40 Cheap Dinners Under $10 for a Family of Four to Six

When people ask how I feed a family for so little, they expect a trick. There is not one. It is a short list of cheap, filling foods, used well: pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, eggs and frozen vegetables. Build dinner around those and the whole meal lands under ten dollars.

The hard part is not the cooking. It is deciding what to make at 4:30 when you are tired and the grocery budget is already stretched. So I wrote down forty dinners that all clear the same bar: the whole meal costs under $10, feeds a family of four to six, and uses ingredients from a regular grocery store.

What is inside

• 40 dinners: pasta, rice bowls, potato dishes, bean dishes, egg dinners, sheet pans, skillets, quick soups and tacos
• the cost per serving and the estimated total on every recipe, with the under-$10 mark
• ingredient lists with real quantities
• short numbered methods with times and temperatures
• one money-saving tip on every recipe
• a 43 page PDF in letter size

These are stovetop, skillet, sheet pan and oven dinners, so they are different from the slow cooker and freezer books in the series.

Three dinners from the book

• Lemon Garlic Pasta with White Beans: $1.20 per serving
• Migas Tex-Mex Eggs: $1.38 per serving
• Black Bean and Potato Hash Tacos: $1.30 per serving

The migas are my go-to for the last night before payday. Eggs, tortillas and a jar of salsa make a dinner that feels like a treat.

How to stay under $10

I use four rules. Buy store brands, because the shelf tag will show you the unit price and it is almost always lower. Let one cheap protein do the work, whether that is beans, eggs or a small pack of sausage stretched across a whole pan. Buy frozen vegetables, which cost less and never go bad in the crisper drawer. And cook the same ingredient twice in a week so nothing is left to spoil.

Prices are estimates at 2025 budget grocery stores, and they will move with your region. The tips on each page show you where to push the cost lower when your store runs high.

Who this is for

It is for the person standing in the grocery aisle doing math, for the family cutting back without wanting to feel it, and for anyone who wants dinner to feel solved. It is an instant PDF download, easy to print, and each recipe fits on one page so you can pin it to the fridge.