echomomo sauce is a great answerer?

Office workers who bring meals

Yes, I think cooking for myself saves money rather than ordering takeout! First of all, let me explain this issue. Because the canteen of my workplace provides meals for brunch, I usually make dinner by myself. I usually make two dishes, one plate of staple food and one plate of fruit in the evening, so that I can finish the meal without any leftovers. If office workers bring their own meals, in addition to saving money, they also need to consider the nature of the ingredients. For example, vegetables will contain nitrite overnight, and it is best to cook vegetable dishes that morning. Sharing my cooking experience with you can definitely reduce costs to a certain extent and use the money saved to do more fun things. Wouldn’t it be more delicious?

1. How to buy cheap ingredients.

First of all, when it comes to vegetables, I usually buy them from the following sources: 1. Large supermarkets; 2. Pinduoduo; 3. Community group buying groups; 4. Discounted vegetable shops at the entrance of the community. I used to go to large supermarkets, such as Wal-Mart, once a week, and basically every time I would find vegetables at a low price of about one yuan. Moreover, I will save a note record of the lowest price of vegetables and meat I encounter on my mobile phone, so that when I go shopping, I can clearly know whether the price is the lowest and whether it is a good deal. If you know the prices of food ingredients well, you won’t be deceived by merchants’ prices just because you are a young person.

Purchasing vegetables on Pinduoduo is also a good choice, but because Pinduoduo usually sells them in lots of 5 kilograms or 10 kilograms, it is not recommended to choose leafy vegetables. Choose rhizomes, which can be stored for a longer time. It will be more convenient. If you particularly like a vegetable or fruit, and you are sure that you will be able to finish it all, it is more cost-effective to buy more of it from Pinduoduo. I have bought 10 kilograms of pineapples from Pinduoduo several times before. In order to eat cheap pineapples, I even learned to use a pineapple knife to cut them in the fruit shop-style way.

Community group buying groups now exist in various places, and they are now becoming a normal development trend. If you visit the group occasionally, you will find cheap dishes worth buying. Because I mentioned before that as long as you know the price of a dish, you will know it when the price reaches your expectation.

There should be discounted vegetable shops at the entrance of the community. You can check with the uncles and aunties around you. The most famous vegetable shop of this kind is Aunt Qian. Many fruit and vegetable stores have learned from Aunt Qian's business model. This store near my home offers a 50% discount on all vegetables after 9:30, but it’s still very cheap after all. You should learn to ask more questions from the elders and aunties in the community. They will know where it is more cost-effective to buy vegetables and meat nearby. Where is the cheapest place to buy groceries around the community? You are right to follow the directions. However, this kind of physical stores generally use stored-value cards. In order to avoid risks, it is not recommended to store too much money in the card at once.

2. Regarding how to make cheap ingredients.

First of all, when it comes to making ingredients, you should have a rough idea. Generally speaking, beef and mutton are more expensive than chicken and duck meat in the market. Chicken is the cheapest. Chicken wings are more expensive than chicken breast. Frozen meat is more expensive than chicken breast. Chilled food is cheap, but freshly slaughtered food is more expensive. Various seasonal fish and shrimps are also very expensive. If you have high requirements for the ingredients themselves, there is no way to make cheaper dishes than takeout. If you make too much at one time, just put it in a box and freeze it, or just freeze the ingredients according to the amount when you buy them. It is also a good choice to pre-process the ingredients in advance.

For example, for braised chicken, I usually use frozen chicken wing roots, chopped chicken pieces with a bone chopper, boil them with potatoes, and pour them over rice. The taste will be very good; Kung Pao Generally, chicken breasts are used for diced chicken. As long as it is marinated in starch in advance, it will be very tender and not woody at all. Pipa legs are a bit tasteless. I personally don’t like to eat them directly. Chopping chicken pieces is too much. If it's big, I usually debone it and stir-fry it with chicken thigh meat. Last time I tried using salt-baked chicken powder to bake Pipa legs in a rice cooker, and it was also very delicious. As for duck meat, halves of duck and frozen duck legs in supermarkets are very cheap and should be good to make. However, I don’t eat much duck, so I can’t offer any suggestions.

As for seafood, saury, mackerel, yellow croaker, and pangasius are very cheap. If it is a fishing ban season, you can find a lot of cheap frozen yellow croaker by searching "Zhoushan yellow croaker" on Taobao. , just pay attention to the fact that some of them are relatively small, maybe seven or eight can be used to make a dish. As long as this kind of frozen fish is thawed and marinated with salt, pepper, ginger slices and old wine for fifteen minutes, it will taste similar to fresh fish when steamed and topped with soy sauce. Those who have high requirements for umami taste can also make the taste stronger, such as braised with bean paste, so that the original umami taste is basically not noticeable. Or have a good relationship with the fishing guys around who are skilled and not in the air force, so that there will be endless river fish to eat (laughs).

I have also bought shellfish. The Japanese drama "Yesterday's Food" also introduced a method of preserving uneaten shellfish: directly spit out the sand and freeze it, so that the texture will be the same when you eat it again. of. Note: Frozen skin shrimps are different from ordinary frozen fish. They are divided into boat frozen and cooked frozen. Generally, the meat will not shrink after being cooked and frozen, but this is different when it is frozen on a boat. Be careful not to be fooled.

Finally share some low-priced convenience dish recipes. 1. Cold black fungus.

Place about 10g of dried fungus in a thermal box, add a teaspoon of sugar, fill the box with warm water, cover it and wait for 10 minutes, the fungus will be soaked. This method feels like magic. Blanch the fungus in hot water, cool it, add three cloves of minced garlic, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of vinegar, a tablespoon of sesame oil, a tablespoon of sugar, and a little chicken essence, and stir evenly. That’s it.

2. Pumpkin and red date soup. Peel and cut about 500g of pumpkin into pieces, put a handful of red dates and a spoonful of sugar into the rice cooker, fill it with a pot of water, set the timer soup button, and you will have cheap and delicious pumpkin and red date soup when you get home from get off work.

3. Baked potato wedges. Cut the potatoes into hob pieces, sprinkle with minced parsley, allspice, and cumin powder (you can sprinkle whatever you have at home), add a small spoon of oil, and bake in the oven at about 220 degrees for 30 minutes. Potatoes are really cheap. This dish It feels like the most expensive thing is the electricity bill.

4. Sweet and sour pork ribs. This dish of pork ribs will be a little more expensive, but it is quite simple to make. Blanch the ribs to remove impurities and fry them normally according to the recipe of one wine, two sauces, three vinegar and four sugars. According to the proportion, add a small bowl of water. After boiling on high heat, cook on low heat for about 15 minutes and it will be very delicious.

Here are some pictures of other dishes I have made myself

Hyohwa fried dumplings

Fish head tofu soup

Kumamon curry Rice

Roasted three-yellow chicken in honey sauce

Italian tomato risotto

Korean bibimbap

Spanish paella