TVP is king
Defatted soy flour cooked under pressure and dried into little flakes or chunks is the ultimate grocery hack that so many people here are still terrified to try. Textured vegetable protein costs absolutely nothing and expands like crazy when you add hot broth or water. You can find it in basically any supermarket or ethnic grocery store and it lasts literally years in your pantry without going bad. It is the absolute most ubiquitous cheap food that stretches a dollar further than almost anything else on the shelves. Folks in this sub are usually amazing at stretching a dollar but avoiding this ingredient based on illogical internet rumors ruins a perfectly good way to save money. You are getting an absurd amount of bulk and protein for literal pennies and it absorbs any cheap bouillon or spice blend you throw at it.
People hear that a solvent called hexane is used to pull the fat out of the soybeans and they immediately assume they are eating toxic industrial chemicals. The reality check is that the trace amounts left in the final dry product are so infinitesimally small they do not even matter. You literally inhale significantly more hexane just standing near a gas station pump for two minutes while filling up your car than you would ever get from eating a massive bowl of TVP everyday for a year. If you drive a car and pump your own gas but refuse to eat a cheap pantry staple because of hexane you are being deeply hypocritical. Your lungs are taking a much bigger hit from the ambient air than your stomach ever will from some hydrated soy crumbles.
Online health gurus constantly claim phytic acid is an anti nutrient that steals minerals from your body and ruins your digestion. Nah that is totally overblown and scientifically bankrupt. You have to soak and cook TVP in hot liquid to eat it which naturally breaks down a huge percentage of the phytic acid right off the bat before it even hits your stomach. Phytic acid actually functions as a potent antioxidant in your system and your gut adapts to it easily. TVP is an absolute mineral bomb food packed with insane levels of iron magnesium potassium and zinc for practically zero money. Avoiding all those cheap accessible minerals just because a tiny fraction might not get absorbed perfectly is completely illogical. You are still netting a massive surplus of nutrition that you normally have to pay top dollar for in other whole foods.
Cheap plant proteins supposedly lack the leucine needed to build or maintain muscle but that is a massive lie when it comes to this stuff. TVP actually packs significantly higher leucine per dry weight than almost any meat you can buy at the butcher counter. You get around 4 grams of leucine per 100 grams of dry TVP which completely destroys the roughly 2.5 grams you would get from a similar weight of chicken or beef. What surprises me is that it has 50% protein dry and is significantly higher than most meat even chicken breast. Folks also try to claim soy spikes IGF-1 and causes weird health issues which is just pure hypocrisy. Regular dairy and cheap animal meat spike your Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 significantly harder than soy ever could. If you are slamming cheap milk or buying discount ground beef but avoiding TVP over IGF-1 fears you are ignoring basic food science and wasting your grocery budget. Yup it really is that simple. Plant IGF-1 does not even affect us as much as mammal IGF-1. We are mammals so the hormones from a cow or pig perfectly match our human receptors and trigger a massive biological response. Plant hormones are structurally totally different and do not have that same biological impact on our human system. panicking over soy IGF-1 while drinking regular cow milk, I think, is mathematically and scientifically ridiculous.
Astronauts already eat TVP up in space because it is insanely lightweight and packs a ridiculous amount of protein and nutrients per ounce while being completely shelf stable. NASA realized decades ago that this ingredient is a nutritional powerhouse that will not spoil. If it is high quality and safe enough to fuel peak human performance in zero gravity it is definitely good enough to stretch your grocery budget on a Tuesday night. You just rehydrate it with whatever cheap savory liquid you have and bulk up your chili or pasta sauce for a fraction of the cost of ground meat. Stop letting hypocritical internet myths scare you away from the most cost effective protein on the planet.