Delicious Extreme Budget Dinner Idea

She decided that she wanted me to make mini tacos.

One thing that I love about these mini tacos is if you make too much, they are great to put in the freezer, and you can just pop them in a microwave for 30 seconds, and they're as good as they were fresh from the skillet.

Those mini tacos are their family's absolute favorite. They get some mild salsa and ] dip the mini tacos in the mild salsa.

Sometimes they pair it with a side of Mexicorn, and it's really good and so easy. Let's make Southern Frugal Mama's mini tacos.

Mini tacos ingredients

For these mini tacos, we will need one pound of ground beef. This is a little more, but that's okay. It's what I had on hand. We'll use refried beans (these were on sale this week) and sharp cheddar cheese. Of course, some taco seasoning and corn tortillas.

Mini tacos recipe

The first thing I'm going to do is get my ground beef browning up in a skillet.

Once your meat Is browned, you'll need to drain it. I used 73% lean ground beef, so there was a lot of grease. I'm going to drain the grease off and put a can of Mexicorn on the side.

Now that my meat is drained, I am going to make this up like tacos. So we're going to add in taco seasoning. Add in as much as a packet, season it to your family's taste, then add a third a cup of water. I might need more, but I'll start with a third of a cup.

We're going to be adding in refried beans; the recipe calls for a full can.

So I got this little packet of refried beans. I've never tried these refried beans in a little bag, but It smells good. I’'m going to add that in and stir

I can thin it out with more water if it's too thick. So I think I'm going to need to do that. This makes a ton of meat. I learned this trick a long time ago about how adding beans to your meat stretches it out if you are on a budget. I've started doing that, and it stretches your meat. I think I'm going to need a little bit more water

We can start making our mini tacos; I just put my meat and bean mixture in a separate bowl. I cleaned out my pan now. We're going to work on building these mini tacos.

Cooking the tortillas

So I'm going to put some oil in my pan. Next, I'll put in a tortilla, cheese, and some of the meat mixture.

Let these crisp for about two minutes on each side, and we flip.

The cheese burnt a little bit right there on the edge. These look so good.

We're going to keep assembling and flipping. I'll show you what it's like when we get it on the plate. This is good with street corn, so I have some Mexicorn, salsa, and sour cream. This looks yummy.

It was tricky for me at first. I had a hard time flipping the corn tortillas, but it's all good. That made 20 of these tacos, and It's really budget-friendly; I feel like the taste will be on point.

So here is my plate, I have three of those mini tacos. I've got some sour cream and salsa and Mexicorn.

I'm going to try it first without using any salsa or sour cream on it.

That is so good. Now, let's try it with some salsa and sour cream. You guys, I can't even stop eating it long enough to talk to you about it. This was a win and is definitely going in the rotation.

This extreme budget meal was one I probably wouldn't have tried on my own just because I don't think of making tacos this way. I'll just buy the shells. It made plenty, and we still have corn tortillas left.

Extreme budget dinner

Do you cook on a budget? What is your favorite extreme budget dinner? Share your recipes in the comments below.