11 Frugal Food Swaps to Help You Save Money

1. Tea or coffee

Let's start with everybody's daily cuppa: tea or coffee. Tea and coffee are dry stores, so if you come across a bargain in a supermarket or the grocery store, you can buy a couple and store them for later in your pantry, as dry stores last a long time. However, tea and coffee are usually quite expensive. 

There are some cheaper alternatives, and they're very much worth trying. The good old stinging nettle out of your back garden or you see when walking is an excellent way of making a lovely cup of tea. You can dry the leaves or put them fresh into a cup. 

Just steep them in boiling water for 5 minutes, remove the nettles, and then drink the tea. If you haven't tried it, it's worth a try. They make lovely earthy-flavored tea. It's fresh, stimulating, and has various good health properties. It can help reduce inflammation, and it's also meant to be very good for those suffering from hay fever. 

One of my favorite natural teas is blackberry leaf, and we're just coming to that season now in the blackberry bush or the bramble bush, where the little new leaves are coming through. 

Those tiny little bright green leaves, if you pull one off and rub it between your fingers, you will notice they smell so sweet, like the most delicate of blackberries. 

They are the same in a cup of tea. You can have them fresh or dry and use them just as you usually would use tea leaves. 

If you collect acorns, coffee can be made from acorns. 

It has a small amount of caffeine, and the acorns have a lovely nutty coffee flavor when roasted. 

Also, you can roast dandelion roots. It makes a nice coffee if you dig it out, scrub it, and roast it. It's more of a Chicory type of coffee. It won't pack the same punch as your regular jar or roast bean coffee, but it's an excellent alternative, and it's free. 

2. Salad leaves

Nettles can be used as salad leaves or in a stir-fry. 

If you are collecting nettles, be a little bit careful and make sure you've got gloves on. 

We don't want you to get covered in stings. 

3. Baking soda

We tried a little experiment this week.

We have found that carbonated water can be used to help the bread to rise if you don't have any bicarb of soda or baking soda, or yeast. 

4. Sugar

Carrots have a sweetness if you're low on sugar and need to make a cake or want to. 

Carrots, squash, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes can add a little bit of sweetness to cakes and baking. 

We used grated carrots this week to add to cakes and bread loaf, adding some nice texture to the baking. 

5. Potato chips

Don't get rid of your potato skins and root veggie peelings. As long as the root veggies have been scrubbed, cleaned, and then peeled, you can save them and roast them as paupers chips. 

You roast them in a conventional oven like you would roast potatoes, or you can use your air fryer. 

Also, the veggie peelings are great for stock bases and soup bases in a slow cooker or a big pan. Again, as long as the peelings are clean, you don't need to waste any of the peelings. 

6. Onions

If you are low on onions for a recipe, try cabbage.

Finely shredded cabbage, lightly fried, makes a good replacement in texture and all you need to add is a bit of garlic to get that flavor going. 

7. Water chestnuts 

Sliced radishes are an excellent replacement for water chestnuts in stir-fries.

8. Meat

Cans of legumes or beans drained and mashed down make a fabulous meat replacement that you can use in burgers. They're also quite good if you mash them down. 

You can make them into small little meatballs. 

Just make sure you add some seasoning and herbs to bulk them out. 

9. Flour

If you're running short of flour, mashed potato added to flour will stretch it further. 

10. Mayonnaise

If you can get it cheap enough, mayonnaise is a convenient and useful item to have. Not only will it replace eggs and some oil in baking, but it can also be used as butter by frying or adding to mashed potatoes. 

You can spread it on your bread and skip the butter or the margarine. 

You can make a hot sauce by adding chili, a nice cool sauce by adding cucumber and mint, or a prawn cocktail-type sauce, which will be a squish of tomato puree and a little bit of paprika into your mayonnaise mixed up. 

11. Eggs 

Eggs have been something else that has gone up in price, and there are quite a few shortages. 

There are some alternatives for eggs. Mayonnaise added with cans of legumes becomes a starchy juice. You can use that for binding in baking and cooking—the same with potato water.

If you cook potatoes in water and you've boiled them, don't get rid of the water; save it and let it cool. You can use it as a binder in baking because it's lovely, starchy, and sticky. 

Frugal food swaps

Food swaps are great alternatives when you run out of something, or the price is too high, and you need a cheaper item. Do you have any free, cheaper alternatives that either stretch your budget or are just good backups? Share your food swaps in the comments below.