Meat is too expensive now — how do I still eat it?

Four moves, in the order the library’s pages would make them: buy it where a human cuts it, buy the cooked bird and use all of it, make a little go through a whole pot, and stop drying out the meat you did pay for. A fifth, for sandwich meat, comes after them, with its own safety box.

Ask at the butcher counter. Skip the shrink-wrap: ask at the butcher counter is people independently discovering the same thing: the counter with a human behind it is often the cheap option, not the fancy one. Local butchers and the meat counters at Hispanic groceries cut and portion to order at prices the big chains’ packaged case does not try to match, and you can ask for exactly what you want, two pounds split into four bags, a roast cut into stew meat. One walked in for tortillas and left with two weeks of chicken thighs and pork shoulder for less than four days’ usual spend. Both discoveries came with the same embarrassed laugh: the counter had been there all along. The companion trick: the morning after a holiday, when demand vanishes overnight, is when the meat case empties at the deepest markdowns of the year; portion, label, freeze, and check the receipt. Ask the person at the counter how they would cook the cheap cut, and you will usually get a better answer than a recipe site.

Buy the cooked bird and boil the bones. Buy the cooked bird and boil the bones starts at the hot counter where the whole cooked chicken costs about what the raw one does, and something about that feels like a trick. Many people say it is priced at or near a loss to bring you through the door; the page carries the argument about whether the shop actually loses money and says it does not need it settled, because the bird is cheap for you either way. Many people say the bird is several meals: strip the meat into two or three before you eat the first, then put the carcass, skin and bones in a pot with water and vegetable ends for stock. Some say the shop marks unsold birds down late in the day or sells them chilled next morning for less. The storage clock, from the federal food-safety service: into the fridge within two hours of coming off the warmer, one hour if the room is over 90 °F, three to four days refrigerated. And the page says plainly who it is not for: in the United Kingdom one person says the cooked bird costs more than the raw one, so the test is the two prices side by side, not the country.

Make the meat a seasoning. Make the meat a seasoning comes from people who call themselves financial vegetarians, cheerfully. Shrink the meat to a flavouring and build the meal on beans, lentils, rice or potatoes; a modest amount carries its full flavour through a pot that feeds six, and chili, curry, stir-fry and ragù were built on exactly that. The pattern that kept failing was the all-or-nothing vow; the one that worked was a few meat-light dinners a week that nobody at the table particularly noticed. If you want meat fully on the menu with a smaller bill, that lane is equally respectable: cheaper cuts, whole birds, the sale-and-freeze rhythm.

Salt it the night before, and pat it dry. Salt the meat the night before is for the chicken that is dry again and the pork chop that never browned. Many people salt it out of the packet, pat it dry and leave it uncovered in the fridge until it is cooked; the surface dries so the skin crisps, and the meat keeps more of its water in the pan. A wet surface will not brown, so the pat-dry is not optional if you want a crust. Spoon spices in rather than shaking the jar over the heat, or steam turns the jar to a brick. Coarse kosher salt and fine table salt are not equal by the spoon; a recipe written for the first wants about half as much of the second.

For sandwich meat, ask the deli to slice a whole one before you buy a slicer. Try the deli slicer before you buy your own starts from the price of pre-sliced deli meat, which can cost a good deal more per pound than the same meat in one piece. Read the safety box first if you are pregnant, 65 or older, have a weakened immune system or are buying for someone who is, because for you the page says to skip this one.

Sliced deli meat can carry Listeria, a germ that refrigeration does not kill, and it is the reason some readers should not use that page as it stands. The CDC lists people who are pregnant, newborns, people 65 or older and people with a weakened immune system as at higher risk, and the NHS lists the same groups and says older people’s risk rises with age. For those groups the CDC says to avoid unheated deli meat and cold cuts, and to eat them only when reheated to 165°F (74°C) or until steaming hot. The NHS, for pregnancy in the UK, says processed cold pre-cooked meats such as ham or chicken should be kept chilled and eaten before the use-by date, and cold cured meats such as salami, pepperoni, chorizo and prosciutto should be cooked until steaming hot first. The two bodies differ, so if you are pregnant, ask your doctor or midwife which applies to you; heating the meat until steaming hot costs nothing and is the stricter answer. These lines are about shop-bought deli meat; the page did not find an authority that speaks to meat you cook and slice at home, so if you are in a higher-risk group, ask your doctor, midwife or pharmacist before you rely on it.

If you think you have been made ill: in the US, the CDC says to contact a healthcare provider if you ate food that was recalled or linked to an outbreak and you have a fever with fatigue and muscle aches, and to say what you ate, especially if you are pregnant, 65 or older or have a weakened immune system; the serious form usually starts within 2 weeks of eating the food, and in people who are not pregnant it can bring headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and seizures. In the UK, the NHS says to ask for an urgent GP appointment or call NHS 111 if you are pregnant, or have a condition or a treatment that weakens your immune system, and think you have listeriosis, or if you think your baby might have it; if you are pregnant and your baby is moving less than usual, call your midwife or maternity unit; and to call 999 or go to A&E for a severe headache and stiff neck, discomfort looking at bright lights, a fit, sudden confusion, being very sleepy or hard to wake, or a rash that does not fade when a glass is rolled over it, and not to drive yourself. In the US, treat those same signs as an emergency and call 911.

For everyone else, the money comes first. The page’s step is to buy a whole cooked ham or turkey breast (ready to eat, not raw) and ask a store with a deli or meat counter whether it will slice it for you, and what that costs. If it will, you may not need the machine: the counter space, the cleaning and the blade all go too. Note three prices per pound: the whole piece, the counter-sliced meat, and the pre-sliced packs, and do not buy a machine until you have those three numbers. Not every shop will: some people say a grocery deli or meat department slices at no charge if you ask, one person says one big warehouse club sells whole loaves of turkey and boneless ham but has no deli and will not slice them, and one person adds that not every location of one national warehouse chain offers free slicing. Ask the store you actually use, at the counter, before you pay for the whole piece.

A slicer can still pay. People split on it, and it depends on how much sliced meat you eat, how much kitchen space you have, and whether you will also slice roasts, cheese and vegetables; some people find it a chore to clean. The number to compare is the price of the whole piece, plus a share of the machine, against the price of the packs you buy now.

If you do buy one, a slicer blade can cause deep cuts and amputations, so read the maker’s manual and these lines before the first slice. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration says, in a fact sheet written for workplaces, that rotary slicers must be used with guards that cover the unused part of the blade, and that people should never put a hand behind the food chute guard, never feed the food in by hand, use the pusher or plunger, keep their hands away from the back of the blade where the slices come out, and turn off and unplug the slicer when it is not in use or left unattended. For cleaning it says to retract the blade fully, wipe the blade from the centre outward and never wipe toward the blade when cleaning the table, use a cleaning tool with a handle, and unplug the machine before taking off guards. Those lines are for workplaces and a home machine may have different parts, so the maker’s manual comes first. Whatever you bring home, keep it at 40°F (4°C) or below and use sliced meat within 3 to 4 days (3 to 5 for deli-sliced luncheon meat; the NHS says 2 days for opened food), or freeze it in small packs.

Who this is not for. The salt page’s safety line: if you have high blood pressure, a kidney condition or heart disease, or eat low-sodium, a brine is added salt; count it inside the limit your clinician gave you, or take the drying and resting and leave the salt. And the cooked bird is heavily seasoned, so if salt is a medical matter for you, that page says the nutrition is a doctor’s question, not its own.