-cost meal for two. Generous, bold, and simple. Delicious. I've got a great recipe for you which I think is going to surprise you. You're going to love it. It's full of color. It's exciting. You can do it when you get home from work. It's a 20-minute meal that really is delicious.

Not only can you whip these up in no time, but my crispy noodle fish cakes will save you money, too. Using handy ingredients from your fridge, freezer, and store cupboard. This is a proper midweek winner to serve, too. I've got one nest of these brilliant noodles. I always have these in my cupboard. Rice noodles, some boiling water, and about 2 minutes to rehydrate and they're good to go. So, it's a brilliant hack for quick cooking. I love it. And normally a classic fish cake is bound together with mashed potato, but we don't need mashed potato. We've got these noodles. They're fantastic. It's a store cupboard product and they kind of work as a scaffolding holding all the flavor and the fish together and they go really crispy on the outside. So look fish wise we're going to go to get it on budget with frozen white fish. Frozen fish I think is brilliant. I use it. I buy it. I buy fresh fish as well. Of course sometimes it's pollock. They're really nice little fillets. They're all skinned. They're all pin boned. It's good to go. You don't waste any. You'll be surprised how quickly this will defrost. So this is a clever hack to get more fish into your life. So, what I want to do is get two textures. So, I want the fine fish to really hold everything else together. And then I want these chunks here to be chunky and have like a little flake. So, I've taken the tail of the fish and finely sliced it. And then that will hold nice chunks of the diced fish together. So, what we want to do now is flavor this in a really lovely way. I've budgeted for a lemon. I'm going to take a little fine grater and I'm going to take some of that lemon zest and just put just the lovely yellow of the lemon over the fish. Just put this side for later. I'm going to take half a bunch of coriander. If you want to make it last longer, a little bit of wet kitchen paper just keeps it fresher for longer. If you get some cold water, these nice top leaves, right, I will put in the water and they'll go really crunchy and beautiful. And then I take the stalks and the little leaves and I'm going to chop them up and put them into our fish cake. You can use any fresh herb that you want. When you're cooking on a budget, we can still use fresh herbs. They're delicious. They're nutritious and they help you to create massive flavors. So the leaves go into the icy water. And I've got the other leaves and the stalks here that I'm just going to finely chop. This is all flavor. And with the help of salt and pepper. Right, that's going to be good. So, I'm going to go extra heavy on the black pepper to get a nice heat and just mix it up. Also, I've got some sesame seeds here. So, I've got enough to have a tablespoon of sesame seeds in the fish cake and then a little bit of sesame seeds with my beans that I'm going to do in a little bit. So these will toast off of course and be really really tasty. So this is about amping up this delicious frozen fish, giving an edge of flavor, but also stretching it further. So in a couple of minutes, look, these have rehydrated. So what I'm going to do is just drain these. You don't have to let these cool down because I'm going to cook these straight away. I'm going to go in with one free-range egg to bind it all. And then we're going to go in with the fish. And as we're mixing it around, you know, we can break up some of those noodles and that egg will just get into the noodles and it will bind the fish. I've got this large pan on a medium heat. I'm going to give it a little spritz with some olive oil. I'm going to divide up this kind of batch into six little fish cakes. And just put it in your hand. Right. It looks like they're falling apart. They're not. Okay. And then place it into the pan like that. And you can see how the noodles, they're sort of holding the whole thing together. They look delicate, but they're not. You can move them around. And then what I'll do is give them a little spritz or a drizzle with some oil on the top so they go nice and crispy. I'm just going to give this board a little wash.

So, we've got fish cakes frying. We've got pan of boiling water here and I've got enough for 160 g of French beans. So, always nice to get more veggies into your life. So, all I want to do with these beans is just take off the end and leave the wispy part like that. So, we'll get rid of these little stalks and then we'll go into the boiling water with the beans and give them like 3 or 4 minutes just to soften them up and then I'm going to fry them in the pan. It's a very quick meal. I'm going to get my little food processor out. We've got 60 g of dried apricots. We're going to make a really exciting little sauce to go with these beautiful fish cakes. It'll be sweet. It'll be sour. So, what I can do is just nick some boiling water about 100 ml and that will start to rehydrate the apricots. They'll start to plump up. I've got a brilliant spice here or paste harissa North Africa. It's a really beautiful mild kind of chili warmth with spice and I've costed it all in. Right, two teaspoons of that harissa go in to the apricots. So, it's got a little bit of a North African Moroccan vibe going on here. So, if I just go to turn one of these over, I can see this one is nicely browned, but just not perfectly brown. So, I can turn the heat up. We'll go in under here, turn it. I love how imperfectly perfect they are. So, I'm going to turn the temperature up now. This is now hydrated in a really nice way. Plumped up the apricots. I've got this lemon over here that I'm going to use in a few ways. So, I'll take one side of the lemon off and that'll be just to serve on the plate along with this beautiful coriander. And then here, I'm going to put some of the lemon juice. Half of that catch any pips. So, you got lemon, you got sweet and sour apricots, and you got that lovely hum of harissa. This I'm going to put on the green beans. So, we're using lemon and the zest in lots of different ways. And then now I'm going to whiz it up. So, let's have a little try here. Oh my goodness. Utterly delicious. And a little salt and pepper. It's a brilliant store cupboard sauce. So, let's turn these over again. See, they're holding together really beautifully. So, these beans have probably had about 4 minutes. So once the beans come back in the pan, just a little drizzle of oil. I can afford to put in just a little bit more sesame seed. Let the skins of the green beans catch and almost kind of like sizzle a little bit. And let those sesame seeds toast. That last bit of lemon juice goes in. Shake it and cook it away. Right, heat off. So, let's do this. Little bit of sauce on the bottom by layering it up. This is going to be really, really delicious. These have had about 5 minutes now. Look, you can see it's sizzling there. Just take a few of these beans. So, we're back in with that amazing harissa sauce again. How lovely. It's making green beans exciting. Right. Just because this is incredible, money-saving meals. You can see the chunk of fish there. Right. Right. We're not compromising. This is exciting. Beautiful apricot and harissa sauce. It's going to work in harmony with the fish. Come on. Love that. I've even got one last ingredient. Just a tablespoon of soy sauce. It's like the leaning tower of crispy fish pies. I think it's brilliant. It's brilliantly bonkers. Squeeze that lemon over the top. Get in there. Mm. Crunch, then soft, then chewy. I love it. You got chunks of fish and you got the herbs. It's very light, but also got those lovely crispy edges. That sauce is amazing. Even these little green beans toasted with the sesame seeds and that little bit of soy and lemon. Yum. I think it's about thinking differently about cooking. So, what are you waiting for? You've got to give that a go.

