June, Delish's senior food producer and resident budget eats expert, set out to cook as many meals as she could for $20. Watch to see how she fared—and catch the rest of her series Budget Eats on YouTube!
I don't know how I managed to do this to myself, but I did. Feeling extremely exhausted after filming episodes of Budget Eats where I had $25 to spend, Julia and I decided we would lower the budget to $20 this time. Less money means fewer ingredients means fewer recipes means less work for me—right? Wrong. So wrong.
How did I end up making 9 meals—plus a smoothie, plus a snack—and still wind up with a whole stash of red lentils, a handful of tortillas, and five mandarins left over by the time Friday rolled around?? It felt like a cruel joke that I'd played on myself somehow!
The star ingredient of this round was definitely a two-pound bag of wheat berries I picked up for $1.99. While roaming the aisles at lightning speed because it was the day before a snowstorm and half the people in the city seemed like they thought they might starve if they didn't stock up for a month, my eyes landed on a bag that I thought was filled with golden-hued grains of rice. It turned out to be polished grains of durum wheat, Triticum durum, otherwise known as "pasta wheat" because it's often used in—you guessed it—manufacturing pasta.
I used it in seven dishes, sometimes to stand in for other grains I was more familiar with: a fried "rice," a "rice" pudding, a "farro" salad, a khichdi, two bowtie pasta numbers, a stack of tomato-flavored tortillas. Some of these utilized the wheat in their purchased berry form, and some required me to blitz the berries into a flour so I could manipulate it into a dough. The grains had a very pleasing, bouncy, al dente texture to them that remained even after long cooking times; the flour presented forth a naturally sweet flavor that shined through all the applications. All of them turned out super delicious.
Without further ado, here are my favorite recipes from this week of budget eats.
Jicama Slaw
To be honest, this episode started off rough. The first night, I made some salmon tacos that I had hoped would be one of the highlights of the week, but gosh darn it, they just weren't that good.
I overcooked the salmon trying to crisp up the pieces of fish skin, then underestimated the greasiness of salmon fat, then committed the fatal mistake of waiting too long before eating the food (because who has time to eat the food when you have to shoot it from four different angles for camera first??)—so by the time Aaron tasted it, the whole thing was just...no good. While edible, the tortillas were stale, the fish was cold, the flavors unsatisfying against the backdrop of my bitter disappointment.
But the bright spot was the jicama salad, which was perfectly crisp, fresh, light but seasoned just right with raw onions, spicy jalapeños, sweet carrots, fragrant cilantro stems, along with juicy mandarins and spiky vinegar. Aaron said that this salad would've made a great meal on its own, a comment that inspired my salmon jicama wheat salad on Wednesday, a riff off of Lena's farro salad.
Sweet Potato Butternut Wheat Berry Pudding
If you love sweet and creamy rice pudding, I think you'll love durum wheat pudding. And if you have a fear overcooking rice, know that that won't happen with wheat berries: They retain their chewy nature even after almost one hour of simmering away on the stove. By using my $1 can of evaporated milk, the concentrated levels of lactose (milk sugars) meant I didn't have have to add a whole lot of sugar to make this treat sweet, especially with the presence of sweet potato, butternut squash, and cinnamon.
Despite this being more of a dessert than a savory main, Aaron and I both loved eating a nice, big, hot bowl of this comfort food for dinner. We both went back for seconds before I fridged the leftovers, which became a nice tall, cold glass of thick horchata-esque shake two mornings after, blended until smooth with ice.
10/10 would make again.
Canned Tomato Chilaquiles With Jalapeño Salsa And Butternut "Crema"
Oh man, was this a spicy number. I wanted to treat Aaron to one super-spicy dish and truly succeeded in that mission while simultaneously bringing unforeseen destruction to my own digestive system. By using ground chile, gochugaru, sambal oelek, black pepper, and smoked paprika in addition to fresh jalapeños, mere mortals stood no chance surviving eating this dish.
...Which is to say, I died while eating this dish, and then died again in the evening after eating this dish. To calm down the heat ravaging through my entire being, I cheated and dolloped on some expired sour cream that was floating in the purgatory of my fridge. Tasting creamy dairy was like inhaling the breath of God, a taste of cooling salvation from the fiery hells of my own construction.
Aaron said it was fine. I might or might not have cried.
Salmon Broth Minestrone With Eggless Farfalle
Lest you be deceived, there is no actual salmon meat in this soup. Clocking in at about $1.58 for two servings, this dish only used salmon broth that I'd extracted by boiling water with the salmon bones that remained after I'd already stripped the scraps of salmon meat off them.
I threw in chunks of veggies that remained from the wreckage of previous recipes, and to bulk it up, added in some cute homemade bowtie pasta made with only ground durum wheat berries and salt and water—no eggs.
Boiling the fresh, rustic noodles straight in the broth gave the soup a slightly viscous, silky mouthfeel and Aaron proclaimed it reminded him of the best canned soup memories from childhood. I'll take it.
Sweet Potato Hummus Wrap With Homemade Durum Tortillas
Aaron had been asking for sweet potato fries all week, so I finally decided to make his dreams come true on Friday. Instead of deep-frying them, I brushed shoestring cuts of sweet potato (skin-on, for more fiber) with a little bit of oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper, and baked at 375° for 30 minutes, turning and flipping halfway through.
To make it a meal, I made a super garlicky (with three variations of garlic in it! Roasted! Raw! Fried!) lentil hummus and four large durum tortillas tinged with a bit of tomato (for color! And flavor!) and served it as a wrap.
They were very good. Aaron didn't give it a perfect score but what are numbers worth? He ate three of them, and I happily let him have them. I guess you can call that love.
Homemade Baked Tortilla Chips And Salsa
When it comes to snacking, there are few things better than hot tortilla chips and fresh, cool salsa. While the fried version is way more satisfying, the baked ones come together with minimal effort and a far less intimidating clean-up.
I've linked Makinze's homemade salsa above, which uses roasted jalapeños, tomatoes, and onions for smokier flavors. If you're short on time and energy like I was, a bare-bones salsa can come together in just 5 minutes or under: three plum tomatoes (I used canned), one jalapeño (or half if yours were as big as mine were), ¼ large onion, 1 clove of garlic, 2 teaspoons vinegar (or a squeeze of lime), plus salt to taste. Roughly give everything a chop, whizz it all up in a food processor until your desired chunkiness, and let's eat!
Bonus Snack: Roasted Salmon Bones
Now, I'm not recommending you do this, because it is a potential choking hazard, but if you do decide to roast salmon bones until they are golden and crispy, you just might be looking at the most dangerous but most delicious #trashfood snack of all time. It takes about 30 minutes in a 350° oven. Cheers. Please be careful. Please don't be reckless like I am.
