Good bang-for-your buck foods that are easy to prepare?

Good bang-for-your buck foods that are easy to prepare?

I don't have a lot of storage space, so no "beans and rice in bulk" or "freeze a bunch of whatever is on special" stuff. I also really only have a microwave and stovetop available to me.

I'm already thinking things like pastas, hot dogs, eggs... looking for outside of the box ideas that are consistently priced. I'm not dirt poor, but looking to save where I can.

eggs and milk.

You can buy rice 5 lbs at a time very easily and still get it for pretty cheap, 5 lbs russet potatoes are also just as cheap. The go-to cheap protein option is chicken thigh/quarters, normally I bake them, but if you lack an oven, I recommend making soup with them.

ramen

Like I was saying in the OP, I don't have a lot of storage space, so 5 lb bags of stuff in bulk isn't an option, I also can't store a ton of chicken thighs/quarters, unless you're recommending individual smaller packages...

5lb bag of potatoes - $2.29
Dozen eggs - $0.78
Small bag of generic shredded sharp cheddar - $1.48
Optional:
Bell peppers - $0.49/ea
Sausage - $2.58 for 6 Hillshire Farms Beef Hot Links, or roughly the same for a Polish Kielbasa

Take two potatoes, wash and remove eyes. Dice/cube/whatever into small bite size chunks, throw into a frying pan on medium-high heat. Add salt and pepper to taste, and I enjoy a healthy dose of garlic powder. Toss and stir after about 5 or 10 minutes, you can largely just ignore them. Add water and cover to steam cook for faster results.
After tossing, wait another 5 minutes, add a little bit of butter or oil to the pan, crack two eggs. Mix thoroughly.
Plate and dust with shredded cheese for some nice gooey action.

If you want to add peppers or sausage, just cut them up and add them in right after the first toss.

Get into curry, tons of flavor for few dollars. Stretch it out with rice.

How much storage space do you have, exactly?
None? Are you planning on buying ingredients and immediately using them?

Spaghetti. Like several pounds of ground beef is maybe $10 and pasta and sauce are cheap af. Can literally feed you an entire week.

Bread
Butter
Eggs, balonga, bacon, cheese, peanut butter

Can make fried balonga sandwich, based bacon egg & cheese sandwich
Peanut butter sandwich
Toast sandwich
Peanut butter and bacon sandwich
Bacon eggs and toast breakfast

For me it's gotta be the McChicken, with that nice hot juicy middle, the home style breadcrumbs around the chicken, the lettuce slices, a nice swab of mayonnaise and the finest two buns layered upon the top and the bottom of the steaming chicken patty makes for the finest of the fast food sandwiches.

So for a period of time I'll be living out of my car, which isn't large. I'm not homeless by any means, but I'm looking to move to another area and will be bouncing between friends' houses as I look for jobs in the area. The only consistent storage space I'll have for clothes and my things will be in my car. I'll have a couple of days in most places, but I can't hold onto a bunch of lbs of potatoes or long-term frozen meats.

I'm basically mainly looking for easy preparation, single person meals.

if you are living in car, then I guess pasta is your best bet. set up a little stove, boil some water, and cook the pasta.

>but I can't hold onto a bunch of lbs of potatoes
I don't see why not? Just throw them in your trunk dude.
They're potatoes.
That does raise the question of how you plan on dealing with anything that requires basic refrigeration though.

Also you're going to going through 5lb of potatoes a hell of a lot faster than you think if you're eating them regularly.

I think I probably worded this thread wrong, for one... I'm not destitute, but I just want meals that are cheaper and easier to get and prepare in smaller quantities. I'll be staying with people for 3-5 days each, some who will have a fridge I can use and plenty of cooking tools, some who are poorer and just do the microwave thing, and a night or two I'm going to have to camp most likely.

I'm just trying to go back to the city where I went to school, but I have $15k saved in the bank. I'm planning to spend about a month out there in January and come back if nothing works. I just don't want to blow money on eating out every night, gas, and hotel rooms if I don't have to.

Fill jerry cans with delicious homemade soup.

