Common Budget Meal Fails & How to Fix Them

How to correct too much salt

I started with a good amount of delicious ingredients that are great building blocks for recipes usually. I was planning on making some roasted chicken packets, which are chicken and vegetable packets that you'd put in tin foil and stick in the oven.

Everything was going according to plan except that I added too much salt. 

Now if you add too much salt into something, it can make the whole thing kind of inedible, but you can salvage the whole recipe if you add something else that could soak up the extra seasoning or the extra salt. Potatoes are a great way to do that. 

Rice is what I ended up using. 

I ended up cutting up the chicken into small pieces, adding a bunch of rice, and mixing it all together, which helped absorb all that extra salt. So if you add a little bit too much salt or another seasoning, a lot of times adding in a neutral starch like potato or rice is going to really help that recipe be salvageable. It will help to disperse the amount of seasoning in it and neutralize some of the excess seasonings. 

How to correct texture

What if it's more of a texture thing? I was making these flatbreads that were supposed to be nice, airy, and fluffy, and they turned out a lot doughier, a lot thicker, and even a little tough in the end because the baking powder was a little old. The baking soda that I used in the next try of the recipe didn't quite work out either. 

So texturally just not what I was looking for. 

Instead, when you have something that's texturally a little off, you can put it into something a little more forgiving. A soup tends to be very texturally forgiving. Cutting up these hard little hockey pucks that I made and putting them into a soup helped soften them and made them a little more like dumplings. 

I put them into potato soup, which was delicious and softened up nicely. So if you have something that's texturally a little bit off, depending on the texture, putting it into something like a soup can help to soften the thing or change the texture slightly so that it is more edible and tastes a lot better. 

Also, don't be afraid to experiment with the thickness, thinness, or texture of something. 

I rolled the failed flatbreads out, and they turned out much better as tortillas than they ever did as flatbreads. 

So definitely feel free to experiment as you go along when you see that a recipe is just not turning out as you would like. 

If you need to improve the flavor 

Now, what if you make something and it tastes okay? It just doesn't taste great. It's not a wow meal. I think there's often this idea that all our meals need to be amazing, and that's just not the case. 

Sometimes you're going to make food, and it's going to be okay, but it's just not going to be great. 

It's not going to be a meal you want to repeat, or it's just not going to be something that everybody loves. 

Not every meal will be a repeat meal or something you want to have over and over again. That's okay. Food can taste delicious, but it doesn't always have to taste absolutely amazing in order to fill our bellies or for us to get nutrition from it. 

So if you make something and it's slightly off, but it's still palatable, and you still are going to eat it because you have no money for other food, it is okay. 

It is still a win because you still have food, and you are still able to eat it. 

Now, is it a huge plus if the food tastes delicious, and can you eat a delicious meal on a tight budget? Yes. But will every meal you make when you are on a tight budget be a win? No. It's hard to make meals that are absolute, without a doubt, going to be foolproof sometimes. 

Budget meal fails & how to fix them

You're going to have some things that you add into a recipe, and it just doesn't turn out as you like, and that is okay. 

Give yourself a lot of grace. When you're cooking on a tight budget, that can be a huge challenge for anybody, even a well-seasoned chef. How do you fix meal fails? Share your tips in the comments below.