How to meal prep a week’s worth of lunches or dinners for less than $2 per meal and all in under 1 hour! Fast, healthy and frugal!

Meal prepping while staying on budget can be a little tough. While eating meals from home is one of the biggest ways to save money, meal prepping can pose some challenges. You want to eat healthy, you want variety, and you want it all on the cheap. Most of the delicious meal plans I see require a whole list of ingredients that can really add up, and the budget meal preps I see can be just plain boring. The goal is to be somewhere right in the middle. You want flavor, but you also want to save money. This requires two things: creativity and…A PLAN.

*Don’t feel like creating your own plan? That’s ok too. For $5 you can have someone plan it for you! No, not me unfortunately, but there are some great sites out there that will. So far this has been the best. I did use it before my creative juices got flowing. It can be helpful if you’re not a cook as well. It may be worth the investment in the beginning by providing you with a week’s worth of meals and a grocery list. It’ll still save you on groceries (each meal is estimated at $2 as well) and eating out, and over time you’ll create your own meal plans. Sign up here for your FREE 14 DAY TRIAL. 

The biggest thing with meal prepping on a budget is to incorporate it in to your overall monthly grocery plan. Don’t just shop for items to meal prep, meal prep around the items you have.

Over time you’ll learn that buying meat in bulk really is a huge savings. At most of the stores like Costco or SAM’s you can get chicken (sometimes even organic) for under $2 per pound. That’s a steal! Chicken is upwards of $7.50 per pound when you buy it at the local grocery store. Tip #1 Buy In Bulk. For this month’s meal prepping we stuck with chicken. Why? Because it was on sale!! It’s lean, a great source of protein, and takes on any flavor you give it. Buy your month’s supply and set aside 4-6 ounces per portion for meal prepping. Separate and freeze the rest! When it comes to veggies, buying in bulk isn’t always the best for your budget. Think waste. If you don’t use those veggies before they go back then you’re basically throwing money in the trash. Not cool. Again, PLAN. Can you freeze a portion or even can some? Or use them in your meal prep bowls? If the answer is “yes” then go ahead and buy that 3lb bag of broccoli for $3.98! If the answer is “no”, then pass on the deal and find something else you’ll use. Tip #2 – Don’t Waste Food. One of the hardest parts of meal prepping is making food you will actually eat.

Yes, al of those Pinterest boards filled with 5 varieties of lunches from Greek chicken skewers with veggie couscous to Asian sticky rice and pineapple shrimp all sound absolutely delicious, and they look even better! But let’s face it. Most of us want something easy to make, quick, and budget friendly right? Oh, and healthy, tasty, not boring, visually appealing and filling… Not too much to ask. This is where creativity comes in. For the most part meal prepping has 3 components: a protein, a veggie, and a starch. It’s your job to take what you have on hand and flavor it the way you like. It’s my job to show you how to create the basics so that you can ad your own spin!

Check out these three compartment meal prep containers I found on Amazon. They’re not only BPA free, microwave and dishwasher safe, and reusable, but they also fit in the budget!

Meal Prep Bowls for Under $2 Each and Made in LESS than 1 Hour

Broccoli, Mixed Baby Peppers, and a Sweet Potato:

Broccoli. For $3.98 we got a 3lb bag of broccoli and used roughly 1/5th of the package for meal prepping. That’s $0.79 for the 5 meals.

Broccoli is one of those produce items that you really have to use, so make sure you have a plan if you’re going to buy this large of an amount. It can go bad within a week.

We chose to make broccoli salad, use it in stir fry, as an addition to our salads, in the meal preps and froze the rest to use in meals for the month.

Mixed baby peppers were on sale as well. A 2lb bag was $3.99 and we used approximately 1/6th of the bag. Bringing it to $0.66 for our meal prepping.

Sweet Potato. One large sweet potato costs around $0.50. You don’t need much because it’s simply a flavor addition to the rice and quinoa mixture.

Simply toss the broccoli and peppers together with a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoning of choice then spread on a foil lined cookie sheet.

Peel the sweet potato and cut in to small sized cubes. You toss them in olive oil and seasoning as well and spread on the other side of the foil lined cookie sheet.

