3 Super-Easy & Delicious $10 Dinners You Can Make This Week

1. Pasta bake

Up first is a quick and easy pasta bake. This is a family favorite and is really convenient. It is a cheap budget meal that comes in right at $10 if you buy everything at Walmart. 

Gather the ingredients and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

I'm going to start by cooking up my hamburger meat. I'm going to season it with the basic seasonings of garlic, salt, pepper, and onion powder. They are seasonings I always have on hand. 

When you are on a tight budget and have to feed your family, having seasonings can help make your food flavorful and help those cheap budget meals taste great. This $10 dinner is a go-to meal for us. 

I'm also going to go ahead and cook my pasta. I used about 3/4 of a box, but you can use the whole box depending on your family size. I'm feeding four here, and we had leftovers. 

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and then add a jar of Alfredo, making sure that it gets thoroughly mixed together. 

Next, place the Alfredo pasta mixture into a 9 by 13 greased casserole dish.  

Once the hamburger meat is cooked, drain the grease and add the jar of spaghetti sauce. Mix that until all the meat is covered with sauce. Place this mixture on top of the Alfredo noodles, spreading it out evenly.

Top that with cheese and put this into a 350-degree oven, and cook the pasta for 30 minutes  

We like our cheese a little toasty on top. 

2. Taco bake

Next up is a quick and easy taco bake. This one came in right under $10, including a side of rice. I love keeping those Knorr rice sides on hand. Even the pasta sides can make a quick and easy, cheap side dish to go along with a meal, especially if you have to cook on a budget. 

Get all your ingredients together and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

I'm going to go ahead and cook up my hamburger meat, and then I'll get the rice started because that will take about twelve minutes. 

Once my hamburger meat is cooked, I will drain it in that same pot. I'm going to add my can of drained corn, water, and taco seasoning. 

Now we're just going to layer everything up. I've got two flour tortillas laid down, and then we're just going to layer our taco meat mixture, and cheese, and then do more tortillas, then taco meat, and keep repeating it until your meat mixture is gone. I like to top it with cheese. 

I am already using shredded cheese because that's what I buy. I prefer it, but if you have to shop on a budget, buying the blocked cheese and shredding it yourself is way cheaper than buying the already shredded one. 

We will put this into the 350-degree oven and cook this for about 20 to 30 minutes. It's already cooked, but you want to heat everything through. 

This one was so easy and so good. It changes up the traditional taco night. We served it with rice, and it was filling. 

If you have sour cream, salsa, and extra cheese, as I do, you can top your taco bake with that.

3. Ham and broccoli frittata

I used ham, broccoli, eggs, and shredded triple cheddar cheese. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

This ham and broccoli frittata is perfect for a cheap breakfast or supper. This didn't give us any leftovers, and I'm feeding four. We each just got a piece. With it being cheap and under $10, if you took a $10 bill, you had little room to add something well for a side dish.

You could get some fruit, or you could even get a cheap can of biscuits and a packet of gravy. So you have options with this one to keep this under $10 and bulk it up just a little. 

Even without adding anything, these frittatas are filling because you've got double protein, veggies, and some cheese. 

I will add some salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika to give a little love to my eggs. Season with your heart, and then we're going to mix that. 

I didn't add any milk or anything to it. If you add milk, it will stretch it a little bit, but it's not necessarily needed. 

I will mix this and pour it into an 8 by 8 casserole dish. If you wanted to do a full 9 by 13, I would probably use a twelve-count carton of eggs. I just used six, so I did this in my glass 8 by 8 pan. 

We will top it with broccoli and ham and finish it with cheese. I put my broccoli in the microwave and cut it into smaller pieces to make it more manageable in the casserole. 

We will cook this in a 350-degree oven for about 20 to 30 minutes. Take a toothpick or knife and ensure the middle comes out clean. 

This is a favorite of ours, and it just happens to be a cheap budget meal.

$10 dinners

I hope I have given you some new meal inspiration to help you feed your family on a budget. What are your family's favorite $10 dinners? Share your recipes in the comments below.