This may take some experimentation on your part, but the end results will be better than you expect. In many cases, your frugalized recipe will be pretty and tasty, and often indistinguishable in taste and presentation from the original.
The first thing you need to do in this process is collect your favorite recipes as well as the recipes you’d like to try that have expensive ingredients you can’t find or afford. Write them in a spiral bound notebook or type them into the computer so you have room to write your substitutions and notes.
Next, make a list of the expensive ingredients in your recipe collection: saffron, asparagus, truffles, arrowroot, unsweetened baking chocolate, leeks…
Now, figure out less expensive substitutions for them. For example, turmeric makes a good substitute for saffron and the taste and presentation are almost indistinguishable between them. You can replace unsweetened baking chocolate with cocoa powder and cooking oil or butter. Scallions (also known as spring onions) and regular yellow onions can replace leeks. Cornstarch replaces arrowroot handily. Green beans can be used in place of asparagus; it changes the flavor but leaves the presentation and texture pretty much intact. Truffles are a type of mushroom, so experiment around to find a mushroom that will give you the earthy sweet flavor of truffles – morels are, to my taste, a good substitute, but you may prefer an oyster mushroom or even the common button mushroom.
Write your preferred substitutions in your list.
You can also use less of the expensive ingredient. For example, truffle oil will often give you the flavor of truffles for far less than buying actual truffles. Also, using half a cup of chocolate chips in a cookie recipe won’t affect the flavor any, but will make the cookie healthier and less expensive. Jarred roasted red peppers are just as tasty as freshly roasted red peppers and both faster and less expensive. Canned tomatoes make a good substitute for fresh when tomato season is over. Consider halving or even quartering the amount of meat in a recipe or replacing the meat with stock – we don’t need to eat so much meat anyway. Cut back on sugar and other sweeteners, and substitute unsweetened fruit juices instead where possible. Fruit juices add depth to the dish as well as sweetness and often has fewer calories.
Also, consider making your own stocks, broths, pie crusts, and sauces. These are easy to make from inexpensive ingredients and they can often be canned or frozen to use later. Stock is made with a deboned poultry carcass, chicken feet, or pork neck bones, or beef marrow bones, or other bony parts and is simmered for about 6 hours. Broth is made with meatier parts and even with whole chickens and vegetables like the ends of carrots, celery tops, onions, and herbs, then simmered for about 3 hours. Pie crusts cost about a dime to make yourself compared to $2.00 to buy frozen. A lot of sauces can be made and canned or frozen to use later – pesto sauce made when basil is growing, then frozen, is cheap compared to buying prepared pesto, for example. Consider what you can make yourself when you are making substitutions for expensive ingredients. Sometimes, homemade is both tastier and cheaper.
Now, prepare a recipe using your substitutions list. Note what happened – was it too dry, too moist, did it fall apart, was the flavor not quite right? Was the texture off? Make any adjustments, and try again. Often, the method you use to cook the dish has almost as great an effect on the final outcome as the ingredients themselves. Consider toasting your spices before adding them to your recipe – toasting spices brings out greater depths to the flavor. Let your bread doughs rise longer.
Have family and friends sample your experiments. When you create a frugal and tasty substitution, write it down and keep it. You can make a file of recipes on the computer, or write them on recipes cards, or keep the recipes in a spiral bound notebook, or however you prefer to keep your recipes.
Review them from time to time to see if you’ve developed new and better frugal substitutions. The goal is to continue to eat delicious foods on a decidedly shoestring budget.
Some frugalizing substitutions
Wine - fruit juice, broth, stock
Red wine: blueberry, grape, cherry, pomegranate, cranberry, or other red juice
white wine: white grape, pear, white cranberry, white peach, or apple juice
fresh herbs - 1 tablespoon fresh = 1 teaspoon dried
lemon or lime juice - vinegar
sour cream - yogurt - mayonnaise
soy sauce - 5 tablespoons soy sauce = 4 tablespoons Worchestershire sauce + 1 tablespoon water
1 cup ketchup - 1 cup tomato sauce+1/4 cup sugar+2 tablespoons vinegar
pancetta - bacon
arugula - spinach
ravioli - pasta (I use penne pasta) or egg roll wrappers, filled with ravioli fillings
maple syrup - honey or brown sugar with enough water to make a syrup
molasses - honey
balsamic vinegar - 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar+1 teaspoon honey
capers - green olives or nasturtium buds (if you grow nasturtiums)
Here are some recipes I frugalized to help you get started:
Giada's Ravioli with Arugula, Tomatoes, and Pancetta
Penne with Spinach, Tomatoes, and Bacon
1 pound penne
5 rashers of bacon, diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 – 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 ounces fresh or frozen spinach
2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
(A rasher is a slice of bacon)
Wash, drain, and dry the spinach (thaw it first if it's frozen).
Cook the penne until al dente (or as done as you want) and drain it, tossing with 1 tablespoon of butter. Set aside.
Fry the diced bacon until crisp, remove with a slotted spoon so the grease remains in the skillet, and drain the bacon on a paper towel.
Drain the tomatoes, reserve the juice.
Saute the garlic in the bacon grease with the olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter. Be sure to scrape up the bits of bacon that might be clinging to the bottom of the skillet. Cook until fragrant, remove the garlic bits (unless you want the bite of the garlic pieces), then add the drained tomatoes. Cook for 3 - 4 minutes. Add the spinach and cook 1 - 2 minutes - the spinach will wilt down very small, that's OK.
Toss the tomato spinach sauce with the penne and top with the crispy bacon bits.
Martha Stewart's White Chicken Chili
Frugalized Chicken Chili Blanco
2 15 ounce cans diced tomatoes, drained, juice reserved (I used Red Gold with green chiles) (or, if they're in season, 10 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced)
2 jalapenos, halved and seeded
1 banana pepper, halved and seeded
1 chipotle pepper, halved and seeded
2 white onions, peeled and halved
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds chicken, quartered
1/4 cup chile powder
1 3/4 cup chicken stock + 2 cups water
3 cups cooked navy or white kidney beans
Poach the chicken in the stock and water until tender - about 25 minutes. Cool enough to shred the meat off the bones, return the bones to the stock and simmer down to 1 3/4 cups stock. Remove the bones and reserve the stock.
Drain the tomatoes and reserve the juice. Arrange the tomatoes, peppers, onion, and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet. Keep them separate because you'll be doing different things to them later. Broil until they begin to char - about 10 minutes, but watch closely in case yours chars earlier (my daughters oven will char them in 7 - 8 minutes, mine in 10 -11 minutes)
Start heating a cast iron dutch oven, with the olive oil coating the insides, over a medium heat.
Coarse puree the onion and garlic. Add to the heated dutch oven and saute until they caramelize - about 10 minutes.
Rinse the baking sheet with a bit of the reserved tomato juice, than add to the charred tomatoes and peppers in the food processor and pulse with some more tomato juice.
Push the onions and garlic to the side and toast the chili powder slightly, until it smells divine and starts to darken - about 1 minute.
Add the shredded chicken and the tomato mix. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add the 1 3/4 cup of stock. Simmer for 20 minutes, adding more stock if needed (usually you won't need more unless you like a thin chili). add the beans and simmer another 10 minutes.