35 Meals · 7-Night Plan · One Shopping List
Cheap Dinners For A Family Budget: 35 Meals Under $9 and a 7-Night Plan
Thirty-five dinners that feed five without anyone noticing you were economising, plus a week that actually hangs together and the list to shop it with.
- Feeds 5
- Filter by cost or speed
- One chicken, three dinners
- Printable plan
None of these cost more than nine dollars to put on the table for five people.
Cheap dinners for a family budget usually fail for one of two reasons: the food gets so repetitive that everyone quietly rebels, or half of what you bought goes in the bin on Sunday. Neither is really about price. Both are about planning.
What follows is thirty-five dinners sorted so you can find one fast, a seven-night plan built so that one chicken becomes three separate meals, and a single shopping list that covers the lot. Costs are given as per-serving bands rather than exact prices, because your shop is not my shop — but the ranking between meals holds almost anywhere.
Save the pin so the plan and the list are there on shopping day.
The Five Levers That Actually Move the Number
Most budget advice is a list of cheap ingredients. These are the five decisions that change what a week costs, in rough order of impact.
Buy whole, not portioned
A whole chicken is close to half the price per pound of breasts, and it comes with a carcass that makes stock for free. Every step of butchery you pay someone else to do is charged back at a premium.
Anchor on beans, lentils and eggs
Not instead of meat — alongside it. A pound of dried lentils carries more protein than a pound of mince at a fraction of the cost, and half a pound of sausage will flavour a pot for five.
Plan so one cook feeds twice
Roast chicken into fried rice into soup. Chilli into nachos. The second meal costs almost nothing, and it is the difference between a cheap week and an expensive one.
Buy frozen without apology
Frozen vegetables are picked and frozen fast, they cost less, and critically they do not rot in the drawer. Waste is usually a bigger leak in a food budget than price ever is.
Shop the list, once
Two trips to the shop cost more than one, every time. A written list attached to specific meals is the cheapest piece of kitchen equipment there is.
About the numbers on this page: costs are shown as per-serving bands rather than exact prices, because grocery prices vary enormously by country, region, shop and season, and any figure printed today is wrong somewhere by next month. Use the bands to compare meals against each other — that ranking is stable — rather than to predict your receipt.
35 Cheap Dinners for a Family Budget, Filtered
Tap a filter to narrow the list. Every cost is per serving, for five people.
Red lentil and tomato curry
Lentils, onion, canned tomatoes, spices, rice. The cheapest genuinely filling dinner on this list and it reheats better than it cooks.
$0.70–$1.00 per servingBaked pasta with white sauce
Pasta, milk, flour, butter, cheese. A roux costs pennies and turns plain pasta into something that feels like an occasion.
$1.00–$1.40 per servingRice and beans with fried eggs
Black beans, rice, an egg each, hot sauce. Complete protein, five minutes of work, and children eat it without argument.
$0.70–$1.00 per servingRoast chicken, night one
A whole chicken with potatoes and carrots. Buying whole rather than in pieces is the single biggest saving in this whole list.
$1.40–$1.90 per servingChicken and rice soup, night two
The carcass from last night plus rice, carrot and onion. This meal is effectively free and it is better than most soup you can buy.
$0.40–$0.70 per servingChicken fried rice, night three
The last of the meat, cold rice, frozen peas, egg, soy. Cold leftover rice fries far better than fresh, so this is a reason to cook extra.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingSausage and white bean stew
Sausage, canned beans, onion, stock, greens. A small amount of sausage flavours an entire pot, which is the whole trick.
$1.30–$1.70 per servingChickpea and spinach curry
Canned chickpeas, frozen spinach, onion, curry powder, coconut milk. Fifteen minutes and almost entirely from the cupboard.
$0.90–$1.20 per servingLoaded baked potatoes
Baking potatoes, cheese, beans, spring onion. Cheap, hands-off, and everyone builds their own so nobody complains.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingTuna pasta bake
Canned tuna, pasta, sweetcorn, white sauce, cheese. The canned-fish dinner that people are genuinely glad to see.
