Are we talking about only the plain substance, not allowing for spices? Because I feel like every food isn't delicious unless you season it in some way, or at least use an oil in cooking. If we're just talking about baking everything then I'd say everything is "bland" Lol

For me it's all about how you prepare the food. I eat chicken, canned beans, and mushrooms pretty much all the time because I try to buy cheap as much as I can, but just those few main items can be made so many different delicious ways with other "smaller/lesser" ingredients.

Eggs

🥑
I think a ripe avocado can be a good meal by itself, it has healthy fat, vitamins & fiber.
One avocado as a meal is cheaper than alot of other options.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/avocados/

Yes - generally beans are both healthy (33% protein, 33% fiber, 33% carbs), cheap (dried or in cans), and can be pretty tasty, even out of cans, but if not with eggs, as part of a soup (tomatoes + grain + spices + veggies).

Carrots. Same as potatoes. Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Someone already mentioned onions, same idea.

I know your edit says you were thinking about dishes, and I think carrots can be their own dish with very little preparation. I like to bake mine on a sheet for half hour or so at 425f, and they are wonderful on their own. Also so low-calorie you can eat a practically infinite amount of them without spoiling a diet!

Thanks for this prompt. Reading this thread was the first time I felt like I was on reddit since I've joined this instance. I laughed and learned.

Well-seasoned, air-fried chicken is super healthy and cheap.

Well, first we need to define what healthy means, because you could die of water intoxication, meaning there is a point where quantity matters.

Are cheese and butter healthy ? Not if it's your only diet, but there are tons of very healthy things in cheese and butter. And of course, the same goes for every thing. So we must have balance in mind when defining an healthy food.

The second is to define what is cheap. In most of European countries, fresh food is relatively cheap, but in other countries they can super expensive. And there's nothing more healthy than fresh food. So you definitely need fresh food as a base for an healthy balanced meal.

The third is highly subjective.

As for my healthy delicious cheap meal:

Breakfast

One scrambled egg by Gordon Ramsay with a melted slice of cheddar on toast and A fruit salad of one orange, one kiwi and one small apple

Lunch

Spaghettis with fresh garlic, olive oil, fresh basil and tomato wedges

Dinner

Pan-fried chicken fillet with frozen peas and carrot rings

Snack

Any fruit really

This will be controversial. I'm going with Costco rotisserie chicken. $5. They taste good fresh but bad reheated. I don't eat the skin

Hi everyone, this post inspired me to make a community about this topic! https://lemmy.world/c/cheaphealthyfood

parsley in the form of tabbouleh salad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbouleh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley

check out the vitamins and minerals in parsley, it's one of the super foods.

Vegetable soup. I know it sounds boring but you’d be surprised at just how nice vegetables in water with salt can taste.

https://youtu.be/21ofoREnXbM

I heard that tacos are actually quite good for you, and I assume they could be if you get proper ones with lots of veg and natural ingredients rather than going to Taco Bell or some other fast food place and getting processed defrosted junk.

Source: Dr Karan on Youtube (yes, Youtube doctor, but he's British, so I trust him)

BEANS

Addictive carbs and salt, dirt cheap, and healthy as shit. Also convenient and compatible with most dietary/ethical restrictions.

If you learn to like beans when you're 20 and throw it into an index fund, you'll have a modest retirement fund just on the money you saved (yes, I calculated it based on money saved and growth of the S&P).

Well chicken maybe as it is the most cheap meat. And it is subjective, but something like chicken soup (if cooked at home) can be relativly cheap and really delicious.

Also, just thought about it - fruits and berries also easily break this trinity

Curiously, peanuts 🥜.

100 gr of peanuts have almost all the fatty acids that you need in a day, with almost half the minimum calorie intake required and half the protein you need. They are satiating, VERY easy to grow, and even used as a way to replenish the soil with nutrients in crop rotation.

If you ask me what was the mana taken through the dessert, I'd say most likely peanuts.

Oh boy I've got one! Bonus, it ticks a 4th box - convenient!

Not sure where you're located and there are different brands, so you'll have to investigate for yourself. But the Tasty Bite brand microwaveable Indian pouches to me manage to hit each of these dimensions. They're cheap (-ish, I wanna say $4 per meal?), healthy (probably high in sodium, but if you look at the ingredients list it's all just food - not weird processed and/or synthetic crap), microwaveable and totally delicious. Granted, it's delicious for a microwaved meal...can't exactly compete with a properly prepared Indian dish. But it's easily the best microwaved food I've ever eaten.

And they're vegetarian and sometimes vegan so a small win on the critter ethics too! Can't recommend em enough unless you mean REAL cheap or you're used to eating home cooked Indian dishes on the regular.

I am making vegetarian lentil soup today.

Ingredients are cheap (you can add nearly any seasonal vegetables) and lentils can be grown locally (America, Europe, Asia, maybe elsewhere too) without too much environmental damage and dried lentils can be stored for long times, you do not need expensive spices and no industrial processed stuff.

Cooking it in a pressure cooker makes it energy effective and done very fast.

You can freeze it over longer periods, so you can make one big pot, but eat multiple times. It should stay perfectly fine for three month in a freezer* and we kept it for three days in a fridge just fine (could stay good longer but I haven't tried it).

And we love it.

• If you plan to put it into a freezer do not salt it. Salt it when heating it up again.

Highly nutritious. Lentils are often overlooked, even though they're an inexpensive way of getting a wide variety of nutrients. For example, they're packed with B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, and potassium. Lentils are made up of more than 25% protein, which makes them an excellent meat alternative.

The one thing missing from the trinity is "effort". For instance, you could make any Dal, which would fit the trinity, but takes a lot of time. There are books with hundreds of Dal recipes that all taste different and work, too. And this is just one example. Less than a dollar a meal if made in bulk with rice.

I was looking at similar requirements for my daily lunch during the workday. I live in London so you're paying between £5 and £10 per day even for just a sandwich-based lunch. I needed a packed lunch that was cheap, tasty, healthy and additionally: filling, easy/quick to prepare and low carb. So that's a big ask.

I settled on a kind of custom Greek salad. One cucumber, some red onion, pickled beetroot all diced up, olive oil (or cold-pressed rapeseed oil) and some feta cheese. Sometimes I add chickpeas and coriander.

It's perfect, I've been eating it for years now.