To save money (or for other reasons) I'm trying to recreate dinners we've always liked at restaurants, which I found I can make much cheaper. Here's an example from last month: my guy grilled a steak for him, and I made salmon in the air fryer for myself, with a baked potato, a loaf of french bread with an olive oil herb dip, and a wedge salad for both of us.
Breaking down the cost: I shopped around until I found four ribeye steaks for $23.00 at Winn Dixie (which has consistently been the cheapest place for steak.) The entire loaf of bread was $1.00 at Wal-Mart, and it is surprisingly quite good if you can get it the minute they put it out on the racks in the bakery (that's also cheaper than even I can make it.) The oil/herb dip was made from a 10-serving packet, and cost about fifty cents per portion. The wedge salad came from leftover iceberg lettuce I got for $3.00 and used for two other meals. We grew the radishes. The potatoes were from a five-pound bag for $3.99, also from Wal-Mart, which works out to about twenty cents each. I got my salmon filet on sale for $30.00 and cut it up into 15 smaller portions.
I even found an excellent recipe for the dill sauce for my fish that I made with sour cream leftover from another recipe, and fresh dill from our garden.
With the ribeye steak his dinner cost about $7.95; to buy his from a restaurant would be a minimum of $28.99 for one steak and two sides (ribeye is super pricey to eat out these days.) My dinner had two portions of salmon (one of which broke in half in the air fryer), and cost about $5.95 total. The same meal at the restaurant that I was duping was $18.99 before they took it off the menu; I can't even dine out for it anymore in our area. In the end we ate meals worth $52.98 (that includes a 20% tip for the server) that we made ourselves for just under fourteen bucks.
Comments
I try to duplicate the meals we eat out. The only ones I have trouble with are the Chinese/Thai ones. They usually have ingredients I don't normally carry so I have to substitute. I keep trying though because it's the one time I can substitute sugar with sugar free substitute or use bean vermicelli instead of rice vermicelli. (Rice always spikes his sugar.)
If you're interested, this is the bread dip I make from scratch.
Bread Dipping Oil
Ingredients:
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, finely minced, to taste
• ½ tsp dried basil
• ¼ tsp dried parsley
• ¼ tsp dried oregano
• ¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or less if desired
• ⅛ tsp garlic powder
• Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
• ⅓ cup good olive oil
• Good balsamic vinegar, to taste, optional **Add right at serving
Combine the minced garlic, basil, parsley, oregano, crushed red pepper flakes, garlic powder, sea salt, and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste, together in a small shallow bowl.
Pour the olive oil on top of the seasoning mixture and stir until well mixed; set aside for 15 minutes to allow flavors time to mingle.
One other trick I use to always have bread handy: freeze it, then thaw it when ready to use, once thawed, stick it in the oven on low temp for 15 minutes or so. You'll think it was fresh baked. Sometimes we just nibble on bread and oil when we're not hungry enough for a whole meal.
Orzo can be a decent replacement for rice if he's okay with pasta.