$1.10–$1.50 per servingShakshuka with bread
Canned tomatoes, peppers, onion, eggs, cumin. Breakfast for dinner, one pan, and it looks far more expensive than it is.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingBeef mince chilli
Half a pound of mince stretched with two cans of beans. The beans are doing most of the work and nobody notices.
$1.20–$1.60 per servingChilli-loaded nachos, night two
Leftover chilli over tortilla chips with cheese. The same pot becoming a completely different dinner is how the week gets cheap.
$0.90–$1.20 per servingVegetable fried noodles
Instant or dried noodles, whatever vegetables are tired, soy, egg. The designated fridge-clearing meal.
$0.70–$1.00 per servingPotato and leek soup
Potatoes, leeks, stock, a splash of milk. Blended smooth it tastes rich and costs almost nothing.
$0.50–$0.80 per servingEgg fried rice with frozen veg
Rice, eggs, frozen mixed vegetables, soy. Ten minutes from cupboard and freezer with nothing fresh required.
$0.60–$0.90 per servingSheet pan sausage and vegetables
Sausages, potatoes, onions, peppers, all on one tray at 425°F. Nothing to watch and one thing to wash.
$1.40–$1.80 per servingLentil bolognese
Brown lentils in place of half the mince, with pasta. Cheaper, higher in fibre, and it freezes in portions.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingTomato soup and cheese toast
Canned tomatoes blended with onion and stock, plus toast under the grill. A twenty-minute dinner children actually request.
$0.70–$1.00 per servingChicken thigh traybake
Thighs are roughly half the price of breasts and much harder to ruin. Add potatoes and whatever vegetable is cheapest.
$1.50–$1.90 per servingBean and cheese quesadillas
Tortillas, refried or mashed beans, cheese. Five minutes a pan and endlessly repeatable.
$0.70–$1.00 per servingCabbage and noodle stir fry
Half a cabbage, noodles, soy, garlic. Cabbage is the most underrated cheap vegetable there is — it keeps for weeks.
$0.60–$0.90 per servingSlow cooker pulled chicken
Chicken thighs, stock, spices, slow cooked and shredded. Serve in buns one night and over rice the next.
$1.20–$1.60 per servingSplit pea and ham-free soup
Split peas, carrot, onion, smoked paprika for depth. Thick enough to stand a spoon in and costs pennies a bowl.
$0.40–$0.70 per servingFrittata with whatever is left
Eight eggs, any leftover vegetables, a handful of cheese. The official end-of-week fridge amnesty.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingRice, roasted vegetables and yogurt
Whatever vegetables are cheapest, roasted hard, over rice with seasoned yogurt. Looks like a restaurant bowl, costs nothing.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingPasta with garlic, oil and breadcrumbs
Pasta, garlic, oil, stale bread blitzed and toasted. Four ingredients, all of which you already own.
$0.40–$0.70 per servingSweet potato and black bean chilli
No meat at all, and richer than the beef version. Sweet potato does the job that fat usually does.
$0.90–$1.20 per servingFish finger wraps
Frozen fish fingers, tortillas, shredded cabbage, yogurt sauce. Twelve minutes and a genuinely good dinner.
$1.30–$1.70 per servingMinestrone from the freezer
Frozen mixed vegetables, canned tomatoes, small pasta, a can of beans. Nothing fresh, nothing wasted.
$0.60–$0.90 per servingTurkey mince tacos
Turkey mince is usually cheaper than beef and takes seasoning better. Stretch with rice folded into the filling.
$1.30–$1.70 per servingCheesy rice and broccoli bake
Rice, frozen broccoli, cheese sauce, baked until the top browns. Cheap comfort food with a vegetable hidden in it.
$0.80–$1.10 per servingDal with flatbreads
Split red lentils, onion, garlic, spices, plus flour-and-water flatbreads. Feeds five for the price of a coffee.
