Dinner Ideas
Cheap Dinner Ideas: 20 Budget Meals Under $10
Budget dinners get a bad reputation, but the best cheap meals aren't sad compromises — they're smart pantry cooking. Here are 8 of the best cheap dinner ideas, with cost-per-serving so you know exactly what you're spending.
Jump to a Recipe
8 cheap dinner recipes with cost-per-serving
Pasta e Fagioli
Italian pasta and bean soup — canned white beans, pasta, tomatoes, garlic. Incredibly filling.
Black Bean Tacos
Seasoned black beans in warm tortillas. Add salsa, cheese, and lime. Stupidly cheap and good.
Lentil Soup
Red lentil soup with cumin, tomatoes, and garlic. One of the cheapest complete meals available.
Ground Beef Stir-Fry
Korean-style ground beef with soy sauce, garlic, and ginger over rice. Cheap and addictive.
Egg Fried Rice
Day-old rice, eggs, frozen peas, soy sauce, sesame oil. The original leftover meal.
Pesto Pasta
Pasta with jarred pesto, parmesan, and cherry tomatoes. Fancy enough to feel like a treat.
One-Pot Pasta
Pasta cooked directly in seasoned broth with tomatoes and garlic. One pot, zero waste.
Chickpea Curry
Canned chickpeas in a creamy coconut tomato sauce with curry spices. Serve over rice.
How to Plan Cheap Dinners for the Week
The most effective budget cooking strategy is ingredient overlap — buying a small set of cheap ingredients and building multiple dinners from the same pantry. A week of cheap dinners shouldn't feel like a week of deprivation. It should feel like smart planning.
Stock the $20 pantry foundation. Rice, dried lentils, canned black beans, canned chickpeas, canned tomatoes, pasta, eggs, onions, garlic, and olive oil — these 10 items cost about $20 total and anchor a full week of dinners under $2/serving. This isn't a sacrifice. Lentil soup, chickpea curry, pasta e fagioli, and black bean tacos are genuinely good food.
Pick one cheap protein per week. A pound of ground beef ($5-7) makes tacos Monday, stir-fry Wednesday, and pasta meat sauce Friday — three dinners from one protein. A rotisserie chicken ($8-10) does the same: breast meat with rice Monday, shredded chicken tacos Tuesday, chicken soup with the carcass Thursday. One protein, three nights.
Buy chicken thighs, not breasts. Bone-in chicken thighs are typically $1.99-2.99/lb versus $4-6/lb for boneless chicken breasts. They're also more flavorful and harder to overcook. For every recipe that calls for chicken breasts, chicken thighs work just as well at half the price.
Plan around what's on sale. The biggest lever on your weekly food budget is buying proteins that are on sale and building the week's meals around them. Chicken thighs on sale for $1.49/lb means the whole week is built around chicken. Ground beef at $3.99/lb means beef nights this week. This is how professional kitchen managers think — shop the deal, then build the menu.
Eliminate food waste. The average household wastes $150-200/month in food that gets thrown away. The cheapest meal improvement you can make isn't finding cheaper recipes — it's using everything you buy. Track what's in your fridge and prioritize meals around ingredients closest to expiring.
Already have ingredients? Use the Recipe Suggester → to find cheap dinners you can make with what you have — no extra grocery run needed.
Quick Tips for Budget-Friendly Cooking
- ✓
Dried beans cost 4x less than canned — and they taste better.
A pound of dried black beans costs $1.50-2 and yields the equivalent of 4-5 cans. Canned beans are convenient, but if you can plan ahead and soak overnight, dried beans are both cheaper and have better texture in soups and stews.
- ✓
Cook once, eat three times.
The real power move in budget cooking is stretch cooking — one cooking session that produces three dinners. A single roasted chicken on Sunday produces: Sunday dinner, Monday chicken tacos or grain bowl, Tuesday chicken soup with the carcass. You cook once and eat the work for three nights.
- ✓
Never let produce expire.
Produce that goes bad is money you already paid going in the trash. Prioritize vegetables in order of shelf life — delicate greens and fresh herbs within 2-3 days, then zucchini and tomatoes, then hardier vegetables. If you're not sure what to make, the rule is: always cook the most perishable thing first.
Save these recipes to Tablespoon
Tablespoon tracks your grocery spending and inventory so your budget goes further — and nothing expires before you use it. Free forever.
Save These Recipes to Tablespoon →Cheap Dinner FAQs
What is the cheapest dinner you can make at home?
Rice and beans is the cheapest complete dinner available — a serving costs under $0.80 and provides a complete protein. Other ultra-cheap options include lentil soup ($0.75/serving), egg fried rice ($1.00/serving), and black bean tacos ($0.90/serving). All of these use pantry staples and take under 30 minutes.
How can I eat well on $50 a week?
Buy in bulk (rice, dried beans, lentils, oats, pasta), anchor meals around cheap proteins (chicken thighs, ground beef, eggs, canned tuna, beans), and plan meals with ingredient overlap so nothing goes to waste. A week built around one rotisserie chicken, one pound of ground beef, and pantry staples feeds 2-3 people for about $40-50.
What pantry staples make the cheapest dinners?
Rice, dried lentils, canned beans (black, chickpea, kidney), canned tomatoes, pasta, eggs, onions, garlic, and olive oil are the core cheap-cooking pantry. With these 10 items, you can make lentil soup, pasta e fagioli, fried rice, black bean tacos, pasta marinara, and chickpea curry — all under $2/serving.