10 Cheap One Pot Family Dinners

These cheap one pot family dinners are what get my family through the last week before payday, and they’re good enough that nobody notices that’s what they’re for.

From a hamburger macaroni to a Mexican beef and rice skillet, a taco rice skillet, a potato corn chowder, a chicken noodle soup, and a lentil soup, they stretch a pound of meat or a bag of beans across a whole family with rice, pasta, or potatoes doing the heavy lifting.

Here are the ten I make most!

The cheapest dinners in my house share a pattern, which is one pound of ground beef, chicken thighs, or sausage, or no meat at all, stretched with a cheap starch and a can or two of something from the pantry.

Cooking them in one pot saves the gas and the dish soap too, which doesn’t sound like much until you add it up over a month.

1. Hamburger Macaroni

A pound of ground beef, a box of elbow macaroni, milk, broth, and cheddar cook in one pot into the boxed helper made from scratch for less money.

The pasta cooks in the milk and broth and makes its own creamy sauce.

It feeds six, and the leftovers reheat for lunch.

A spoonful of mustard makes it taste like a cheeseburger!

2. Mexican Beef and Rice Skillet

Ground beef browns with onion and taco spices, then rice, salsa, broth, and a can of beans simmer underneath a lid until the rice is tender and a layer of cheese melts on top.

It’s a burrito bowl for six made from a pound of beef and a cup of rice.

Sour cream and crushed chips on top.

The leftovers roll into tortillas the next day.

3. Taco Rice Skillet

Ground beef, rice, corn, black beans, and taco seasoning cook together in a skillet, and avocado and cheese go on top.

It’s built from the same pantry cans as taco night and costs about the same as a jar of salsa.

Frozen corn and canned beans are the whole vegetable budget.

Lime and cilantro if there’s any in the house.

4. Unstuffed Pepper Skillet

Ground beef, chopped bell peppers, rice, tomatoes, and Italian seasoning cook in one skillet into everything a stuffed pepper is without the stuffing or the oven.

Peppers are cheapest in late summer, and this is where the extra ones go.

A little mozzarella on top at the end.

Six plates from a single package of beef.

5. Potato Corn Chowder

Potatoes, frozen corn, onion, and broth simmer in one pot, and milk and a little flour thicken it into a chowder.

It’s a dinner made from a bag of potatoes and a bag of corn, and it’s as filling as anything with meat in it.

A few slices of bacon crumbled on top if there’s some in the fridge.

Bread and butter on the side, and it’s a cold night dinner for almost nothing.

6. Chicken Potato Soup

Chicken thighs, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion simmer in broth, and a splash of cream at the end makes it a creamy soup.

Thighs are the cheap cut, and two of them flavor the whole pot.

It’s what I make with the last of the vegetables in the drawer.

Crackers on top, and the kids call it the good soup.

7. Black Beans, Sausage, and Rice Skillet

Half a ring of smoked sausage, a can of black beans, rice, and salsa cook together in a skillet into a dinner that costs less than a fast food meal for one.

The sausage seasons the whole pan, so half a ring is enough.

Lime and cilantro over the top, with the hot sauce bottle within reach.

8. One Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken, carrots, celery, onion, egg noodles, and broth in one pot, and it’s the soup everyone knows for the cost of a couple of chicken thighs.

A rotisserie chicken carcass and its leftover meat make it nearly free.

The noodles cook in the soup for the last ten minutes.

It feeds a crowd and freezes well without the noodles.

9. One Pot Spaghetti

Ground beef, a jar of sauce, water, and a box of spaghetti cook in one pot, and there’s no second pot to boil and no colander to wash.

One package of beef and the cheapest box of pasta on the shelf, and there are still leftovers.

Parmesan on top and a bagged salad on the side.

It’s the dinner I make when I’ve stopped thinking about dinner.

10. Lentil Soup

A bag of brown lentils, carrots, celery, onion, a can of tomatoes, and broth simmer in one pot for forty minutes into a thick, filling soup with no meat at all.

Lentils are the cheapest protein in the store, and a bag makes two pots of this.

A splash of vinegar at the end wakes it up.

Crusty bread, and it’s the cheapest dinner on this list.

Notes on Cooking Cheap in One Pot

One pound of ground beef goes around a table of six once there’s rice, pasta, or beans in the pot with it, which is the trick behind most of this list.

Chicken thighs are cheaper than breasts and taste better in a soup, and two of them season a whole pot.

Smoked sausage goes further than you’d think, and half a ring is enough for a skillet dinner when it’s sliced thin.

Dried lentils and canned beans are the cheapest protein there is, and the pantry can hold months of them.

A jar of bouillon base makes gallons of broth for the price of a few cartons.

A cast iron skillet and a Dutch oven are the only two pots these need, and both last for decades.

Buy ground beef in the family pack when it’s on sale and split it into pounds with a kitchen scale for the freezer.

The soups freeze flat in freezer bags, which is how one cheap dinner becomes two.

More Budget Dinners on the Site

The slow cooker chicken and dumplings belongs on this list in spirit, since it costs about as much as the soups above.

My hearty crockpot beef stew with root vegetables stretches a cheap chuck roast across two nights.

And the quick crockpot dinners with ten minutes of prep post has more pantry dinners for the same kind of week.