$0.40–$0.70 per servingBaked beans on toast, upgraded
Canned beans simmered with onion, smoked paprika and a spoonful of mustard, on thick toast. The upgrade takes four minutes.
$0.40–$0.70 per servingBig-batch mac and cheese
Made from a roux rather than a packet, baked with a breadcrumb top. Cheaper per portion than the boxed version and vastly better.
$0.90–$1.20 per servingThe 7-Night Plan
The order of the week matters more than any individual meal in it.
This is not seven unrelated dinners. Sunday feeds Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday feeds Thursday, and the two hardest nights of the week get the two dishes that need the least attention. Read the “why here” lines — they are the actual plan.
Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots
Buy the biggest whole chicken you can. Roast it, serve it, and then do two things before you go to bed: strip every scrap of meat off the bones, and put the carcass in a pot of water.
Why here: This one purchase becomes three dinners. That is the entire logic of the week.
Chicken fried rice
Cold rice cooked yesterday, the last of the chicken, frozen peas and an egg. Twelve minutes.
Why here: Cook double rice on Sunday. Cold rice fries properly and fresh rice turns to mush, so this is a real technique rather than a shortcut.
Chicken and rice soup
The carcass has been simmering or sitting in the fridge as stock. Add rice, carrot, onion and whatever herbs you have.
Why here: Ingredient cost tonight is close to zero. Every week needs one of these to bring the average down.
Beef mince chilli
Half a pound of mince, two cans of beans, canned tomatoes, spices. Make the full pot even though it is too much.
Why here: Wednesday is the night people give up and order in, so it gets the most reliable crowd-pleaser.
Chilli nachos
Last night’s chilli over tortilla chips with cheese, under the grill for four minutes.
Why here: Same pot, completely different dinner, almost no work. This is the cheapest trick in family cooking.
Sheet pan sausages and vegetables
Sausages, potatoes, onions and peppers on one tray at 425°F for 35 minutes. Walk away.
Why here: Friday needs to be hands-off. One tray, one wash, and nobody standing at the stove at the end of the week.
Shakshuka with bread
Canned tomatoes, peppers, onion, cumin, and eggs cracked in at the end. One pan, fifteen minutes.
Why here: Eggs are the cheapest protein in the shop and Saturday is the right night to lean on them. Finish with whatever bread is left.
Rough total for the week: the seven nights above land in the region of $0.40 to $1.90 a serving, which for five people is comfortably inside nine dollars a night and well under it on most. The two chicken-derived nights are what pull the average down.
One Shopping List for the Whole Week
One trip, one list. Two trips to the shop cost more than one, every time.
Grouped by where you will find things, so you walk the shop once. Quantities assume five people and the seven-night plan above; check your cupboards before you go, because at least a third of the pantry column is usually already there.
Pantry
- Rice (2 lb bag)
- Dried pasta (2 lb)
- Canned tomatoes x4
- Canned beans x4
- Red lentils (1 lb)
- Stock cubes
- Cooking oil
- Plain flour
- Tortilla chips
- Tortillas or flatbreads
- Spices: cumin, paprika, chilli, curry powder
Fridge and freezer
- Whole chicken (largest available)
- Beef mince (½ lb)
- Sausages (1 pack)
- Eggs (18)
- Milk (½ gallon)
- Cheddar (1 block)
- Butter
- Frozen peas
- Frozen mixed vegetables
Fresh
- Onions (3 lb bag)
- Potatoes (5 lb bag)
- Carrots (2 lb)
- Peppers x3
- Garlic
- Cabbage (1)
- Lemons x2
- Whatever green is cheapest
Before you leave the house: cross off everything you already own. The pantry column is deliberately long because it is the part that carries over — buy it once and most of it lasts several weeks, which is why week two is always cheaper than week one.
The Week Plan and Shopping List
Seven Nights
- Sunday — Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots. Strip the meat, keep the carcass.
- Monday — Chicken fried rice, using Sunday’s cold rice and leftover chicken.
- Tuesday — Chicken and rice soup from the carcass stock.
