I spend a lot of time thinking about how to tweak everyday foods until they feel like slightly better versions of themselves. To that end, we just wrapped our “Basics Made Better” series over on “The Bite,” which focused on exactly that: taking dishes that have quietly become part of many of our de facto repertoires and shifting them, ever so slightly, into new territory. Augmenting a humble cinnamon coffee cake with plush ricotta and floral cardamom. Coaxing extra fudginess out of brownies with coffee, without sacrificing the requisite crinkle top. Turning stovetop pasta into a spicy, creamy Cajun version that tastes like if the average Rainforest Cafe were suddenly staffed entirely by people with experience on the line at French bistros.
And yes, sometimes that means recommending specialty ingredients genuinely worthy of a relative splurge: the good vanilla, candied citrus, Kewpie over the bottom-shelf mayonnaise.
But that’s exactly what those are: little luxuries.
Most meals, though, are less decadent than that. Which is why I was thrilled when a handful of “Bite” readers landed in my inbox requesting a short-run series focused on budget-friendly recipes and cooking tips.
Because unless you occupy a very specific income bracket — one I certainly don’t belong to — you’ve probably noticed things feeling tighter lately. Grocery prices remain stubbornly high. For millions of Americans, SNAP and WIC benefits have been throttled or remain under threat. Gas prices leave people feeling squeezed from another direction entirely. And somehow, impossibly, $20 at the supermarket feels like it buys less and less every month.
Still, I believe there are ways to find indulgence in the space between scarcity and abundance. More than that, I believe it’s a teachable skill — one built on generations of ingenuity, adaptation and care. We have different names for it depending on the culture and era: Italy’s cucina povera, Depression-era “waste not, want not” cooking, the deeply practical art of stretching ingredients without making dinner feel bleak. Many dishes now elevated to restaurant darling status — barbacoa, ratatouille, pasta e fagioli — were born from exactly those constraints.
And in the coming weeks, we’ll explore some of those shopping, planning and cooking techniques, along with the meals that deliciously embody them.
Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.
But first, I want to start with a technique that doesn’t require spending a single additional dollar: “reverse- shopping” your own kitchen.
For some context, I do a no-spend week in the kitchen with some regularity. My guiding rule is simple: “Buy new groceries only once I’ve meaningfully worked through what I already have. And whatever I do buy afterward? It has to play nicely with the odds and ends still lingering in the pantry.” It’s frugality, yes, but it’s also a tiny self-imposed puzzle, one I’ve grown strangely fond of.
There’s the obvious benefit, of course: saving a little money during seasons that feel financially stretched. But there’s also a quieter side effect I’ve come to love. Cataloging what I have — and tossing anything expired, dubious or otherwise a little grim — feels like a miniature form of spring cleaning. It’s oddly grounding.
If you’d like to read more about my broader philosophy around no-spend weeks, you can check out my full guide here. Here’s what I wrote then about “reverse-shopping”:
The first place I start any no-spend cooking challenge is by “reverse shopping” my kitchen. Instead of adding items to a cart, I make a blank grocery list organized by category—meat and protein; fruits and vegetables; dairy; grains; pantry, plus a final catchall section for pantry extras. This is where the oils live, and the spices, and the half-forgotten jars of jam, olives, vinegars and other bits of kitchen ephemera that have been quietly waiting for their moment.
Then I put on my headphones and start browsing. Not scrolling — browsing. Opening drawers, peering into the fridge, excavating the freezer. The kitchen becomes the store, and I’m its only customer.
It helps to be specific. “Six slices of Swiss” tells you far more than “cheese.” “One sourdough heel” is a different proposition than “bread.” Writing things down this way gives you a clearer sense of what you actually have on hand—not what you think you have, or what you vaguely remember buying in a moment of optimism.
This is also the moment for a little gentle reckoning. Anything expired, off, or unmistakably past its prime can go. The goal is that, by the end of this process, your list and your kitchen are in quiet agreement with each other. You should be able to look from pantry to paper—and back again—and trust that what you see is the truth.
