Saving money on the weekly shop is one of the biggest areas I like to save I love making very cheap meals to feed my family on a budget. I like spending less on shopping and bills to give us more money to spend on fun things such as days out.

Here are my tips for finding cheap food every week.

I wanted to share some of the ways we keep the cost of our food shopping down week to week and find lots of cheap food to feed my family.

This is where most of my meat and bread comes from. I either freeze or cook on the day of purchase to ensure it doesn’t go off – although some items last for ages after their use-by date including carrots and muffins.

Reduced food can be found at any time of day, so don’t be put off looking just because it’s early. While the best bargains usually are in the evenings, there is still plenty of cheap food to be had at other times of the day.

I have a lot of posts on reduced food – here are a few of them:

The Best Time of Day for Yellow Sticker Bargains

10 Misconceptions about buying Yellow Sticker Food

The Big Christmas Eve Reduced Shop

The Difference Between Best Before and Use By

10 Things To Do With A Reduced Food Haul

Does Reduced Food go off Quicker? 

2. Uses Apps Like Shopmium And Checkoutsmart For Free And Cheap Food

I use these apps to get free and discounted food. They offer all sorts of food – from yoghurts to crisps and cider to chocolate and even baby food.

The food pictured below came in at £2 for everything (rather than the RRP of £12) by using cashback apps to get money back on my shopping.

Take a look through the app before you shop, buy the product and then upload a picture of your receipt for a full or partial refund.

It’s worth double-checking to ensure you buy the right product in the right size or flavour – I’ve got it wrong before when I’ve been in a rush and missed out on my money back!

3. Buy Basic Rice And Pasta

We eat loads of rice and pasta in our house and I find basic rice and pasta work just as well in most recipes as the more expensive versions. They are also extremely versatile so can be used in a multitude of meals when sticking to a tight budget.

Other products I buy the basic versions of include:

• Tortilla Chips
• Stock cubes
• Flour
• Stuffing mix

4. Buy Wonky Fruit & Veg

Wonky Veg boxes from Lidl – these are £2 and often have enough vegetables to last us for the week.

Of course, it can vary a bit what you get but at the same time, it means finding new and exciting recipes to try and use everything up.

Most supermarkets now have wonky veg at cheaper prices too – one of my favourites is the wonky avocados from Morrisons which cost around £2 for a bag of six.

5. Using Up Scraps

Some of the cheapest meals I make come from using up bits of food that most people would usually throw away. If you’d normally have thrown something in the bin, using it up essentially makes a meal that costs nothing.

I try to avoid peeling vegetables where I can, but when I do peel them, the peels are made into Vegetable crisps, soup, or loaded potato skins.

Stale bread also has a multitude of uses including making dishes such as bread and butter pudding and turning into breadcrumbs which can be used to bulk out other dishes.

Here are some of my favourite cheap food dishes made from scraps and leftovers:

• Potato Peel Soup
• Garlic Bread for the freezer
• Healthy Potato Skins
• Southern Spiced Potato Skins
• Pepper and Onion Potato Skins
• Croutons & Breadcrumbs

6. Combining Offers, Freebies And Yellow Stickers

To make meals as cheap as possible, I’ll often combine offers such as a reduced piece of meat with a very cheap sauce from one of the supermarket apps I mentioned.

This 47p curry recipe is a prime example of that. The meat was reduced to 18p but enough for two people and sauce worked out at 10p with cashback from the app.

7. Looking At Offers Before I Shop

We do our main weekly shop at Lidl and before I shop I always check the Lidl App to see what offers are on this week.

In particular, I check for the ‘Super Weekend Offers’ which often feature products at half price such as olive oil, meat, sauces and nuts.

8. Other Special Offers

I’ve seen lots of people say you should never look at the special offers at the end of aisles in the supermarket as they don’t represent good value.

I think that’s totally wrong.

It does depend on what you’d usually buy, but special offers can make some branded foods cheaper than the supermarket’s brand version.

A good example of this is the co-op £6 meal deal which usually has five or six frozen items that retail at around £12 making a good cheap way to buy food.

9. The Too Good To Go App

The Too Good To Go App is an excellent way to get cheap food – you do have to be quick though as boxes of food sell out quickly.

With this app, you can purchase a box of out-of-date or short-dated food from supermarkets and cafes. It helps prevent food waste and the value of the food is often much more than the £3.09 you’ll be paying.

My friend Vicky managed to get a box from her local Morrisons – here’s what it contained:

• 3 boxes of Roses
• 2 Packets of Hershey’s Chocolates
• 2 loaves of bread
• 3 packets of butter
• A bag of white potatoes
• A bag of red potatoes
• A bag of onions
• A packet of pitta bread

Vicky has a full post on How To Get A Too Good To Go Box which you need to read if you plan to give this a go!