- Wednesday — Beef mince chilli. Make the full pot.
- Thursday — Chilli nachos under the grill, four minutes.
- Friday — Sheet pan sausages, potatoes, onions and peppers at 425°F for 35 minutes.
- Saturday — Shakshuka with bread, one pan, fifteen minutes.
The Shopping List
Pantry
- Rice (2 lb)
- Dried pasta (2 lb)
- Canned tomatoes x4
- Canned beans x4
- Red lentils (1 lb)
- Stock cubes
- Cooking oil
- Plain flour
- Tortilla chips
- Tortillas or flatbreads
- Cumin, paprika, chilli, curry powder
Fridge and freezer
- Whole chicken (largest)
- Beef mince (½ lb)
- Sausages (1 pack)
- Eggs (18)
- Milk (½ gallon)
- Cheddar (1 block)
- Butter
- Frozen peas
- Frozen mixed vegetables
Fresh
- Onions (3 lb)
- Potatoes (5 lb)
- Carrots (2 lb)
- Peppers x3
- Garlic
- Cabbage (1)
- Lemons x2
- Cheapest green available
Three Rules That Keep It Cheap
- Cook double rice on Sunday so Monday is twelve minutes of work.
- Never bin a chicken carcass — it is Tuesday’s dinner.
- Make the whole pot of chilli. The leftovers are Thursday, not a second cook.
How to Stretch What You Bought
Three techniques do most of the work. None of them involve smaller portions.
One chicken, three dinners
Roast it whole. Strip every scrap the same night while it is still warm and the meat comes away easily. Simmer the carcass with an onion for stock. That is a roast, a fried rice, and a soup from one purchase.
Half the mince, all the flavour
Replace half the meat in any chilli, bolognese or taco filling with brown or red lentils. They take on the same seasoning, add body, and cut the cost of the dish by roughly a third. Nobody at the table has ever noticed.
Cook the starch twice
Double the rice on any night you make it. Cold rice fries far better than fresh, so the extra is not a leftover — it is the required ingredient for tomorrow’s fried rice.
Let one pot become two meals
Chilli becomes nachos. Roast vegetables become soup. Bolognese becomes a pasta bake with a layer of cheese. Making the bigger pot costs a few minutes; the second dinner is close to free.
Substitutions That Actually Work
Every swap below saves money without making the food worse. That second part is the hard bit.
| Instead of | Use | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Instead ofFresh vegetables | UseFrozen equivalents, bought in the largest bag | What changesUsually cheaper, never wasted, and nutritionally near identical |
| Instead ofBeef mince | UseTurkey mince, or half mince and half lentils | What changesTurkey takes seasoning better; lentils cut the cost roughly in half |
| Instead ofChicken breasts | UseBone-in thighs, or a whole chicken you joint yourself | What changesAround half the price, more forgiving, and you get a carcass for stock |
| Instead ofStock cubes | UseThe carcass from the Sunday roast, simmered with an onion | What changesFree, and it is the single biggest flavour upgrade in this whole list |
| Instead ofBranded canned goods | UseStore-brand cans of tomatoes, beans and chickpeas | What changesIn a cooked dish, genuinely indistinguishable |
| Instead ofFresh herbs | UseDried herbs added earlier in the cook, or none at all | What changesDried need heat and time; fresh need neither |
| Instead ofParmesan | UseThe cheapest hard cheese you can find, finely grated | What changesIn a sauce or on a bake, nobody can tell |
The one swap not worth making: cheaper cooking oil or cheaper spices. They are a tiny fraction of the weekly bill and they touch every single meal, so they are the last place to economise and the first place a cheap week starts tasting cheap.
Where Budgets Actually Go Wrong
Pick whatever is happening in your kitchen:
Food keeps going off before we use it
This is where budgets actually leak — usually more than the shopping itself. The fix: shop for a plan rather than for a fridge, and buy frozen for anything you will not use within three days. Freeze bread the day you buy it and take out slices as you need them. The single most wasted items in most homes are salad leaves and fresh herbs, so buy neither unless a specific meal needs them.