Cook in preheated oven at 375 for approximately 30 minutes while you sauté the chicken.

Chicken:

Out of a $9.50 package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts I was able to get 22 portions. Yep, 22. I sliced each chicken breast horizontally to create cutlets. This made approximately 4 ounce portions. Some were a bit larger.

-If you want to do the math, that comes out to just under $1.80 per pound, and the chicken was on sale for $1.79 per pound. That sounds cheap, but this is where having a big box membership like SAM’s pays off (or having a friend or family member who lets you go shopping with them – save on the membership!).

After slicing the chicken in to cutlets, I seasoned it with our favorite spice blend and simply sautéed the breasts in a skillet on medium heat until the outside was golden brown and the inside was cooked through.

Make sure you put a tiny bit of oil in the pan and use a good non-stick skillet. Oh, Tip #3. It’s better to have a few high-quality pieces of cookware than multiple cheaper versions. They’ll last a lifetime and help you cook with less oil and less headache.

Quinoa and Brown Rice:

Easiest part ever! We found a box of 10 Seeds of Change brand microwavable packages for about $8. Believe it or not you only need 1 bag of the rice divided in to the 5 meals. No, you’re not going to starve. You combine it with the sweet potato for a full size serving of starch.

Open bag, divide amongst the 5 containers. No need to cook first unless you’re eating the meals right away. Otherwise, you just heat up the whole meal container together.

Combining Meal:

Slice the chicken breast and place in one section, divide veggies in to 5 and place in another section, and finally divide the sweet potato and place on top of the rice and quinoa.

Simple as that! Less than 1 hour and you have 5 meals ready to go. If you wanted one for lunch AND dinner for the full work week then simply double the amount you make. It doesn’t increase the price at all, just the amount of food.

Get creative:

Just eating veggies, chicken and rice can get boring really quickly right? You want to eat healthy and you want it to be cheap, but you also want to WANT to eat it.

Take a look at what you have and what you like. We used a few optional items like avocado, cilantro, green onions, red onions, siracha, and BBQ sauce. These items did not bring us over the $2 mark for a few reasons. We had the siracha and BBQ sauce on hand, only used a tiny portion of the red onion and half of an avocado which we also had, and we got the cilantro and green onion from the garden.

Having your own little herb garden can be a HUGE money saving tip. So… Tip #4. Try growing your own herb garden. This can even be done in a window sill. They don’t take up much room and just add zest, color and life to any dish.

Other options could be: siracha mayo chicken, homemade pico de gallo (fresh salsa) for the chicken, teriyaki sauce, leftover pesto mixed in with the rice or the chicken, even topping the chicken with spaghetti sauce and a bit of cheese. The possibilities are endless. You just have to have a solid basis and a bit of creativity.

These meals don’t have to be expensive OR boring. They are perfectly portioned and can be adjusted based on your dietary needs. These meal preps, in particular, are gluten and dairy free and most of the veggies are organic. All of under $2 per meal. I don’t know about you, but I can’t buy a healthy meal for under $2.

By taking less than an hour once or twice a week, I am able to create ready-to-go meals for myself and my family. This not only is beyond helpful for our budget, but it helped me get off the baby weight. This momma CRAVED carbs when I was pregnant with our daughter and packed on a solid 50 (closer to 60) pounds. Anything that helped get off that weight AND saved me time and money was worth trying.

The meal prepping isn’t about depriving yourself of food. It’s about having meals ready-to-go because when you’re hungry you make bad choices whether that’s with calories or cash.

Thanks for reading! Happy meal prepping and GET CREATIVE!

For more meal prep ideas look here, and check out the following recipes for some inspiration:

• Easy Asian Tacos
• Quick and Easy Chimichurri
• The ULTIMATE Cobb Salad
• Gluten Free Burger Quesadilla
• The one gourmet meal you CAN make
• Gnocchi and Pesto in LESS than 30 minutes

No time? Try $5 Meal Plan’s FREE 14 day trial. They provide you with customizable meal plans that focus on budgeting! Each meal is estimated at less than $2 as well!

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