5 Quick & Easy 5-Ingredient Meals You Can Make on a Budget

1. Carbonara

For this recipe, you will need grated parmesan cheese, eggs, garlic, bacon or panchetta, and pasta.

Boil the water, salt it, then add in the pasta and give it all a good stir occasionally so it does not stick together.

While the pasta is cooking, cook up the bacon. I suggest chopping the bacon before cooking it. You can save your bacon grease in a container in the fridge to use it later to season and cook chicken and other types of meats in the pan.

Once the bacon is fully cooked, remove it and put it on a paper towel on a plate to get all the excess grease off.

Add some garlic to your pan and heat this until it is fragrant. Once it is, add the drained pasta into the pan.

Next, combine two eggs and a half cup of Parmesan cheese, and add that to the pan as well. Give everything a good stir to make sure that the egg and cheese mixture gets on all of the pasta. Add some pasta water just to make it saucier.

Once everything is cooked and well combined, add the bacon back in. At this point, I recommend adding a bit of parsley. Then season with additional pepper and salt, but be careful because bacon tends to get too salty.

Here's the completed dish. This is so tasty and it comes together in about 20 minutes.

2. BBQ pulled pork pizza

Get frozen crescent roll pizza dough. I normally pull it out about 24 hours in advance. Press this out onto a cookie sheet; try to get it wide, but still thick enough on the bottom. 

While the crust bakes for a few minutes, start preparing the pizza toppings by caramelizing some onions with butter, salt and pepper.

After the crust cooks for a few minutes according to the package instructions, take it out and start adding other toppings. The things that I had were barbecue sauce, the caramelized onions and pulled pork. You can definitely add more veggies to this, maybe bell peppers or mushrooms.

Top it all with some mozzarella cheese and then pop it in the oven at 425 for about seven minutes. Just wait until the cheese has melted.

Here is the result! It came out delicious.

3. Teriyaki chicken stir-fry

You will need rice or noodles and chicken, stir-fry mix or fresh veggie mix (Walmart has some great options), and some teriyaki sauce. 

Cut the chicken into small bite sized pieces, put it in a pan with some oil and season with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. Once the chicken is fully cooked, take it out and place it on a plate, and move on to the veggies. 

Cook the vegetables according to the package instructions, then add the chicken back in, and add teriyaki sauce.

Here it is, served with rice. This is a really simple and tasty meal for the entire family.

4. Sausage and veggie bake

This dinner is one of my absolute favorites. This is a spin on my sausage and veggie bake with sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, onions, and sausage.

You can switch the veggies for anything you want, just be mindful of the time they need in the oven – make sure not to overcook them.

Get sweet potatoes into a baking dish, add olive oil, season it with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and some Italian seasoning – this will be our seasoning for all the veggies.

Give them a good stir, cover them with aluminum foil, and then put them in the oven that has been preheated to 425 degrees. Cook these for ten minutes while you prep the rest of the other ingredients. 

Finely dice an onion and chop carrots. Add those to the pan, cover it up and bake for an additional ten minutes.

In the meantime, cut up a sausage (you can replace it with beans, like garbanzo beans or black beans, to make the meal vegetarian). Add it in next, and bake for 5-10 minutes. 

Add the green beans very last, they only need 7-10 minutes in the oven. You can bake this uncovered for a little bit to add a little extra crispness, if you like.

We eat this quite often because it's cheap, has minimal ingredients, and filling, and is pretty well balanced.

5. Meatball sub

We are going to use some rolls, homemade spaghetti sauce, mozzarella cheese, and some meatballs. Pop the meatballs in the microwave to thaw them out before you combine them with the sauce. 

Start warming up our sauce on the stove, and then once it is a little bit warm, go ahead and add the meatballs. I like to cut my meatballs in half so they are a little bit easier to eat that way. 

If you have some butter and garlic powder or even some Parmesan cheese, you can make some little garlic rounds. Alternatively, if you have hoagie rolls, you can make little garlic hoagie rolls to add a little additional flavor to your sandwich. 

Pop the rolls in the oven at 400 degrees for 2-3 minutes to melt the butter, and then add the meatballs and cheese. Put these in the oven for about two or three minutes until the cheese has melted.

This is what they look like just out of the oven. We love serving these with some kind of veggies on the side.

Easy 5-ingredient meals

These are my favorite 5-ingredient healthy meals that I regularly cook for my family. Which one did you like best? What are some of your favorite minimal-ingredient meals that I should try out with my family? Leave a comment below and have a great day!