One of the activities this week is to develop a healthy recipe so I decided to look at the minced beef recipe which I cook about every six weeks or so. I suppose it was originally some sort of Bolognese sauce but I doubt if any Italian would recognise it now. Anyway I decided to look at how I could make it low fat, high fibre and tasty to boot. I recorded what I put in it and investigated the nutritional values and as this is called Frugally Challenged, I took on the costing challenge as well.
750 grammes mince (I used Tesco less than 5% fat mince)
2 tins Everyday value chopped tomatoes (I drained off some of the juice)
3 tbsp Worcester sauce
about 20 grammes garlic
350 grammes mushrooms sliced (again I used Everyday value)
500 grammes frozen mixed vegetables (see below)
500 grammes chopped onions
1 tube tomato puree
I used Tesco vegetable mix for Bolognese because it's on special at the moment at 50p but I think I would normally use any mixed veg. I cooked this first then pureed it.
Brown the mince and put it in the slow cooker. Bung in everything else (semi drained tomatoes, Worcester sauce, garlic, sliced mushroom, vegetable puree, chopped onions and tomato puree). Cook on high for four hours then switch to low and remove the lid until it is the consistency you want.
The total cost was £8.10, the total calories 1920. This meant it cost 68p per portion and had 160 calories. I won't bore you with the carbohydrate, salt, fat and sugar figures but they were pretty good as well.
And the sauce was scrummy!
Sounds like a winner to me. I suppose you could do a similar thing with a basic chilli recipe adding more vegetables etc. By lowering the calories like this you can keep the portion sizes similar.
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