08 jan 52 Affordable Meal Prep Ideas You’ll Enjoy

I recently put together a list of the best meal planning apps. Once you’ve mastered the art of the weekly meal plan, be sure to check out the Good Cheap Eats System. Not only will you lower your food budget, but you’ll learn key strategies to save time on meal prep and grocery shopping. Be sure to download our Budget Grocery List so that all your meals are designed to save you money. Creating a meal plan that’s both budget-friendly and nutritious begins with setting clear goals for your meals and snacks.

Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Coconut milk

• I’ve asked her to make it several times since then because it is so good!
• Learning to scale recipes appropriately prevents waste and ensures proper portions.
• That led to an overblown food budget and nightly stress about what to make for dinner.
• Spending hundreds of dollars a month on fast-food lunches because it’s easier than making them yourself?
• These healthy burritos are one of the few vegetarian solutions on this list!
• There’s Greek-seasoned ground beef, creamy hummus, refreshing cucumbers, grape tomatoes, salty olives, and tasty feta cheese.

Eating a small snack before heading to the store helps you stay focused and in control. Planning your trips at times when you’re not hungry ensures you stick to your list. Include everything needed for the week’s meals to reduce last-minute trips. Sticking to a list ensures your meal plan stays on track and within budget.

This way, you’ll always have herbs on hand for future recipes. If you find yourself with leftover fresh herbs that are starting to wilt, don’t throw them away! Chop them up and freeze them in ice cube trays with a little water or oil. When shopping for groceries, consider choosing generic or store-brand products instead of name brands. In many cases, the quality is comparable, but the price is often significantly lower.

Roasted Veggie Spinach Pasta

This One-Pot Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole is a simple and satisfying dish that brings comfort to any meal. The image showcases a creamy blend of broccoli, rice, and melted cheese, all cooked together in one pot. It’s colorful and inviting, making it a perfect choice for family dinners or meal prepping for the week. It can be a relief to get home from work and know that we already have food that is ready to eat for the evening. I would highly recommend meal planning to anyone that wants to save money and reduce stress in their life.

Buffalo Chicken Wrap Meal Prep

The sultanas add little bites of sweetness to the dish. If you prefer not to spend your Sunday afternoon cooking, use the cook once, eat many times method of filling the freezer. With this method, you cook a meal at night as normal, but you double or triple the amount and freeze the leftovers in meal-size portions.

Option 1: Sweet Potato and Chicken Bake

Serve alongside rice that you cook in bulk at the start of the week. The flavors deepen as the days pass, making leftovers especially tasty. Brown an onion, add red lentils, diced sweet potatoes, canned tomatoes, and vegetable broth, then let everything simmer until thick. A handful of spinach stirred in at the end boosts nutrition without raising the price. This stew freezes beautifully, so make a double batch and tuck half away for a rainy day. It’s cozy, filling, and costs less than a single vending-machine snack.

Avoid Pre-Cut Fruits and Vegetables

Shopping on an empty stomach often leads to overspending and unplanned purchases. Hunger makes tempting snacks and convenience items harder to resist, which can quickly derail your budget. Keeping a record of what you throw away can help you make smarter shopping decisions. A food waste journal or reviews on unimeal app lets you see patterns, like buying too much produce or forgetting leftovers in the fridge. This strategy can spark creativity and lead to fun, unexpected dishes.

Spiralized Zucchini Chicken Noodle Soup Jars

Lastly, don’t overlook leftover-friendly meals like soups, stir-fries, or grain bowls. These dishes are perfect for stretching ingredients across several servings, and they reheat well, making them great options among the best cheap meal prep ideas. This meal prep idea actually has 4 different fish cheap meal prep recipes you can use! Not all of them fall into the $2 or less range, but the “Citrus Soy Salmon Fillet Recipe” is awesome! Salmon is by far one of the healthiest foods anyone can eat and this recipe knocks it out of the park.

One-Pot Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole

“You have options, but the bulk of the work has already been done,” Michelson said. We asked Curry, who regularly offers tips to his 1.6 million Instagram followers, to share some of his best meal-prepping secrets with us, and he did not disappoint. The best thing to do is prepare for the possibility that you will be unwilling or unable to prepare your meals according to your original plan. Luckily, there are other protein options that are more affordable.

Try Meatless Meals

If you are in the second or third, focusing on budget-friendly, nutrient-dense options will be paramount. Just click generate shopping list, and you’re good to go. When you meal plan on a budget, you free up extra money within your overall budget for bigger and better things, like travel, savings, college, or paying off debt.

Cost-Effective Protein Sources for Meal Prepping

You can put this together split up by recipe or by area of the store. I put this in my Google spreadsheet so I can have sample grocery lists on hand. But here’s the good news, you can eliminate nearly all the https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/most-weight-loss-friendly-foods temptation to overspend on food by ordering your groceries online. Not to mention the fact that it’s much easier to track the running total of your groceries, which makes staying within your budget a much more likely outcome. Organize your list by category (produce, dairy, canned goods) to save time and avoid impulse buys. Determine how much you can spend on food for the week.Use your Clever Fox Budget Planner to track and adjust your grocery category over time.

Insanely delicious spicy taco spiced shrimp bowls loaded with cheese, black beans, corn, brown rice and tomato. They are stuffed with brown rice, ground turkey, onion, garlic and are one of the most satisfying meals we have ever made. Turkey Stuffed Peppers are an easy, healthy and super delicious dish that is perfect for dinner. This super easy Ground Turkey Stir Fry is a delicious and versatile answer to busy weeknight dinners. Gluten free Fall Harvest Meal Prep Bowls are similar to Sweet Green’s fall harvest bowl with chicken, sweet potatoes, apples, feta cheese and a maple tahini dressing. Lentils are inexpensive, nutritious, and easy to cook.