Cheap Dinner Ideas for Winter

With the unemployment rate rising, many families are looking for cheap dinner meals to reduce grocery costs. Frugal dinner meals are more easily made when you make a meal plan before going to the grocery store. With fall and winter approaching, stocking up now to make hot comfort foods is a good idea. Frugal soups and casserole recipes are good, filling, cheap dinner ideas which work well for winter meal plans.

The most frugal meal plans begin by considering the items already on hand, and combine those with the weekly grocery sale items. To decrease the cost of the meal plan, consider cheap dinner items which use similar items to allow for reduced costs when buying larger packages. Serving a frugal soup with bread, or extending the servings in a rice based casserole recipe by adding more rice versus more meat are both ways to make the dinner meal less costly. Consider these frugal meals and the tips to save grocery money by serving them.

Save Grocery Money with Frugal Soups

This frugal soup can be made from left over meat or from whatever amount of ground beef you can afford.  It can use shopped meatballs or hamburger from another meal, frozen and saved until soup day. 
Frugal Soup Recipe: Cheeseburger Soup

1/2-1 pound left over beef
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
3-4 cups beef broth
2-3 potatoes, cut in cubes
Cheese
salt and pepper to taste

If your meat is already cooked, start your frugal soup cooking by sauting the onion and carrots in a small amount of the broth until they are tender. Add the rest of the broth, potatoes, and seasonings along with your meat choice. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook 20 minutes or so. While this mixture cooks make a white sauce from 2 tablespoons butter, 1/4 cup flour and 1 1/2 cups milk. Add the flour to melted butter over a low heat. Stir until mixed being careful not to burn the mix. Slowly add milk, stirring constantly with a whisk. Turn the heat up and simmer  until thick. Add this thickener to the broth and vegetable mix.  Add 8 ounces of shredded cheese and stir until melted. Serve with bread, or over rice.

More Cheap Dinner Ideas for Winter Cooking
Frugal soups make great winter meals. Every soup can be different if you save leftovers from your meals to make them. For this cheap dinner idea, start with two empty containers to store leftovers in the freezer. Mark one Mexican and the other Creamy.  For any leftover which could be a part of a Mexican meal toss it in the Mexican freezer container. This might include left over whole kernel corn, chili beans, taco meat, tortilla casserole.  In the creamy container, collect left overs of other vegetables and meats.  At the end of the week, make a soup from whichever container has the most ingredients.

For a cheap dinner made from the Mexican container, make  Taco Soup.  For the Creamy container, make Creamy Vegetable Soup.

Recipe Taco Soup: Cheap Dinner Idea from Leftovers
Thaw the food in the Mexican container and place in a soup pot.

1 Can Tomatoes with Green Chilis
1 Can Diced tomatoes
1 Package taco seasoning

If your container did not have any meat, add a can of chili beans to the mix. If there is not enough liquid to serve your entire family, either add more tomatoes, tomato juice, or water to increase the volume. Adjust taco seasoning based on additions.  Simmer to meld flavors. Serve over rice.

Recipe Creamy Vegetable Soup: Cheap Dinner Idea from Leftovers
A Creamy Vegetable Soup can be made from any left over vegetables or from fresh or canned ones. 

First make a white sauce using the instructions in the Cheeseburger Soup Recipe. After adding the milk, allow to thicken and then add the contents of the creamy soup freezer container. The frugal soup will be different each time based on the leftovers added.  If the vegetables are ones that go well with cheese you may add some for flavor. If they are better with onion and garlic, either add those seasonings or sauté some to add to the soup.

Your weekly meal plan will vary from week to week and month to month. With time you will find the frugal dinner meals your family likes most and can make your meal plans from those.