If you are having to tighten your belt but struggling to find frugal meals, then step on up! Eating frugally has been a way of life for our family, and with rising inflation, we’ve taken a more extreme approach to budgeting. In this article, I’ll share my top 47 go-to frugal meals that help me stick to my $100/week grocery budget in New Zealand dollars.
Embracing Extreme Frugality, One Meal at a Time
Tightening our budget to $100 a week has transformed the way we approach meals. It’s not just about saving money; it’s about embracing simplicity, creativity, and organization. Such an extreme grocery budget forces you to eat simply: you can’t snack, and you have to be creative. And you have to be organised, because it involves a lot of from-scratch foods.
It’s much cheaper to make things from raw ingredients, from scratch. This style of cooking is usually healthier and more flavourful. I love what eating frugally has done for me. Easting every meal from scratch has forced me to be creative, healthier and lower-maintenance. Plus, it is REALLY helping our budget.
These 47 Frugal Meals are basically an overview of the breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks that we, as a family of 4, eat on a a regular basis so we can stick to out $100/week grocery budget.
The Characteristics Of Frugal Meals
- Frugal meals are simple, utilizing basic, affordable ingredients with a long shelf life. They do not require any special, odd, or expensive ingredients. Or if they do (like coconut oil), they only use a little of it (like, a teaspoon).
- They often feature carbohydrate-heavy options like rice, lentils, and beans, which are excellent value for money and make a little go a long way.
- The Proteins in Frugal Meals mainly come from pulses, which stretch your budget further than meat, dairy, or eggs. Pulses are cheaper, and keep for longer, and make a larger quantity of food.
- A Frugal meal uses what is already in your cupboard. This means it probably has a lot of basic ingredients with a long shelf life, like lentils, tinned tomatoes or tinned beans. Â
- Sauces for frugal meals are more likely to be tomato or stock based, rather than creamy or cheesy.
- And all frugal meals are most likely to be made from scratch. Pizza, a delicious comfort food, was actually borne out of poverty, and is an incredibly frugal meal. It makes two tablespoons of sauce and cheese feed an entire family. And if you make the dough yourself, it becomes an artisan-style meal that is extremely cheap.
47 Frugal Meal Ideas to Inspire Your Kitchen
Frugal Breakfasts
Start the day right with these scratch-made delicious breakfasts that are surprisingly frugal!
1. Porridge
Here is a basic porridge recipe, which you can easily refine with toppings of your choice.
2. Overnight Oats
This overnight oats recipe will teach you how to make a base that can be used with any toppings or add-ins you choose.
3. Yoghurt
Homemade Yoghurt is so cheap and healthy when you make it yourself. Strain it for a Greek-style yoghurt, my favourite breakfast treat!
4. Muesli
This Homemade Muesli Recipe is cheaper than store-bought, and better for you.
5. Sourdough Croissants, Pain Au Chocolat or Danish Pastries.Â
You can have this decadent breakfast within your $100/week budget if you make it yourself using this delicious recipe.
6. Sourdough Pancakes
Pancakes are a treat breakfast, but they are so cheap to make! This Sourdough Pancakes recipe is my go-to, and it never fails.
7. Toasted Sourdough
I love to make a uniquely-flavoured loaf, such as this Apricot and Ginger Sourdough, and toast it with butter and honey for a sweet breakfast.
8. Sourdough French Toast
French toast is a decadent breakfast that is actually made from simple ingredients. It’s not necessary to make it with Sourdough, but it’s a whole lot nicer! Here’s my favourite Sourdough French Toast recipe.
9. French Toast Casserole
French Toast Casserole takes the stress out of preparing breakfast. You can prep it the night before and bung it in the oven in the morning. No fuss!
10. Kedgeree
Kedgeree is a traditional English Breakfast dish comprised of curried rice with smoked fish and boiled eggs. It’s a really cheap meal, and makes for a novel breakfast!
Breakfasts that are NOT frugal:
- Anything that is bought pre-made: Muesli, croissants, yoghurt, or cereal. These foods usually come in small packages, so they do not last for many meals. If you are relying these foods for your breakfast, you will need to buy them every week, and this adds a stack to your grocery spend. Having oat-based breakfasts and making your own yoghurt will save you a ton of money, not to mention improving the quality of your breakfasts!
- Omelettes: Eggs are pretty expensive, so meals which are comprised mainly of these are not so cost-effective. A simple omelette uses about 3 eggs per person, not to mention all the toppings! Breakfast quiche and Dutch Pancake fit into this category.
Frugal Lunches:
For our family, we almost invariably eat homemade sourdough bread as toast for lunch. This is an incredibly frugal option, not to mention quick and easy to prepare (once the bread it made). I have linked an easy overnight sourdough loaf that makes simplifies the process of homemade bread.
Bread is a great way to make a little portion of delicious toppings into a nourishing and filling meal. We will usually toast it and top it with any of these, depending on what is around. To keep costs down, we normally buy one kind of topping, like peanut butter and jam, and make it last the whole week.
Here’s a list of our preferred toppings (that our budget allows):
- Peanut butter and jam or honey
- Butter, honey and cinnamon
- Homemade Nutella (using chickpeas) and Strawberries (homegrown).
- Butter and marmite or vegemite (a staple when I am pregnant).
- Marmite and lettuce (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! This was a childhood relic).
- Ham, cheese and lettuce
- Cheese and relish.
- Toasted Cheese sandwich.
