Dishes/Recipes Created out of Poverty?

[mamilla93]

Ramen with eggs dropped into it . Cheapest and best. Very fulling as long as you dont mind the bloated puffer fish look of the next day.

[Akshi Porwal]

I love eating maggie instant noodles with a little cheese .

[review-specialist]

Ramen with eggs dropped into it . Cheapest and best. Very fulling as long as you dont mind the bloated puffer fish look of the next day.

Yes, I second this. It's delicious and apart from being cheap, it's also very easy to make when you need a quick meal

[review-specialist]

I love eating maggie instant noodles with a little cheese .

Maggie instant noodles with cheese, that's new to me. I'm going to try this. Thanks.

[Akshi Porwal]

I love eating maggie instant noodles with a little cheese .

Maggie instant noodles with cheese, that's new to me. I'm going to try this. Thanks.

Do try it. It's an instant noodles which is very popular in India

[Recee Ann]

Where I come from, the poor man's food is garri and sugar. Garri is obtained from processing cassava. It's really delicious and even the middle-class eat it too. You will have to mix the garri with sugar in water just like golden morn. You can even eat it with peanuts or groundnut.

[Recee Ann]

Gumbo is another food born of poverty, and Navajo fry bread (you may already know) is a result of U.S. settlers imprisoning Navajo people in Arizona after what is known as the "Long Walk" (300 miles through the desert). The colonizers only gave the Navajo people canned food, processed white flour and sugar, and lard- the latter three became fry bread. That is a very brief recount of the beginnings of the food and I recommend reading more about it for those unfamiliar.

When my parents divorced my father had absolutely no cooking skills, and I remember when we would go visit he would always make mac and cheese with cut up hot dogs mixed in. Personally, rice and dry beans became my staple meal when I was vegan in college - it'll get you by but isn't much fun to eat. Now that I have a crock pot dry beans have become even more low maintenance to cook (just put a cup of dry beans in with three cups of water, leave them overnight on low - the house will smell strongly of beans in the morning, beware for those who mind) and I keep them all the time for easy meals. I agree with a big batch of soup as the ultimate money saving but hearty meal - you can make a week's worth of chili for only a few dollars if you don't mind canned tomatoes. I also love to bake bread and have a very easy bread recipe that I like to make, though I wouldn't call it cheaper than buying a loaf of the worst bread at the store, it is more gratifying and much better for you. A homemade sourdough starter is an easy cheap thing that can save you money on yeast, though I don't have my own recipes for baking with it yet. I do find that the meals that are cheap and healthy also often require the most time. It's sort of a pick two: Cheap, Quick, or Healthy. Here's that bread recipe:

1 tbsp Yeast
1.5 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Honey
1.5 cups Water
3.5- 4.5 cups flour*

*I use unbleached all purpose, but this recipe will likely work with half unbleached and half wheat flour with slightly more kneading and rising time added.

-Combine Yeast, Honey, and Salt in a bowl, keeping Yeast and Salt on separate sides of the bowl
-Heat water to 110-120 degrees Fahrenheit (or so that it is just hot to the touch) and combine
-Lightly stir to kick ingredients up from the bottom. Let sit open in a warm place for fifteen minutes or until very foamy
-Beat in flour 1/4 cup at a time, stirring vigorously to combine completely before adding more.
-When no longer able to combine with spoon, tip dough onto floured surface and knead in flour a tablespoon at a time. Continue adding flour until bread dough is no longer too sticky.
-Roll in flour and shape into long log shape. Place on baking sheet lined with foil and sprinkle lightly with flour. Slit diagonally three times with sharp, wet knife and cover with towel in a warm place.
-Set oven to 425* and let loaf rise while oven preheats, at least 20 minutes.
-Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

*note: my oven runs cold so I bake at 450.

Hmm.. I guess I gotta check this out then!

[Recee Ann]

My opinion has always been that any traditional food is born from poverty. When you think of traditional food of any country or region, it's always local produce, seasonal, hearty, often not containing any meat. Where I come from we eat a lot of potatoes, cabbage, cheese, eggs, wild mushrooms. It varies with location. So if you want to eat cheap, make everything from scratch, it's cheaper, healthier and tastier than pre- or ready-made, buy local produce and choose seasonal. If you want to lower the expenses, cut on meat, use beans, eggs, or cheese, whatever it is that you have available. Make onion instead of meat gravy. Choose cheap cuts of meat and learn how to prepare them (usually cheap cuts are the tough ones, and need slow cooking, simmering, like in stews). Soups are a great thing, cheap, filling, tasty, easy to make and reheat.

You're completely right @Anna Maria 86

[Salah bourouba]

in our country, it's lentils

[T T 2]

I am not sure if it's created out of poverty but in India, we make Dal Chawal or Lentils and rice. It's like comfort food and every household makes it. It is not expensive.

[Anthonio042]

Well, I'm not sure if this is significant. This is only for those who are poor and have become accustomed to eating eggs as a substitute. While poverty might be devastating at times, eggs with hotdogs or hotdogs with soysauce can be a lifesaver in a pinch.

[Stephanie Kanu]

Garri. In English, that's ground cassava grain. Poor families in Africa survive on this staple. It's very popular. The grains are soaked in water with sugar and milk(optional). See it a sort of cereal but lighter and less tasty.

[n3stl3y_]

I think mine is a famous one here in Nigeria. It’s called concussion rice and basically rice and anything you have that will taste good in the rice

[Comfort Ansah]

Food eaten out of poverty where I come from can be rice and palm oil. You just mix together add salt and cook.

[Rose Tamuno]

Hi everybody, it's a gray rainy day in Charlotte, NC and I'm taking a break from reading to browse the forums... how are you all today?

So as you all know, a lot of foods commonly eaten vary by region. Different areas have local delicacies and dishes that show the influence of colonialism in the early US, or vary as a result of climate and landscape. We all have a taste for some things that others find odd but that are completely normal in our own communities. What I'm curious about is, what about foods that were born of poverty? Some regional foods have their origin in necessity. Barbecue is one. With barbecue, many people (read: enslaved/formerly enslaved black people) could only afford the poorest quality meat, and so they developed a special cooking method for it.

My personal experience wasn't "poverty" per se, but we struggled quite a lot. My Texan paternal grandparents were poor, and my dad told us stories of buying Wyler's powdered soda mix instead of Coke, drinking powdered milk mixed with water, and eating ground beef with sage mixed in and pretending it's sausage. My parents didn't have a lot of knowledge about cooking in general, so they didn't know about cooking from scratch or being creative with simple ingredients to save money. Everything they cooked came from the freezer and boxed mixes. As a grown up, eggs in purgatory and mujadarra are some end-of-budget meals I turn to frequently. These are both peasant dishes borrowed from other cultures; I'm southern through-and-through but was raised strangely devoid of food culture (probably as a result of our box-only diet).

What are some born-of-necessity foods you grew up eating or just are aware of? Are these known across the US or strictly regional? Did your family invent your own born-of-necessity foods? Any thoughts in general about this? I'd also be really interested to hear about dishes invented out of the waste-not-want-not mentality. I'm really interested and I hope you guys respond with your experiences and thoughts about this.

Thanks guys!

You know my parents and my family never really invented any food because of poverty. I guess we're one of the lucky people on this side of the world.