Easy cheap meals on a budget: seven dinners for two from one $40 shop

The $40 shopping list for a week of cheap meals

The list below is priced at typical discount-grocer shelf prices in the US. Prices change by region and by season, sometimes sharply (eggs are the obvious case), so treat the total as a target, not a promise. It assumes a few pantry basics are already at home: oil, salt, pepper, a dried spice or two, and some stock cubes.

That works out at roughly $2.90 a serving across fourteen dinner portions, with rice, beans and eggs left over for lunches. In the example month on the home page, groceries get $310. A week of dinners at $40 leaves real room for breakfasts, lunches and the odd treat.

Why these ingredients make cheap meals on a budget

Every item on the list does at least two jobs. Beans become a stew and then burritos. Chicken becomes a roast and then soup. Rice turns up three times. Cabbage keeps for two weeks in the fridge, so it is still fine on day six, when lettuce would have gone.

Dried beans are the biggest single saving. A 2 lb bag cooks into roughly the same amount as five or six 15 oz cans, at a fraction of the price. They need soaking overnight or a long simmer, which is why the cooking order below puts them on Sunday.

The list also leans on frozen vegetables. They are picked and frozen quickly, they do not spoil in the fridge, and they cost less per serving than most fresh vegetables out of season. For cheap meals on a budget, waste is the hidden cost. Food that goes in the bin is money that went in the bin.

Seven easy cheap meals, in cooking order

The order matters more than the recipes.

1. Sunday: a pot of pinto beans with rice. Soak the whole bag of beans the night before, then simmer with an onion, garlic and a stock cube for about two hours. Eat a third tonight with rice. Keep the rest.
2. Monday: roast chicken with carrots and onions. Roast all the chicken at once with half the carrots and two onions. Eat half. Save the rest of the meat and the bones.
3. Tuesday: pasta with tomato and vegetables. One can of crushed tomatoes, garlic, a bag of frozen vegetables, a pound of pasta.
4. Wednesday: bean and cheese burritos. Mash the second third of the beans with a little of the cooking liquid, fill tortillas, add cheese and any rice that is left.
5. Thursday: chicken and cabbage soup. Simmer the bones with water, carrots and onion for an hour, strain, then add the leftover chicken, shredded cabbage and a handful of rice.
6. Friday: egg fried rice. Cold rice from the fridge, four eggs, the second bag of frozen vegetables, a splash of soy sauce if you have it.
7. Saturday: eggs in tomato sauce. The second can of tomatoes, simmered with onion and garlic, eggs cracked in and cooked until set. Tortillas on the side.

The last third of the beans freezes well. So does half of the soup. That is the start of next week.

Budget lunches from the same bag

The list is built around dinners, but the leftovers cover most weekday lunches without a second shop. Rice cooked on Sunday keeps for three to four days in the fridge if it is cooled quickly and covered, which is long enough for Friday's fried rice and a couple of lunch boxes before then.

A few combinations that use only what is already in the kitchen:

• Beans and rice with a spoon of cheese, reheated until steaming hot all the way through.
• Two hard-boiled eggs, a raw carrot cut into sticks and a tortilla.
• A thermos of the chicken and cabbage soup, which tastes better on the second day.
• Leftover pasta with the last of the tomato sauce, eaten cold or warmed.

Bought every working day, a $9 lunch comes to about $45 a week. Packed from the dinner leftovers, the same five lunches cost a few dollars, because the ingredients were already paid for. That gap is often larger than anything a coupon will save at the checkout.

Making easy cheap meals fit a real week

Nobody cooks seven nights in a row every week, so build in an escape. The simplest is to swap any one of the seven for a freezer night: something cooked earlier and frozen in portions. A pot of soup or beans that fed you once can feed you again three weeks later for nothing.

It also helps to shop once. Every extra trip to the store tends to add items that were not on the list. If the store has a weekly flyer, check it before writing the list and swap in whatever protein or vegetable is on sale; a cabbage and a bag of potatoes on promotion will usually beat anything planned in advance.

Households that qualify should also check SNAP. The USDA reevaluated the Thrifty Food Plan that sets SNAP benefit levels in 2021, and the average benefit rose by about a fifth as a result. Many people who are eligible do not apply.

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