- Homemade hummus and tomato (if it is homegrown).
- Peanut butter and sauerkraut.
- Peanut Butter and Pickles
- Poached or fried eggs and mayonnaise.
- Scrambled Eggs and Onions
Lunches that are not frugal:
- Tinned fish or chicken: While a tin of fish is itself quite cheap, we do not buy it on our $100 budget because one tin will only do a single serve, so we would have to buy multiple to feed the family. So, if we want a meat for lunch, we will buy a packet of ham, which will serve all of us the whole week. We would have to buy about 10 tins of fish to do the same!
- Salad: Salad involves just too many ingredients to be called a frugal meal. Lettuce, cucumber, a protein source, and cheese or seed, not to mention a dressing!  Salads are delicious and healthy, but far too complicated and expensive to make it to our frugal meal plan.
Frugal Dinners
It is surprising how delicious dinner can be when it is frugal. Pizza and pasta, for example, are two of the most frugal meals you can have, if you make them from scratch. Let’s take a look at the Frugal Dinner options, shall we?
1. Lentil Bolognaise
Lentils boil down in this vegan bolognaise recipe to make a rich tomato-based sauce which can go with anything.
2. Vegetarian Chilli
Vegetarian Chilli is made from basic pantry ingredients and comes in vast supply. It’s delicious, comforting, and a total crowd pleaser.
3. Sourdough Pizza
Another kid favourite, you can have Pizza on a regular basis and still stick to your budget if you make the base yourself. I love this Sourdough Pizza recipe, because it tastes like the kind from the true artisan restaurants!
4. Calzone
Use the above Sourdough Pizza Recipe, but shape them into little pockets filled with all the toppings! This is a creative way to make the same ol’ same ol’ a little bit different.
5. Chickpea and Pumpkin Curry
Vegan Pumpkin Chickpea Curry is SO cheap to make, because it contains only basic ingredients, with no expensive dairy or meat. Plus, it packs an awesome flavour punch, a family meal must!
6. Mushroom Risotto
Creamy, velvety, and bursting with savory goodness, Vegan Mushroom Risotto just like classic risotto but dairy-free and vegan (therefore super frugal!).
7. Fried Rice
Fried Rice is a combination of long grained rice, mixture of warm peas, carrots and onions with scrambled eggs mixed all together. It has got to be the most frugal meal, stretching cheap vegetables into a satisfying plate of food.
8. Homemade Pasta with Reduced Tomato Sauce
My Homemade Sourdough Pasta Dough is super frugal, using only 2 eggs, sourdough discard, and a little bit of flour. Homemade pasta is 1000 time better than store bought stuff, and it feels like a treat meal (while actually being really cheap!)
9. Sourdough Dumplings
Homemade Sourdough Dumpling Wrappers make a few odds and ends into an interesting and nourishing meal. It’s a family favourite, a great one to pull out at the end of the week.
10. Homemade Tortillas
The Vegetarian Chilli above would make a delicious meal with these Homemade Tortillas (sourdough, of course). I make these tortillas often when I have a little bit of sauce which I need to stretch into a family-of-4 sized meal.
11. Mexican Lasagne with Leftover Tortillas
Another version of the above hack, but a Mexican Lasagna out of leftover Chili and Tortillas is a frugal meal that always goes down a treat. Simply sandwich the layers with grated cheese (a little goes a long way) and there you have your meal!
Dinners that are NOT frugal:
- Anything with Meat AND Dairy: both these delicious things are pricey, so if you use both in one meal, then that meal is no longer frugal.
- Garnishes: Garnishes like nuts, pesto, cheese, nutritional yeast, capers, pickled onions, etc, add more to the cost of your meal because these tend to be specialty products. Garnishes are a nice extra, but not fundamental. If you are trying to keep food costs down, these would be the first I would scrap.
Frugal Snacks
While I do not normally snack, my boys do, and here’s what I make for them on a $100 grocery budget. All these Frugal Snacks are home-made and healthy, of course!
- Carrots and hummus
- Nut-free Coconut Cookies
- Coconut and Date ginger slice
- Oat and Date Bliss Balls
- Apples and peanut butter
- A banana
- Healthy Date Loaf
- Raw Apricot Slice
- Raw Boysenberry Slice
- Peanut Butter Oaty Cookies
- Sourdough Discard Choc Chip Cookies
- Frugal Sourdough Brownies
- Homemade Sourdough Biscuits
Snacks that are NOT frugal:
- Any pre-packed biscuits, crackers, cookies or chips. These usually cost more (and you get less) than if you made these yourself (my favourite frugal recipes are linked above).
- Any fast-food or convenience store food and drink (coffee, ice creams, ice blocks, slushies, etc). These are nice as treats, and each may cost less than $5, but these small frivolities really do add up (as we tend to not think about having them often).
Conclusion
As a frugal mama, navigating the everyday challenges of providing wholesome meals for my family on a budget is challenging. This treasure trove of 47 frugal meals has become my secret weapon. These budget-friendly recipes aren’t just about pinching pennies; they’re all flavour-packed, artisan-style food that are a joy to eat (not to mention nutritious!) With these carefully selected dishes, you can transform simple, affordable ingredients into delicious, family-approved meals. These 47 frugal meals are a reflection of a mother’s dedication to ensuring every bite is both nutritious and economical. Because, for a frugal mama, the heart of the home is where every penny counts and every meal is a triumph. Here’s to nurturing both your family and your budget with love and delicious simplicity!
