Cooking cheaply is not about finding sad substitutes for good ingredients. It is about noticing where the money in a food budget actually goes — which is rarely where people think — and spending the small remainder on the things that make food taste of something.
Most of the money leaves in three places
Waste, convenience and meat. Food thrown away is the largest single cost in most households, and it is invisible because it leaves in a bin rather than at a till. Pre-prepared anything — washed leaves, chopped vegetables, grated cheese, sauces in jars — costs several times what the same thing costs whole, and the work it saves is usually two minutes. Meat is the single most expensive line in most shopping. Not eating less of it, but using less of it per meal, is where the saving is.
The cheap things that actually carry a meal
Eggs, dried lentils and beans, tinned tomatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, rice, pasta, flour, frozen peas and spinach, and whatever is in season and piled high. These are not compromise ingredients. Half the well-loved dishes in the world are built from exactly this list, because that is what most people have always cooked with.
Spend the saving on flavour, not on protein
A jar of good mustard, a bottle of decent vinegar, real olive oil, soy sauce, a hard cheese, spices bought in bags rather than tiny jars. These cost little per meal and they are the entire difference between plain and good. Spices from a supermarket’s small glass jars can cost ten times what the same spice costs in a bag from a grocer. Buying them properly is the cheapest upgrade available in any kitchen.
Cook things that get better, not things that need to be perfect
Stews, soups, braises, bean dishes and anything baked in a tray reward cheap ingredients and long, unattended cooking. A cheap cut cooked slowly is better than an expensive one cooked badly. These also make more than one meal, which halves the cost again — see the pieces on batching a component and on stretching a dinner.
Cheap food tastes cheap when it is under-seasoned
Salt, acid, fat and heat are free or nearly free, and they do most of what expensive ingredients are supposed to do. A properly browned onion, a well-salted pot and a squeeze of lemon change a dish more than a costlier cut ever will. Nobody notices a cheap ingredient. They notice a flat one.
Waste less, buy whole rather than prepared, treat meat as a flavouring, and spend the difference on salt, acid, fat and spice. That is how food gets cheaper and better at the same time, which is not a trick but simply how most of the world cooks.