Quick and Delicious 5 Dollar Meal Idea

1. Shopping tips

For these extreme-budget meals, I usually go to Walmart. I find that they tend to have the cheapest prices.

I like to start with pasta because it’s a good filling and affordable option.

You can get a box of pasta at Walmart for $.98. There are also lots of pasta sauce options for $1.48. I decided to get a jar of Alfredo sauce.

Using different sauces and different kinds of pasta is a great way to create variety in your budget meals.

Another easy way to get a variety of flavors and textures is to use different vegetables. I decided to go with mushrooms for my Alfredo sauce. Mushrooms are a great way to cut the cost of a meal by using them in place of meat.

I picked up a pound of penne pasta, a 16-ounce jar of Alfredo sauce, and a package of Baby Bella mushrooms. This ended up costing me $5.20.

I could have stayed under $5 if I had gotten the white mushrooms but I really wanted those Baby Bellas and didn’t mind the extra 20 cents.

If you want to keep your meal at $5 exactly, go for the white mushrooms.

2. Cook it up

I started by boiling some water. I added some salt to the water and when it came to a boil I added the pasta in to cook for 10-12 minutes.

Then I put some olive oil in my skillet. You could use butter or whichever oil or fat you prefer if you don’t want to use olive oil.

I rinsed and dried the mushrooms before putting them in the pan to sauté. 

I added some salt, pepper, garlic powder, and minced onion for seasoning.

Once the mushrooms were nicely sauteed I added in my Alfredo sauce. I didn’t get rid of the jar for the Alfredo sauce yet because I decided to use the pasta water to stretch that sauce as far as I could.

When the noodles were done I added those into the skillet and gave everything a good stir.

Then I poured the pasta water into the Alfredo sauce jar and shook it up to get all that sauce out.

Then I put it in with the rest of the sauce and stirred that as well.

3. Taste test

When everything was done cooking I gave it a quick taste test. This mushroom Alfredo penne was so creamy and delicious!

5 dollar meals

I can’t believe it only cost me $5.20. It also made huge portions that were more than enough to feed and satisfy my family of four.

This was definitely what I would consider a successful budget meal. I hope you found this inspiring so you can make insanely cheap meals like this one for yourself and your family.

Give this recipe a try and leave me a comment to let me know how it comes out.