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As grocery prices (and the cost of literally everything else) have started to rise, we wanted to share some of our favorite budget friendly meals with you!
You don’t have to use fancy ingredients to make gourmet comfort food meals at home. There are plenty of fun and flavorful recipes you can make without breaking the bank, from gooey enchiladas and creamy soups to healthier rice bowls and easy pastas. And even if your budget isn’t feeling tight yet, who doesn’t love saving money?
Budget Slow Cooker Recipes
Creamy Slow Cooker Loaded Potato Soup
With just potatoes, a few veggies, broth, cheese, butter, cream, and milk, you can make a big batch of loaded potato soup to feed the whole family (or yourself for a few days!). This crockpot soup makes about 6 servings. Pro tip: Buy bacon when it’s on sale at the grocery store and freeze it until you need it for recipes like this one! Or, skip the bacon topping altogether to save extra dough.
Slow Cooker Chicken Tinga
We love to buy chicken in bulk at Costco to lower our grocery bill – sometimes it’s as cheap as $1.99 a pound. But what to do with all that chicken? Freeze some, and make this crockpot shredded chicken with the rest. It’s a simple recipe that only requires a few ingredients, and you can stretch it across tons of different meals. Use it for tacos, burrito bowls, salads, sandwiches, and our favorite, chicken tinga tostadas, to get the most bang for your buck.
Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup
Make use of those canned goods sitting in your pantry with this easy slow cooker soup! Swap the beer for chicken broth to save extra money, and use our homemade taco seasoning blend with spices you already own instead of buying a packet from the store. We also love how this soup stretches a pound of chicken across 6 servings.
Italian Slow Cooker Meatballs and Gravy
This might be one of the most nostalgic budget recipes we make. Whether you’re craving spaghetti and meatballs or a big meatball sub, this recipe makes it easy to prep a pound of ground beef all at once and stretch it across a number of meals.
Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili
Fill up on this vegetarian chili without having to spend money on meat! Requiring just sweet potatoes, onion, canned goods, and seasonings, this is a go-to budget meal for us, especially when we want hands-free cooking in the crockpot. It’s so delicious, even meat eaters will adore it.
Slow Cooker Pulled Pork
If you love pork as much as we do, save money by buying it in bulk (we like to get a giant pork shoulder at Costco) and making a few batches of it in your slow cooker. Just add water, seasonings, and liquid smoke, and 10 hours later you’ll have juicy, tender pork you can use for any meal you want. Make it barbecue and throw it on a pizza, use it for carnitas burritos, or add it to your favorite noodle dish for extra protein (we love using it for pork lo mein!)
Budget Pasta Recipes
Spinach Cottage Cheese Pasta
Vegetarian pastas are probably the best budget friendly meals out there! Cheap, quick, and easy – that’s pretty hard to beat. When you’re craving the decadence of mac n cheese or alfredo, try this healthier version that comes with the added bonus of extra protein to keep you satisfied longer.
Vegetarian Lasagna With Cottage Cheese
Spend less on Sunday dinner by turning your lasagna meatless! We love making this vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese and a simple tomato sauce for a low cost, large batch meal. This recipe makes 12 squares, so it’ll easily feed you for at least a few days.
Pasta With Zucchini And Tomatoes
All you really need for this recipe is pasta, zucchini, and tomatoes – it doesn’t get much cheaper than that! When the veggies are fresh, this simple pasta bursts with flavor. Make it in the summer when you can harvest your own veggies from the garden and it’ll cost even less.
Cheeseburger Mac and Cheese
This cheesy pasta bake is like hamburger helper, but better. Stretch a box of pasta and a pound of ground beef across at least 6 servings with ingredients you probably already have in your fridge or pantry. Bonus: this recipe is super kid friendly, so if you’re feeding little ones the chances of them not liking it are slim.
Spaghetti Carbonara (No Egg)
Just because eggs are expensive these days doesn’t mean you have to stop enjoying carbonara! Make our easy eggless version with heavy cream, parmesan, and bacon for a more affordable option at home. It tastes just like the real thing and hits the spot when you’re wishing you could be dining out at your favorite Italian spot.
Spinach and Tomato Pasta
It’s all in the name – spinach, tomatoes, and pasta come together for a super simple, easy, and cheap dinner everyone will love. Amp up the flavors with generous amounts of crushed red pepper flakes, and you’ll be adding this recipe to your weeknight dinner rotation ASAP.
Easy Baked Penne
All you need is 3 cheap ingredients – penne, pasta sauce, and shredded mozzarella – to make this deliciously cheesy pasta bake. It makes at least 6 servings, so you can have it for dinner on Sunday and stretch it all week long for easily microwavable lunches at home or at work. (This was our go-to recipe in college for exactly that reason!)
Cheap Rice Recipes
Mediterranean Rice Bowls
If you’re a fan of veggies and rice, this Mediterranean bowl hits the spot for lunch or dinner every time. Chickpeas provide some substance while hummus and tzatziki add extra creaminess. If these dips are a little too expensive at your grocery store, you can make them from scratch instead – check out our hummus recipe and tzatziki recipe!
Thai Chicken and Rice Bowl With Peanut Sauce
We love combining chicken with rice and veggies to make our proteins stretch a little further. This recipe does just that, combining a flavorful marinated chicken with Thai veggies, jasmine rice, and peanut sauce. If you don’t already have Asian cooking staples in your pantry (like rice vinegar and chili oil), you might need to spend some money upfront. But they’ll last a long time, and Asian dishes are some of our favorite budget-friendly recipes since they tend to focus heavily on affordable ingredients like vegetables, rice, and noodles.
