5 Quick & Easy 20-Minute Meals You Can Make on a Budget
Today, I'm sharing recipes for 20-minute meals. Even though I try to reduce my schedule and live a simplified life, it seems like supper time comes a lot quicker than I expect every single day. These are fast, easy, and delicious recipes that you can get on the table for your family in 20 minutes or less.
They are all family-friendly and frugal, so they're friendly to your budget as well. Let's go get started in the kitchen, making five of these delicious, quick, and easy recipes.
20-Minute meals
Vegetarian recipe
This is one that I came up with using the things that I had in my pantry and refrigerator. I needed supper quickly, and I found some ingredients that I thought might go well together and started from there.
I had some tortillas in the freezer. I let them thaw and laid them out on a 9x13 baking dish. Next, I opened up a can of refried beans.
I heated them up a bit and gave them a good stir so that they would be a little more spreadable.
Then, I made homemade enchilada sauce. You can make this with store-bought enchilada sauce if you need to stay within the 20-minute time frame.
I'll spread that enchilada sauce on top of the refried beans.
I have made some rice in the microwave. I'll spread the rice on top of the enchilada sauce and then add one can of Rotel tomatoes.
I'll add one bag of frozen corn and top that with the remainder of the enchilada sauce.
I had some mozzarella cheese in the refrigerator. If you want to use cheddar cheese, that would work just fine in this recipe.
I have my oven preheated to 350 degrees. Bake it in there for about 25 minutes. If you want it to brown on the top, you can broil it for about four or five minutes. I think this is a really good family-friendly option that also is super easy on the budget.
20-Minute chicken casserole recipe
For this recipe, I shredded up some of the chicken that I had cooked at the beginning of the week. I'll put two or three cups in the bottom of this baking dish. I'll add three-quarters of a cup of prepared mayonnaise. You can also use Greek yogurt.
Add 1 cup of shredded Parmesan on cheese, and also, I'm going to add half a teaspoon of paprika, one teaspoon of chili powder, one teaspoon of black pepper, and a teaspoon of salt.
I'll mix all of that together and then spread that on top of the chicken. For the next part of the recipe, I'm going to crush up one sleeve of saltine crackers, add one-half stick of melted butter, mix all of this together, and then top the casserole with this cracker crumb mixture. I'll bake this in a 350-degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes.
While it's baking, I'm going to boil some water and cook some spaghetti noodles and carrots that I had grown earlier. I'm going to cook those up and have that as a side item.
Buffalo chicken recipe
This is a casserole that I also started with rice as the base. I found some brown rice in the pantry and cooked it in the microwave according to the package directions. I'll spread that on the bottom of this 9 x 13 casserole dish. Then, I will take a can of Rotel tomatoes to spread on top of the rice.
Next, I took about three cups of chicken, added half a cup or so of hot sauce, and one block of cream cheese.
I'll mix all of this together, and then I'm going to spread it on top of the rice and Rotel.
I'll top this with plenty of cheddar cheese and then bake it in a 350-degree oven for about 20 minutes or so.
I paired this with some easy-to-make green beans and a couple of tortilla chips and it was super yummy.
Our last two recipes for today are going to use barbecued chicken that I'm going to make in the crockpot. I'm going to use chicken thighs because it is the least expensive option. I would highly recommend using boneless chicken for this recipe. It just is a lot easier to work with.
I'm going to pour all of the chicken into the crockpot and cover it with about two cups of barbecue sauce.
After it's cooked on high for about five or six hours, on low all day, I'll shred the chicken using two forks.
Barbecue chicken nachos
I'm going to start with some tortilla chips and then add shredded barbecue chicken on top.
I'm going to add a little bit of cheese so that it can melt, and then add some lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, and my very favorite ingredient, cilantro; then I'm going to top it with some extra barbecue sauce.
Barbecue chicken stuffed potatoes
The next day, I made some baked potatoes, and I cooked mine in the microwave.
I took two of the cooked potatoes for each family member.
Then I'll top it with some butter and cheese, add some barbecue chicken, some tomatoes, a good helping of sour cream, some barbecue sauce on top, and then, of course, some of my favorite cilantro.
This is one of the easiest recipes that you can possibly make, especially if you've already made the chicken ahead of time.
All of these recipes turned out to be really good, and I got compliments from everyone in the family.
20-Minute meals
I hope that you will give these 20-minute meals a try because they are all absolutely delicious. Do you have a quick and easy recipe you'd like to share? Leave it in the comments below.
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