Cheapest Recipes

Cheap Pasta Meals

Cheapest Recipes Using Pasta

• 1Canned sauce is cheaper than sauce in a jar. Doctor it up with a little ground beef or other leftover meat scraps. Just chop them fine and throw them in. Chop leftover vegetables and add them too. If your sauce is too watery, stir in some parmesan cheese or breadcrumbs. Spice your sauce up with some additional garlic or spices. Spaghetti is a very cheap meal my mother always served with toast, and which my girls loved with garlic toast.
• 2Add pasta to soups and chilis to make it more filling and add servings.
• 3Make lasagna without the meat. Instead, use some chopped vegetables, and extra ricotta and parmesan cheese.
• 4Serve serve warm cream of chicken soup, diluted with a little milk or water, over hot pasta. Add some peas or mixed vegetables, if desired. Top with grated cheese or parmesan, if desired.
• 5To make Poor Man's Stroganoff: Brown a pound of hamburger. Add onion and garlic to taste, then pour in a can of cream of mushroom soup. Dilute with milk until it is the desired consistency. Serve over noodles.
• 6To make Tuna Pasta Salad - Mix together in a large bowl: 1 package of pasta (tri-color spirals are pretty, but you can use anything from macaroni to shells), 1 can tuna, enough ranch dressing to make everything moist. Chill and serve.
• 7Toss hot pasta with plain yogurt, a spoonful of prepared mustard and parmesan cheese, seasoned with a little salt and white pepper.
• 8To make Pasta Fazoli - Brown 2 cloves of garlic and a small, chopped onion in around 4 tablespoons of butter and cook until tender. Then add a can of white beans (juice and all), add some salt and pepper, then heat until bubbly. Add a little olive oil if a little more sauce is needed. Serve over cooked spaghetti with parmesan cheese.

Cheap Potato Recipes

Inexpensive Meal Ideas

• 1My friend, Jayne, a military wife raising three active children, says her cheapest meal idea is a Friday night potato bar. This is extremely popular with her children. She makes potatoes and sets them out on her bar with a variety of toppings, including any leftovers from the week. The kids load up their potatoes with vegetables and leftover bits of meat, top with grated cheese and sour cream. Leftover taco fixings are especially popular on the potato bar.
• 2My girls have always loved a dish we call Fried Skillet. I fry a bunch of sliced potatoes or hash browns in hot oil until they are tender and browned, adding onion and/or mushrooms if desired. When the potatoes are almost done, I throw in whatever I have on hand: cooked hamburger meat or sausage, beans, bits of rice. Then I add eggs and cook until the eggs are cooked through, and top with grated cheese. This is very filling and my girls love it.
• 3Make mashed potatoes, then top with stew or soup. My girls loved a dish I once made out of desperation, when I made mashed potatoes and then mixed it with a can of Dinty Moore Stew. We called it Goop, which is what it looked like. The children loved it and begged for more. I have also made mashed potatoes and topped with various chunky soups, like the Sirloin Burger soup. This is also quite tasty and will stretch a can of soup to serve more than one person.

Cheap Bean Recipes

• 1Make a cheap and easy beans and rice dish by combining one cup each of beans with rice pilaf.
• 2Make bean soup according to the directions on packages of dried soup mix.
• 3Serve baked beans with brown rice.
• 4Add beans to a box of rice mix, add a can of chopped or stewed tomatoes and top with cheese if desired.
• 5Substitute a can of beans for the meat in Hamburger Helper mixes.

Cheap Rice Recipes

• 1Heat a can of cream of chicken soup, diluted with a little milk, and serve over hot rice.
• 2Add rice to soups to stretch them and make them more filling.
• 3Serve rice on the side of other dishes. Add a little gravy if desired. This is filling so that people eat less of the more expensive foods on the table.
• 4Serve chili over rice.

Ideas to Use Up Leftovers

• 1Keep a container in your freezer and add your scraps to it. When it is full use it to make a delicious soup.
• 2Set up a potato bar as described above. Bake potatoes then top with your leftovers from earlier in the week.
• 3Make a casserole by dicing leftover meat, adding a can of cream of anything soup, add some vegetables and serve over rice or noodles.
• 4Make homemade pizza and toss your leftovers on the top.
• 5Make a frittatta, by mixing your leftovers with some beaten eggs, then bake in a greased casserole or baking dish at 350 degrees until eggs are set.