Meat is the thing blowing the budget
Almost always, and the fix is not to remove it. The fix: buy whole rather than in pieces, choose thighs over breasts, and treat meat as a flavouring rather than the centre of the plate. Half a pound of sausage flavours a stew for five. Two of the weeks in this list use under two pounds of meat in total.
The children will not eat it
Cheap food fails when it is unfamiliar rather than when it is cheap. The fix: put new things next to safe things rather than in place of them, and let people assemble their own plates where possible. Baked potatoes, tacos, nachos and rice bowls all work this way, which is why three of them are in the seven-night plan.
There is no time to cook after work
Then the plan has to do the work, not the willpower. The fix: put the slow cooker meals on your busiest nights and the hands-off tray bakes on the nights you are latest home. Cook double on the one night you do have time, and treat the second portion as a meal rather than leftovers.
The freezer is too small to batch cook
A real constraint, and a solvable one. The fix: freeze flat in bags rather than in boxes — a bag of chilli frozen flat takes about a fifth of the space and thaws in a fraction of the time. Freeze components rather than finished meals: cooked rice, browned mince and stock stack far better than assembled dinners.
Questions, Answered
How can I feed a family of 5 for under $9 a meal?
By building meals around cheap protein rather than cutting protein out. Dried lentils, canned beans, eggs and whole chickens all deliver real protein for a fraction of the cost of pre-cut meat. The other half is planning: buying for a specific set of meals rather than filling a trolley is what stops food being thrown away, and waste is usually a bigger leak than price.
What is the cheapest meal to feed a family?
Dal or a lentil curry with rice, at roughly 40 to 70 cents a serving. Split red lentils cook in 20 minutes without soaking, they are filling, and the whole dish is made from cupboard ingredients. Rice and beans with a fried egg, and split pea soup, come in at a similar price.
How do I stretch one chicken across several meals?
Roast it whole on the first night, strip every scrap of meat afterwards, and simmer the carcass into stock the same evening. Night one is the roast, night two uses the picked meat in fried rice or a pasta bake, and night three is soup made from the stock. One bird comfortably covers three dinners for five people.
Is it cheaper to meal plan or shop as you go?
Planning wins clearly, and the saving comes from waste rather than prices. Shopping without a plan means buying ingredients that never get used, while a plan means every item has a night attached to it. A single written list also cuts the impulse buying that happens on repeat trips to the shop.
What pantry staples make cheap cooking possible?
Rice, dried pasta, red lentils, canned tomatoes, canned beans, stock, oil, flour and a small set of spices. With those nine things in the cupboard, almost any cheap dinner is a few fresh items away, and you are never more than twenty minutes from a meal on a night when nothing was planned.
How do I cut the cost without eating worse?
Shift protein rather than remove it, and buy frozen vegetables rather than fresh ones you may not use. Beans and lentils are high in protein and fibre and cost a fraction of meat, and frozen vegetables are picked and frozen quickly so they hold their nutrients well. Cheap cooking gets worse when it becomes beige and repetitive, not when it becomes cheaper.
Do the cost estimates on this page apply to my area?
Treat them as relative rather than absolute. The per-serving bands are there so you can compare meals against each other, and the ranking holds almost everywhere, but actual prices vary a great deal between countries, regions and shops, and they change over time. Use them to choose between meals, not to predict your receipt.
How far ahead should I plan?
One week is the practical sweet spot. Long enough that a whole chicken can be stretched across three dinners and a batch can be cooked twice, short enough that fresh food gets used before it turns. Planning a month in advance almost always collapses within a fortnight.
Buy whole rather than portioned, anchor on beans and eggs, let one cook feed twice, buy frozen without apology, and shop the list once. Five decisions, and they matter more than any individual recipe on this page.
Pin these cheap dinners for a family budget so the plan and the shopping list are there on the day you actually need them — then come back and tell us which night worked hardest.
