WE’RE forking out more for our pasta, with the cost rising 11 per cent in a year. To keep costs down, ditch expensive sauces and ingredients. Here are tasty ways to make spaghetti stretch further.
Sort Your Shapes
Some of the posh pasta brands cost upwards of £2.50 for a 500g packet. But you can save cash by buying a basic range — Tesco’s Hearty Food Co penne is 41p for 500g. Other cheap pasta shapes include spaghetti, fusilli, and linguine.
To keep an eye on costs, watch your portion size. According to the portion calculator at lovefoodhatewaste.com, a family of two adults and two kids under ten needs 240g of dried pasta, making a 500g bag easily last two meals. If you do cook too much, let it cool, drizzle with a little oil and stir to separate, then freeze for another day.
Meat-Free Magic
Many of us love a spaghetti bolognese or a carbonara, but both will eat into your budget because they contain pricey meat and many ingredients. Simple vegetarian dishes, such as pasta with homemade tomato sauce, are just as yummy and keep prices down. All you need is tinned tomatoes, an onion, garlic or garlic powder, and a generous dash of oil. Fry the onion and garlic, then add the tomatoes until they break down and the sauce thickens. Stir into your pasta and top with cheese. For a different dish, add broccoli to your pasta pan for the last five minutes of cooking time, drain, then gently mash the broccoli with butter and cheese.
Eat Like an Italian
In Italy, they have some incredibly elaborate pasta sauces, but they also like to keep it simple. You can make an easy midweek meal by gently cooking crushed garlic cloves in olive oil, then adding it to cooked pasta with a sprinkling of chili flakes and parsley. Another dish — cacio e pepe — uses just butter, pepper, and parmesan with spaghetti.
All prices on the page are correct at the time of going to press. Deals and offers are subject to availability.
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