Learn to do cacio e pepe and spaghetti aglio e olio.

Two simple pasta dishes that taste amazing and only have 2 or 3 basic ingredients.

I lived in my car for a year and I can tell you you're placing limits on yourself where there aren't any. You absolutely can have food in bulk with adequate storage (fridge or ice chest), or room temp.

You sound like you have the cooking part sorted out. But you can definitely store things in your vehicle.

Canned sardines and crackers

Jerky and nuts

Shitty bread and peanut butter

Poptarts/granola bars/boxed cereal without milk

Lots of shit that's designed for single portion with minimal work and stable at room temperature

I keep my car and the pockets of my winter coat stocked with cans of sardines and other virtual non-perishables

Well, I have other shit in my car, and I'm gonna be honest, I really don't feel like eating a shitton of rice and potatoes either.

where do you live, OP?

Vegas, going to Phoenix for most of this adventure.

I'm not the guy telling you to eat rice and potatoes, although I'm not sure why you're excluding that specifically as an option, either. What kind of foods do you like/want to prepare? That's what you can be storing, bulk in its raw form or bulk prepared.

As for room, well... if you insist you have no room I guess we have no choice but to acquiesce but that sounds ridiculous to me, for 2 reasons: 1, you do have room, or 2, why do you have so much stuff. food for 2 weeks will take up a 12 gal ice chest, or 2 6 gals, or 4 3 gals. That's a couple thigh-sized rectangular prisms, there's room for that in your car.

dude, you don't have to do beans in bulk, you can get something like a dozen meals out of a single one pound package of beans

if you have an aldis around they have great prices on veggies and sesonings, which go a reeaaally long way towards making almost anything you can think of, tasty

Buy a cooler and fill it up with sammiches user. Just like Grandma use to do before she passed when you visited her by the beach she lived nearby when you were young and had fun and always had nice, simple, cold sammiches for when you were hungry after playing all day at the beach enjoying building a sand castle bigger than your brother and then seeing who can go out the furthest into the ocean hoping there was never a shark or wave to take you under.

Just stick some ice into the cooler to keep them cool.

Seriously where the fuck do you like where eggs are fucking 78 cents for a dozen? I live in southern MD and eggs here more than a dollar per dozen.

Not that user, but I get 18 large eggs for around $1.25

I have a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich every morning for breakfast. It takes a whopping 10 minutes to make (depending on thickness of the bacon) and goes well on toast, though un-toasted bread works just as well.

A carton of 18 eggs: $2.50
Loaf of bread: $2.50 (I buy wheat shit)
Bacon: $5 (depending on cut and whatnot)
Cheese: $3 (I use shredded cheese since it melts faster)

Total: $13

Over the course of six days, each meal comes out to roughly a total of $2.

These sandwiches aren't really good if made in advance, but with a little spare time in the morning, you'll have a decent breakfast for cheap

I wont ill just drop my common meals here, should be pretty easy to make

Chicken thighs
Rice
Frozen vegtables
Boillon (meat stock cubes)
Salt
Spices
Water

Everything in deep oven dish, thighs on top.
Put into 225°c oven for atleast hour, use own taste with spices. Rice should have absorbed all the water

Proper noodles
Boillon
Frozen vegtables
Water
Cheap cut of pig in small pieces
Soy sauce
Miso paste
If needed cooking oil

Veggies and meat into a pan, if the meat is lean throw in little bit oil. Give them colour and put rest of the ingredients in. Let boil until noodles are done, eat. Result should be soup like

These recipies are flexible so experiment with components. I also know they dont meet Veeky Forums standards but they keep hunger at bay for little money and efford. Sorry for not putting amounts but i dont know them because portion sizes vary and i almost never measure these

At my local Walmart, chicken breast is usually cheaper than chicken thigh

So just consider the following

I get 60 for 4 dollars.

+1 for McChicken. Extra mayo though if you aren't adding siracha sauce. Otherwise too dry.

If Walmart's the cheapest place in your area then sure, go for it. Someplace like ALDIs will likely have cheaper thighs/quarters/whole chicken.