TheDragonWithAFlagon
VIP Member
We do it - using decent mince and real cheese. All you do is mush up the seasoned mince with your hands so it's malleable - you don't need to add a million binding agents, onion chunks or a Bernard Matthews Kiev-style coating as long as you actually put your clean hands to use - make meatball sized pieces, flatten them out in your palm, put a couple of bits of good cheese - anything that is a texture like Brie upwards, blue being the best - into the cup shape, then press a second flattened meatball on top and spend some time pinching and firming the burger back up. Then stick them in a pan on a gentle heat so they cook through, allow to rest and they're done. No breadcrumbs, plastic cheese, no egg, no deep fat frying, just meat (10% fat is plenty, you can use any meat mince you like), seasonings and a couple of ounces of cheese.
If people are poor, they need to get the best nutrition possible for the money and, from experience, use the fewest ingredients to get it - an unnecessary egg means one less breakfast, a burned topping or coating of breadcrumbs and plastic cheese means money wasted for zero nutrition. And the cost of deepfrying means half a bottle of oil wasted (plus the fire hazard).
The best thing somebody can do for their health when they're skint is to buy the largest bag of potatoes they can, a bag of onions, some fat/oil, some flour (plus a raising agent or two if you can't be doing with sourdough starters), seasonings/spices/herbs and some broad spectrum multivitamins. And good teabags. Anything else is a bonus and should be bought with consideration to flavour, nutrition and appearance as well as having at least five different ideas of how to use it. After those essentials, I reckon that the next things on the list should be pasta/rice, tomato puree, eggs/tinned chickpeas (as dried ones use a lot of electricity or gas to prepare) and a bag of carrots and a large, dark green cabbage or frozen peas, cheese and full fat milk if you do dairy.
That'll give thousands of combinations, no need for fancy equipment, and it will feel a lot less depressing than rinsing a tin of beans or risking a chip pan fire for oily little meatballs that cost way too much and few people will like.
Wanting someone to be dependant on you for food 
I don't know, I'm thinking aloud here but something about it seems wrong.
At the time I wanted not to know but in some ways it's better to know the whole sordid truth rather than torture yourself wondering what you don't know...
