So… it seems I may know a few budget meals that might be appreciated.
Cacciatore is a fairly cheap old school family recipe or it freezes for meal prep. It can be a one pot with a Dutch oven or large skillet.
Apologies for the non-Aussie measurements. I was looking for a fairly simple one without flour dredging, limited and cheaper ingredients and having both a stovetop/oven option.
Obviously this can be done in a slow cooker, pressure cooker or instapot to save gas or electricity.
This was picked for posting because chicken drumsticks are currently very cheap at Coles ($6.40 for 1.6kg Coles RSPCA drumsticks). I vaguely heard there might be some chicken shortage coming? so this might change.
Definitely use bone in drumsticks or thighs because they’re cheaper, more flavourful and more suited to the long slow cooking.
I made sure to choose a recipe that uses canned tomatoes for the lower unit price.
I suggest using carrots, zucchini, celery etc if you don’t like capsicums. Check the price on the mushrooms and the capers. Asian grocers can be cheaper for veg if you have one near you, or if you have a market. Obviously access varies.
For the wine use $5 Aldi plonk or use chicken broth (cube should be fine).
Also if you don’t have rosemary consider just using dried Italian herbs from the Hoyts bags. Smoked paprika also goes very nicely.
Serving this with rice, potatoes, pasta, polenta, couscous or bread will soak up the sauce and pad it out.
Some bakeries used to sell their day old bread on a table. Not sure if they still do that. Or if you learn the supermarket restock day and go right before closing time you can get some deals. Honestly any kind of bread would be fine.
This is an ‘easy’ one for chicken breasts https://tasty.co/recipe/easy-chicken-cacciatore
looks yummy!