4 Easy Frugal Recipes You Can Make For $1.25 Per Serving

Breakfast - Easy peasy pancakes

We're going to start with breakfast. I'm going to be using self-raising flour to make pancakes. Heat a non-stick pan while mixing your ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 300g of self-raising flour (10.5 ounces)
• 1 tablespoon of castor sugar  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder 
• 300ml unsweetened soy milk (10 fluid ounces)
• 2 eggs

In a large bowl, loosely mix all of the dry ingredients. Add the unsweetened soy milk and the two eggs in a separate bowl. Once you add two eggs, whisk everything together until well combined, and then we will add it to the dry ingredients. 

Whisk it all together until you have a silky smooth pancake mixture. 

Once the pan has heated through, add some coconut oil. Use a big serving spoon to dish up each pancake, and then use the back of the spoon to spread it out slightly. 

Once you get lots of little bubbles on top of the pancake, flip it. 

These are the completed pancakes.

Lunch - egg mayo salad 

We're going to move on to my lunch recipe. 

Ingredients: 

• 4 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled 
• watercress or lettuce leaves 
• ½ cup mayo 
• salt and pepper
• bread or jacket potatoes

Hard boil and peel your eggs. 

Once you've peeled all your eggs, slice them and add the mayo. 

Depending on how creamy you like your egg mayo, you can add as much or as little as you want. 

Add a good serving of salt and pepper, and lettuce, and your egg mayo is ready. 

Dinner - homemade margarita pizza

Now, let's get into our first dinner recipe.

Ingredients: 

For the dough:

• 650g of plain flour (23 ounces, plus extra for dusting) 
• 2 tablespoons oil of choice (we used olive oil) 
• 1 packet of yeast (11 grams or 0.4 ounces) 
• 80ml unsweetened soy milk (2.7 fluid ounces)
• 350ml lukewarm water (11.8 fluid ounces)
• salt

Toppings:

• ¾ a tube tomato purée 
• water
• 400-500 grams of cheese of choice (13.5-17 ounces)

Weigh the plain flour and salt. Add the yeast and mix it all up. 

Once the dry ingredients are mixed, add two tablespoons of olive oil and mix again. Once the olive oil is mixed in, add the lukewarm water and milk. First, I add soy milk and water.

If your dough looks too wet, add more flour or try not to add too much water. If it looks too dry, you might need to add more water. You want a pliable, stretchy dough, but not a sticky dough. 

Sprinkle some flour onto a work surface and knead for about ten minutes. Once the dough is fully kneaded, get a clean bowl, put a bit of oil in the bottom, and spread it all the way around so that the dough will not stick to the bowl. Place the dough into the bowl and cover a wet tea towel or cling film. 

While your dough is rising, make your pizza sauce. For four pizzas, I used a third of a tube of tomato puree and a similar amount of water and mixed it until it was pourable. 

After about 4 hours of proofing, I cut the dough into four pieces, then very slightly rolled each into a ball shape, and placed them on my chopping board. 

Cover the dough balls with a wet paper towel to proof them and rise a bit more. At the same time, preheat the oven as hot as it will go while they're rising, and grate and prep the cheese for topping the pizzas. Make sure you've left your baking tray in the oven to preheat your oven.

Once everything's prepped, start rolling out the dough. Eventually, you will get to a point where you will use your hands, so flour a work surface and start rolling your pizzas out into a pizza shape. Poke some holes with a fork to ensure you don't get huge air bubbles. Fold out the shape you want, and place it on your very flat, preheated tray with no sauce.

Turn the oven down to around 220 degrees Celsius (430 Fahrenheit). Bake in the oven until it's slightly golden. You don't want it to be fully cooked, but you don't want it to be raw. 

Spread the sauce on top of the pizza and then your cheese and other toppings. Place them back in the oven until the cheese looks melted and golden. 

When it's all done, gently place it on a plate to cool down.

Dinner - vegetarian carbonara recipe 

Lastly is our homemade carbonara. If you would like to, you can easily add bacon.

Ingredients: 

• spaghetti (save a cup of the pasta water for later) 
• 1 egg and 2 egg yolks 
• 150g of cheese of choice (5.3 ounces)
• 5-6 cloves garlic 
• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• salt and pepper to taste

Add your pasta to a pot of boiling water to cook. 

Prep the garlic cloves to get all of the skin off the garlic. Next, separate the eggs and mix the measured eggs in a bowl. Mix the grated cheese with the egg yolks so they are well combined. It'll be a very thick kind of paste. 

Then heat some oil in a pan. Once the pasta is almost finished cooking, set aside one cup of water for later. 

Drain the pasta. Once the oil is hot, add your garlic and cook for a minute. Once the garlic is cooked, turn off the heat to the pan, add the pasta, and then add the egg and cheese paste. 

You want to ensure your pan is turned off before you complete this step so you do not curdle the eggs and cook them too quickly. 

Slowly mix everything, loosening it with the pasta water we kept for later until you get a cheesy, saucy consistency you like. If you wanted to add bacon, you would add it in just before the garlic in this process. 

I served this with corn and green beans.

Frugal recipes

I hope you enjoy all four of these frugal recipes. Do you have a favorite frugal recipe? Share it in the comments; we're always looking for new ideas.