Cheap Meal Recipes: Dinner Under $5.00

If you’ve been caught in the “no job” crowd, you are probably looking for cheap meal recipes. Even if you still have a job, cutting your grocery bill by serving dinner meals under $5.00 may allow you to build up a food pantry or stock your freezer for future cheap dinners in case of a lay off or pay cut.

How cheap or expensive a meal seems to you depends on how much you have already trimmed from your budget. If your pay has been cut down to nothing, even a $5 meal may be more than you can fund. Desperate times define how low cost a meal has to be to be seen as a cheap meal. Consider the foods you typically eat and try to think of ways to turn them into a cheap meal recipe. Two tips for creating cheap meal recipes include turning breakfast items into a dinner meal and adding pasta or rice into a meat dish.

Cheap Meal Recipes: Breakfast for Dinner
Eggs are inexpensive compared to other proteins. Egg casseroles or omelets can be inexpensive meals to serve for dinner and are a pleasant change from a heavy meat laden meal. Here’s a cheap meal under $5.00 using breakfast for dinner to consider.
Stuffing Egg Bake
2 Tablespoons butter
1 package stuffing cubes, seasoned
up to 1 pound left over meat
4 ounces mushrooms, canned
2 cups shredded cheese
8 eggs
4 cups milk
1 teaspoon dry mustard
Melt butter in 9x13-inch baking pan. Put stuffing cubes in pan over the butter and top with meat. Add mushrooms and then cheese. Beat eggs with milk and mustard; pour over the other items making sure the liquid covers the cheese. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Serve with gravy made from cream of mushroom soup and milk if you have it available.

This recipe is adaptable to what you have on had. You can make your own stuffing cubes from left over bread made into croutons type pieces. You can accumulate different left over meats from other meals and use them together in this casserole. Eliminate the meat and use peppers and onions or other vegetables to make this meal an even cheaper dinner idea. You can use less cheese if you don’t have it or you use half milk and half water though the richness won’t be the same.

Cheap Meal Recipes: Bring on the Pasta, Add in the Rice
Pasta meals and rice dishes are less expensive than meat centered meals. If you need a meat meal to satisfy your family, stretch the meal by making the meat part of a pasta or a rice dish.

Easy Spanish Rice Recipe
1/2 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 cans (14.5 ounces each) diced tomatoes
1/2 cup ketchup
1 cup long-grain rice
Start by browning your ground beef in the butter. When the meat has lost its pinkness, add the onion, green bell pepper, salt, brown sugar, chili powder, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Cook until the onion and pepper are tender but not mushy. Add tomatoes and ketchup. Simmer for 15 minutes. Add rice. Finish this Easy SPanish Rice by covering and simmering for an additional 25 minutes, or until rice is tender. If the rice is not tender at the 25 minute mark, add a little water or tomato juice and continue to cook until tender. This cheap dinner idea should be filling enough to serve as the main course. This should serve 6 and easily doubles if you have a hungry teen or want left overs. Spanish Rice recipes can also make use of left over taco meat or ground pork also.

Meal planning with cheap meal recipes will stretch the grocery dollar. Experiment with substituting items or adding pasta or rice to your well loved recipes to invent a new cheap meal recipe which your family will love.