Budget recipes under £1 per head

Get the recipe: Couscous Salad

One of our most popular cheap family meals – sausage and spinach frittata

89. Sausage and spinach frittata

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 97p | Total cost: £3.86

Priced at Asda

Ingredients:

• Asda Farm Stores 8 Pork Sausages, 86p
• 1 onion, 10p
• Farm Stores Cherry Tomatoes, 50p
• Mild Baby Spinach, 180g, 90p
• 6 eggs, £1
• Iceberg lettuce, 50p

A heart and filling frittata with big meaty sausages. We’ve swapped the bag of mixed salad for iceberg lettuce which keeps better and goes further but costs about half as much. This makes a great brunch or lunch at the weekend – it’s not too heavy but will keep you full up for a long time. One of our favourite budget recipes.

Get the recipe: Sausage and spinach frittata

A flavour packed soup the whole family will love

90. Carrot and coriander soup

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 83p | Total cost: £3.32

Priced at Sainsbury’s

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, 20p
• Imperfectly tasty carrots (1kg), 30p
• Garlic, 25p
• 1 lemon, 30p
• Ground coriander, 85p
• Fresh coriander, 47p
• Fresh baguette, 95p

Carrots are amazing value – one of the cheapest ingredients you can buy by weight. Moreover, if you go for the imperfectly tasty or ‘wonky’ ones, they are even cheaper and taste just as good.

Normally we count ground herbs as part of our ‘store cupboard’ ingredients, but since ground coriander is so crucial to this recipe we’ve budgeted for it. It’s also not something that everyone would have on their spice rack – though once you taste this soup, you’ll probably want it to be.

Get the recipe: Carrot and coriander soup

This recipe serves four and costs just 70p per serving

91. Spicy tomato chowder

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 70p | Total cost: £2.81

Priced at Asda

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, 10p
• Garlic, 25p
• 4 baking potatoes, 45p
• 2 x Asda Smart Price Peeled Plum Tomatoes, 56p
• 1 green pepper, 45p
• Garlic & herb baguettes, £1

Another big and hearty soup. Even chunky soups like this can feel a bit thin as a whole meal, so we’re serving this with half a garlic baguette per person as well to fill you up. If you want to add a meatier taste, use some cooking bacon, 75p, bringing the total spend up to £3.56.

Get the recipe: Spicy tomato chowder

A hearty cottage pie is comfort food at its finest

92. Cottage pie

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: £1 | Total cost: £4.01

Priced at Asda

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, 10p
• Asda carrots, 25p
• Butcher’s Selection mince beef, £1.89
• Farms Stores White Mushrooms, 50p
• Smart Price Peeled Plum Tomatoes, 28p
• Farm Stores White Potatoes, 99p

At just £1 a portion, this classic cottage pie is the perfect budget meal for the whole family. You can make this dish even cheaper by mixing the mashed potatoes with mashed carrots, which are cheaper per kilo. Adding in the mushrooms makes the meat go further, as well as adding to your five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Get the recipe: Cottage pie recipe

87p per tortilla wrap – this recipe is a bargain

93. Spicy Mixed Bean Tortillas

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 87p | Total cost: £3.48

Priced at Aldi

Ingredients: 

• Village Bakery Super Soft Original Wraps (8), 85p
• 1 onion, 49p
• 1x Everyday Essentials chopped tomatoes, 28p
• Carrots, 24p
• 1x Everyday Essentials kidney beans, 28p
• 1x Four Seasons Mildly Spiced Taco Mixed Beans, 59p
• Emporium Cheese Slices, 75p

This meal makes a really nice change from soups, pasta, and potato dishes. It’s really easy to make and it’s ready in only 35 minutes. You might even find some of the ingredients – such as kidney beans for instance – are things you already have lurking in your cupboards.

Get the recipe: Spicy Mixed Bean Tortillas

A warming dish that takes just 25 mins to cook

94. Jambalaya

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 87p | Total cost: £3.49

Priced at Morrisons

Ingredients:

• Onion, 10p
• Savers Long Grain Rice (1kg), 45p
• Celery, 49p
• Tinned tomatoes, 45p
• Spicy Spanish chorizo ring, £2 (special offer, normally £2.25)

There are only five ingredients in this recipe, which neatly keeps it under budget. Rather than using tinned tomatoes with chilli in (which are more expensive), we’d just add some dried chilli to the dish for a fiery kick.

Chorizo is the most expensive ingredient in this recipe – if you want to cut the cost of this dish even further you could leave out fo the chorizo and add paprika spices and chill seasoning instead.

Get the recipe: Jambalaya

A vibrant risotto made with butternut squash and red pepper

95. Squash and pepper risotto

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 87p | Total cost: £3.92

Priced at Sainsbury’s

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, 20p
• Sainsbury’s Arborio risotto rice (500g), £1
• 1 butternut squash, £1.25
• 1 red pepper, 42p
• Sainsbury’s dried grated hard cheese, £1.05

This is lovely comfort food, especially towards the end of summer and into Autumn when butternut squashes come into season. If you want to cut the cost further on this dish, opt for extra spring or mature cheese. That way you won’t need to use too much of it to get the flavour – and then they’ll be plenty left over for next time. It’s also a low-calorie option too as too much cheese ups the fat and calorie count.

Get the recipe: Squash and pepper risotto

One of our favourite cheap family meals at just 96p per serving

96. Bacon and pea risotto

Serves: 4 | Cost per person: 96p | Total cost: £3.85

Priced at Sainsbury’s

Ingredients:

• Sainsbury’s Arborio risotto rice (500g), £1
• J James cooking bacon (500g), 75p
• Frozen Garden peas (910g), £1
• Sainsbury’s dried grated hard cheese, £1.05

Last on our cheap family meals list is this delicious bacon and pea risotto. The original recipe here was made with ready mixed risotto but it’s a pricy way to buy it, so we’ve used regular risotto rice which you can cook as normal with stock.

Bacon is always a great addition to a risotto because it’s so flavourful and not too expensive either. Opting for a strong cheese means you won’t use loads of it in your recipe so you’ll have leftovers for another recipe – a great money-saving tip.

Get the recipe: Bacon and pea risotto

How were prices calculated for these recipes?

Storecupboard essentials: For these recipes, we have assumed you have basic store cupboard ingredients already including milk, butter, cooking oil, flour, dried herbs, and spices like dried chillies, salt, and pepper, mustard powder, vinegar, ketchup, except where large amounts are used.

Full product price: For all budgeted ingredients, we have used the price of a full pack, even if less is required for the recipe. This is not included in the £1 per portion budget. For example, if the recipe calls for mustard, we’ve priced a full pot of mustard. If a recipe calls for 1 egg, it’s still necessary to purchase a pack of 6, so that is the price we’ve used in the recipe.

We have budgeted for garlic, fresh herbs, and garnishes like Parmesan. Where a recipe uses a large amount of milk we have included the cost of a pint of milk in the budget.

Prices and portions:

• All prices in a particular recipe relate to a single supermarket.
• Most meals serve four people, except where otherwise stated.
• Prices may vary but are correct at the time of publication.

Which supermarket was the cheapest?

If you’re wondering which supermarket is the cheapest, then this for us varied widely depending on the recipes. Aldi often proved cheapest for large quantities, though we found it difficult to purchase smaller portions – for example, items of veg, like onions, are not sold singly. This pushed up overall costs to some degree.

Asda had the cheapest sausages and their Smart Price and Farm Stores range often represented the cheapest options. Tesco and Sainsbury’s performed well for fresh vegetables; while Sainsbury’s also has a good range of affordable cheeses like mozzarella and feta.

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