Sardines on toast from 40p
Ingredients per person: one can of sardines, two slices of bread. Optional: seasoning & sauce (e.g. black pepper, lemon juice, mayo, hot & spicy sauce). Method: see below.
If you eat fish, sardines on toast is probably the healthiest, cheapest meal to make. Bread and sardines may have been Roman peasant grub, but it was a necessary staple and kept the poor buggers fit enough to work the fields and the sea.
‘… so many excellent things — Fish, fur, feather, all kinds, with prairie, corn-land, and ferals’ - Catullus, Carmina. (Roman mosaic from Tunisia, Sousse-Musée; Michel-Georges Bernard.)
Sardina pilchardus will infuse your guts and body with Omega 3 oil, protein, vitamins and minerals. Sardines on toast is an easy meal to make in large quantities for groups of people, whether it’s for diggers during the fieldwork season or for students trying to live frugally. Fish like sardines are full of flavour; and, along with pilchards, anchovies and mackerel, have a long history as the base for fish sauces that ‘jazz up’ mealtimes, such as the garum sauce from the Roman world made from fermented fish guts and heads.
Four little fishies made garum one day. Nothing was wasted in the Roman Mediterranean - the heads and guts of these sardines were destined for the garum factory. (Roman mosaic, Source: https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/garum-delicacy-of-romans/)
Meanwhile, in the modern world, my top tip is to use the tins (cans) of sardines in tomato sauce. They’re really tasty, and being in a tomato sauce brings some extra nutrients. If you have an intolerance to nightshade plants like tomatoes, use sardines in oil.
Most tins of sardines come with a ring pull; but a basic tin opener is a really good investment anyway to have for budget cooking as a lot of ‘value’ ranges of canned food don’t come with ring pulls.
Pricing
At the time of writing, in the UK, these are the prices of the cheapest tins of sardines:
Lidl Nixe range 125g = 32p; Asda Essentials range 120g = 39p; Tesco 120g = 44p; Aldi 125g = 46p; Sainsbury’s 120g = 60p; Morrisons 120g = 69p.
So, at the time of writing, Lidl and Asda are clear winners.
As for toast, Lidl and Asda also sell the cheapest loaves of sliced bread on the market currently, at 36p and 39p respectively. The choice is limited: white or wholemeal; but it’s very edible. A slice of this basic bread costs about 3.5p, and you have to factor in at least 5p for toasting / grilling / shoving in the oven. If you can, keep the rest of the loaf bread in a fridge and it’ll last a lot longer for other meals-on-toast.
Anyway, this means that two slices of sardines of toast can be yours for princely sum of 39p plus energy costs. I mean that’s cheap - but nowhere near the ‘30p meals’ of Conservative political Lee Anderson’s fevered imagination.
Technique
Scrape out the sardines and sauce into a bowl.
Mash up the sardines with any available seasonings such a little black pepper. Some people like to add a little lemon juice (fresh or from a bottle).
Spread the mashed sardines on two slices of bread or toast. You don’t need butter or spread as the fish themselves are quite oily.
Cook under a grill or place in a hot oven for a few minutes.
If you’re making sardines on toast in bulk for a lot of people, spread the mashed sardines on bread and place on baking trays, and cook them in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes in batches.
For those without the means to cook, a sardine sandwich is also really good, especially with some black pepper or lemon juice of mayo or leftover salad bits or whatever you have lying about. I’ve eaten one with crisps stuffed into it. (It’s a ‘dig diet’ thing, honed over the decades, my innards forged and shaped in a furnace of carbs, chilies and lager.)
Sardines on toast, grilled, dressed with mayonnaise.
Sardines were so important in their ubiquity in the Roman world that, when inflation was running wild in the early 4th century AD and the Emperor Diocletian published his price edict, they had their own entry. Sardines were priced at 16 denarii/pound, roughly the same price as 16 eggs. They are relatively much cheaper today, thanks to the canning process and supply chains. All hail the humble sardine - it has helped to power empires.