Sweet Potato Black Bean Rice Bowl
Allow yourself to splurge a little on avocados and goat cheese (when they’re on sale, of course) and make these comforting sweet potato bowls! This dish is one of our favorite ways to dress up a basic rice-and-beans combo without spending too much on ingredients. It’s super filling and satisfying, so you can easily stretch it across at least 4 servings – sometimes we even get 6 meals out of it.
Black Bean and Rice Bake
Another one of our favorite ways to make rice and beans more appetizing? Crisp up the rice, add some cheese, pair those beans with tomatoes, peppers, and flavorful seasonings, and layer it all together. The result is a surprisingly decadent-tasting healthy dinner that’s super cheap to make.
Easy Vegetarian Bibimbap
Vegetables, rice, and a flavorful Asian sauce – there’s really no easier way to save money on a home cooked dinner! While we do add fried eggs to our bibimbap for extra protein, that’s probably the most expensive ingredient you’ll need to buy here. This dish is packed with flavor and so fresh thanks to all the delicious veggies.
Cheap Lunch Recipes
Sweet Potato Taco Bowls
Swap the meat in your typical taco bowl for sweet potatoes and save money on meal prep! We love to make this for dinner and have leftovers the next day when we’re trying to lower our grocery bill. All you really need is a few fresh veggies, taco seasoning (which you can make at home with spices you already have!), and rice.
Chipotle Lime Black Bean Burrito Bowls
Not a fan of sweet potatoes? You’ll love these super light and fresh burrito bowls – they’ve quickly become our favorite budget recipe! It’s basically beans, corn, pico de gallo, rice, and avocado in a bowl, which is just as delicious as it sounds. When you spend most of your grocery money on fresh produce, it’s surprisingly cheap. Bonus: this recipe requires very little actual cooking – it’s mostly just prepping and mixing.
Homemade Pizza Bagels
What says “cheap meal” more than pizza bagels? Make this nostalgic (and kid-friendly) recipe for an easy lunch or dinner with just a pack of store bought mini bagels, pizza sauce, and shredded cheese. Add some butter and seasonings for a flavorful “crust,” or skip it and save the time and money. They’ll taste great either way!
Veggie Pita Pockets
Quinoa might not be the cheapest, but you’ll be happy to indulge in these pita pockets once you realize you can stretch just a half cup of it across at least 4 servings! Enjoy a nutritious and satisfying lunch of roasted veggies, chickpeas, and quinoa with whole wheat pita bread for a fraction of the cost of your favorite harvest bowl from Sweetgreen.
Our Favorite Budget Comfort Food Dinners
Vegetarian Udon Stir Fry
Again – it doesn’t get much cheaper than veggies, noodles, and a simple stir fry sauce! We love making a big batch of udon stir fry when we’re craving healthier comfort food and don’t want to spend a ton on groceries. Bonus: this recipe is perfect for using up all the produce in your fridge before it goes bad so it doesn’t go to waste! Customize it with whatever you have on hand and it’ll save you even more money than you thought.
Pork Lo Mein
Lo mein is one of those dishes that seems to go on forever and ever, no matter how much you eat. So we think it makes one of the best budget friendly meals, naturally! Fill up on noodles and veggies with a bit of pork to stretch your protein farther without sacrificing flavor. Like we mentioned earlier, if you don’t have a well stocked pantry of Asian sauces, you might need to spend some money upfront, but it’ll totally pay off when you can whip up any stir fry or fried rice later on without having to hit up the grocery store again.
Thai Drunken Noodles
More noodles and sauce, but with a Thai twist! Drunken noodles are our favorite Thai takeout dish. Save the money and make it at home with this easy recipe that makes the most of rice noodles, peppers, onions, bean sprouts, and chicken. We like to use partially frozen chicken to get thin shaved slices, so you can head to your freezer stash of Costco chicken instead of adding it to your grocery list.
Cauliflower Tikka Masala
Indian takeout is probably our favorite kind of takeout, but it’s also usually the most expensive option. So when we’re craving a creamy, spicy curry, we love to make our own at home for a fraction of the price! This vegetarian curry is even more budget friendly thanks to the use of cauliflower instead of chicken, and simply uses onion, canned tomatoes, heavy cream, butter, and a plethora of spices (that you probably already have) for all that flavor.
Pork Enchiladas Verde
Enchiladas are one of the best dishes for stretching a protein across many servings! This recipe yields 8 enchiladas with just one pound of pulled pork, a pack of tortillas, half a bag of shredded cheese, and a simple homemade verde sauce. Feed the whole family for cheap with this recipe, or make it on Sunday and enjoy the leftovers all week long for lunch or dinner. Trust us, we don’t get sick of eating these day after day – and neither will you!
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas
Take your enchiladas one step further and cut costs by swapping pork or chicken for sweet potatoes and black beans. The meaty texture of the vegetarian filling means these eat like traditional enchiladas, but they’re low in calories and cost. Try making them with our homemade ranchero sauce for a spicy and fresh tomato flavor if you don’t want to spend the money on store bought enchilada sauce.
Easy Chicken Enchilada Casserole
Ditch the tortillas (well, most of them) and make an enchilada casserole instead! You can still get about 8 servings out of this recipe with just one pound of meat, which we’re all about when it comes to saving money on groceries. We love making this recipe when we’re feeling too lazy to roll a bunch of enchiladas and we just want a dump and bake meal. Pro tip: take a shortcut and buy one of those cheap Costco rotisserie chickens so you can skip some of the prep!
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