What I found in my kitchen
And here’s what I had this week:
Protein: Two grilled and chilled chicken breasts, a can of chickpeas, eight eggs, half a pack of applewood smoked bacon
Dairy and dairy alts: A can of coconut milk, a tub of crumbled feta, half a stick of butter
Fruits and vegetables: A bag of shredded carrots, a bag of frozen diced onions, part of a bag of frozen pearl onions, a bag of frozen peas, most of a very large sweet potato, a jar of roasted red peppers, a handful of cherry tomatoes, half a beefsteak tomato, green onions, two lemons, an avocado, a jar of artichoke hearts, a jar of salsa
Bread and grains: Half a box of ditalini, most of a bag of rice, half a loaf of sourdough
Extras: Soy sauce, miso paste, some green olives, yuzu jam, a deli tub of good chicken stock, chicken bouillon and many, many partially used jars and baggies of spices (we’ll talk more in the coming weeks about how to build a spice rack that actually aids in budget cooking!), a few glugs of olive oil, a few glugs of avocado oil, frozen ginger cubes
What I made
And here is what I made with it:
Monday: Pastina-style ditalini with cubed chicken
Today was a day composed almost entirely of tiny indignities: a sore throat that refused to fully materialize or disappear, cold drizzle slicking the windows, interview requests for the radio documentary I’m producing seemingly suspended in some fluorescent-lit corner of email purgatory. Nothing catastrophic. Just the sort of low-grade irritation that makes you want to be gently contained by dinner.
So, inspired by my colleague Nicole Karlis’ recent exploration of “nonnamaxxing,” I decided the evening called for pastina. Or, at least, my own loose, slightly pantry-driven interpretation of it.
Into my big Dutch oven went a knob of butter, followed by shredded carrots, frozen white onions, garlic powder, black pepper, thyme and enough salt to make the whole kitchen smell briefly like someone sensible was taking care of me. I let everything slump and soften before transferring the mixture to my mini blender for a quick blitz into a pale orange, velvet-like base. Back into the pot it went with chicken stock, the last of the ditalini and a lingering sprig of fresh thyme, simmering until the pasta softened into that perfect edge between soup and something more restorative than soup.
Then came cubes of chicken breast, added near the end, and a little extra stove time because I like these sorts of meals to drift unapologetically toward stew territory. Cozy food should have a bit of gravity to it.
Once ladled into low bowls, each serving got a single glossy egg yolk and a small drift of fresh lemon zest. Stirred into the steaming ditalini, the yolk turned silken and rich, cloaking the broth in the sort of luxurious texture that makes you briefly forget modern life altogether. Eaten with a hunk of sourdough, it made me feel — at least for twenty blessed minutes — like things were right with the world. Or, at minimum, potentially salvageable.
Tuesday: Sweet potato, carrot and coconut curry with rice
This one felt a little like playing pantry alchemist in the hour before dinner — the sort of meal that begins with “What needs using?” and somehow ends with something improbably lush.
Into a cast-iron skillet went a tumble of shredded carrots, cubed sweet potatoes, roasted red peppers, frozen white onions and a few of those tiny frozen ginger cubes that make you feel like the sort of person who always has a plan. I slicked everything with olive oil and then went gleefully rogue in the spice cabinet: turmeric for warmth and color, cumin and coriander for earthiness, garlic powder, black pepper, red pepper flakes and a spoonful of powdered chicken bouillon for that deeply savory, slightly mysterious backbone that makes a vegetable-heavy dish taste bigger than the sum of its parts.
After about 25 minutes in a 400-degree oven, the sweet potatoes had softened to the point where they collapsed easily beneath the back of a spoon, caramelized at the edges and smelling faintly sweet and spicy all at once. I scraped the whole mixture into my mini blender with a splash of water and blitzed it into a deep orange paste the color of late autumn leaves or a very expensive velvet couch.