So, I might be giving you money-saving meals, but there's still room for dessert, and this one is delicious. My super quick, creamy, and comforting mango rice pudding is full of gorgeous tropical flavor with frozen fruit, warming spices, and it serves six people. So, this is rice pudding, but not as you know it. So, we're going to have fun here. In a large pan, we're going to add one liter of semi-skimmed milk on a medium heat, maybe slightly above that. So, let's bring the milk up to a simmer. And I want to infuse it with some nice flavors. So, I've got a bay leaf here. You might think that one bay leaf won't do anything, but that is wrong. It really will give a nice fruity sort of tutti frutti vibe. Nutmeg, old school spice. So, I'm going to grate about a quarter of a nutmeg. I can already smell it's really perfumed. And then lime. I'm not going to use the juice because of course that would split the milk. So just grating the lovely green oily zesty skin there. Let's just put this aside for later. So in with the bay. We're going to gather up the nutmeg and put that in. Let's go in with the lime. So mix all of that in. Then I need to sweeten it lightly. We're going to go in with some honey. Two tablespoons goes in to the milk. So, stir that in. And what's clever about the honey is actually by weight, it's sweeter than regular sugar. So, you get a good bang for your buck. I'm now going to go in with pudding rice. 250 grams goes in. Short stubby little rice grains and full of that lovely creaminess. Now, that almost like starchiness that comes out of it. So, a little rice goes a long way. So, stir that up. We're going to keep an eye on that and give it a stir every now and again. After about 20 minutes, it'll absorb all of that milk. It will be gorgeous. Now, in this pan here, let's just turn it on. I've put it on a medium heat. So, desiccated coconut. This is unsweetened. Six heaped teaspoons goes in. Give that a little shake. So, that will just toast it up. Now, what's quite cool about toasting up the beautiful coconut is it amplifies its flavor. But that kind of vibe of coconut, mango, lime, you know, spices, I think when we're in the depths of winter, we can use food to really transport us. So, you can see the color of that coconut changing. It smells amazing. So, that little 30 seconds of toasting makes all the difference. So, give that a stir. You can see the rice beginning to plump up and take on that beautiful scented milk. So, we're going to cook some fruit, some frozen fruit, mango.

So, we're going to cook some fruit, some frozen fruit, mango. Certainly in the UK, the mangoes can often be disappointing. You actually pay extra for them to be ripe and then they don't necessarily taste great. Frozen ones are brilliant because you can take what you want, a little bit, a lot. They're peeled, they're cut up for you. They're super convenient and they're really delicious. I can use those in savory curries or I can use them in desserts. But for me, the frozen fruit is just an incredible lifesaver and something that we should use to save money and save waste. It's a brilliant, brilliant thing. So, I'm going to use two more tablespoons of honey in here. Like that. We're going to defrost that mango. That's 500 g there. It feels like tropical in a really gorgeous way. What we can do is just stew this down and make a lovely compote. So, stir the rice. We're getting there. So, it's plumping up. So, don't rush it. Otherwise, it will catch and you don't want to catch the milk. Rice pudding. Come on. It feels like lovely memories as a kid. But it's a really nice dessert served hot or cold. We've now basically defrosted the mango and it's now starting to caramelize. And you can either leave it chunky or you can mash it up completely or puree it or do 50/50. So, I'm going to probably do 50/50 because I quite like it. And just a little mash like this gives you this ability to really get some amazing color rippled through that beautiful rice pudding. So, now I've mashed that bit up. Just give it a nice little shake. Remember, we've got our lime here. So, I'll give that a nice little roll. Look at the juice that comes out of it. Now, using the zest and the juice means we're wasting nothing. So, it's a really good way of maxing out flavor and taking advantage of the whole thing. So, look, I think we're done. Heat is going off. Hot and steamy. Delicious. And then we've got the mango. Time for the desiccated coconut. That's going to give you that beautiful tropical flavor, but also that little crunch. And if you think about it, we got a dessert here that's got store cupboard staples. Frozen fruit. I just love it. This for me is food that makes me so happy. Coconut and mango rice pudding with all of those beautiful spices. So, look, an old-fashioned recipe and technique brought bang up to date. Let's get in there. Yum. Oh man, the lime and the sweet and sour of the mango is just delicious. The lime zest, the nutmeg, the bay. This is a delicious dessert when you take some of that lovely creamy rice, take a bit of mango, and then dip it in that lovely toasted coconut. Wow. It's so good.