Back into the skillet it went, this time with half a can of coconut milk and a drizzle of soy sauce, which added just enough salty umami to keep the whole thing from drifting too far into sweetness. Then came the second of my pre-cooked chicken breasts, cubed and folded through the sauce until everything was glossy and steaming.
I briefly considered adding peas or carrots for extra color, but decided against crowding the bowl. Instead, I finished things with a scatter of green onions, whose sharpness cut beautifully through the richness.
Served with rice and warm bread for dragging through the sauce, it landed somewhere between curry, stew and strategic fridge clean-out — which, honestly, is one of my favorite genres of cooking. Better still: there was enough left for lunch the next day, which always makes dinner feel a little more luxurious somehow.
Wednesday: Risi e bisi-ish
I was immediately taken by Anna Theoktisto’s weeknight risi e bisi for Food & Wine after spotting it on Instagram last week. The dish — essentially Italian rice and peas — sits somewhere between risotto and stew, using both puréed and whole peas for texture and depth. Unsurprisingly, this deeply appealed to me, a woman who has apparently spent the week finding increasingly elaborate excuses to use her mini blender.
I made a slightly scrappier version based on what I had around. An elderly box of Arborio rice — “best by 2023” elderly — stood in for the quicker-cooking Vialone Nano she recommends. And because I had already used my good stock earlier in the week for pastina, I improvised with bouillon cubes dissolved in hot water and zhushed up with a little white miso and garlic powder. Which is to say: budget cooking often rewards confidence nearly as much as ingredients.
I was also parmesan-less, so I pivoted toward other salty pleasures instead: crushed bacon and a pan of toasted breadcrumbs made from the heel of a sourdough loaf.
But the real addition was a can of chickpeas, aquafaba and all, simmered alongside the Arborio until the beans softened and thickened the pot into something deeply creamy and comforting. Finished with the vivid pea purée and crispy toppings, the whole thing tasted far more luxurious than its pantry origins would suggest. I’ll absolutely be making it again — budget week or otherwise.
Thursday: Shakshuka with crumbled feta
I’m a firm believer that any meal involving golden egg yolks, a skillet full of sauce and toasted bread meant for dragging through said sauce is already halfway to perfection. Which is precisely why shakshuka — or shakshouka, depending on who’s spelling it — remains one of my favorite “clean out the fridge without feeling deprived” dinners.
For this version, I tossed chopped cherry tomatoes, the better part of a Beefsteak tomato, the last of a jar of roasted red peppers and half a red onion into a skillet with olive oil, plus a few rogue frozen pearl onions I was delighted to finally use up. Then came the spices: oregano, cumin, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes and a spoonful of harissa for smoky heat.
Once everything had collapsed into a jammy, fragrant base, I added a splash of water and a little bouillon to loosen the sauce into something stew-adjacent before cracking eggs directly into the skillet. Covered and gently poached, the whites turned tender while the yolks stayed gloriously runny — the entire point, frankly.
Off heat, I finished everything with green onions and crumbled feta, whose salty brineiness melted slightly into the warm sauce. Served with toasted sourdough for dipping, it was exactly the sort of dinner that makes a nearly empty fridge feel abundant instead of bleak.
Friday: Egg and avocado rice bowl
I have sung its praises before, but this is one of those deceptively simple meals I could happily eat several times a week. And, truthfully, there have been periods where I more or less have. A bowl of hot white rice from the rice cooker topped with a single fried egg, its yolk still soft enough to collapse into the grains, plus a little shower of fresh lemon zest, which melts into the richness and creates something remarkably close to a lazy, low-effort hollandaise.
Add a few cool slices of avocado and a drizzle of soy sauce and suddenly the whole thing feels improbably complete: creamy, salty, bright, rich. The kind of meal that costs very little, takes almost no time and yet manages to feel deeply, specifically satisfying — which, to me, is one of the highest forms of home cooking.
This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.
Read more
about this topic
