Collection

What to cook cheaply and well

The sixty cheapest dishes in the catalog with a price per serving: porridge and pancakes for breakfast, soups on legumes, dinners of potatoes, zucchini and liver, chicken with cabbage and plov, kefir bakes. Ready weeks: breakfasts, lunches, dinners, meat dinners, no meat, snacks.

62recipes
$0.27–$2.51per portion
10 min – 2 h 20 minto cook
85–819kcal per portion

Plan a week from this collection

A week until payday and you still want to eat properly, not instant noodles. Here are the sixty cheapest dishes in the catalog, chosen by price per serving, each with the price at your store, calories and time. Buckwheat with milk and kefir pancakes for breakfast, pea and lentil soups for lunch, potato pancakes, zucchini fritters and liver pancakes for dinner. Chicken with cabbage, plov and leg quarters with potatoes for those who need meat to call it dinner.

Below are six ready weeks. "Breakfasts", "Lunches" and "Dinners" are the cheapest five of their meal, "Meat dinners" is chicken, pork and liver, "No meat" leans on beans, mung and lentils, "Snacks" has kefir and oat bakes. The button "Build a week from the collection" opens the quiz, and the planner builds a week from the dishes here to match your answers, fills the rest from the catalog and counts the shopping list in whole packs. Any of the weeks below can be repeated exactly: swap the dishes in the plan for the ones on its list. Whole packs mean cheap food stays cheap at the till.

Ready menus

Cheap breakfasts

Buckwheat with milk, semolina porridge, rice porridge, kefir pancakes, oatmeal with banana. Grains and milk, nothing pricier.

Cheap lunches

Pea puree soup with croutons, lentil soup, lean borscht with beans, chicken noodle, mushroom soup with barley. Each pot lasts two days.

Cheap dinners

Potato pancakes, zucchini fritters, liver pancakes with buckwheat, egg fried rice, cabbage and chicken cutlets. The cheapest five dinners in the catalog.

Cheap meat dinners

Chicken with potatoes in the oven, chicken with stewed cabbage, plov, cabbage with sausages, liver in gravy with buckwheat. Leg quarters, liver and a whole chicken are the cheapest meat in the store.

No-meat week

Mung dal, lobio, vegetable stew with beans, vegetable soup with broccoli, lobiani with beans. Legumes give protein and fullness cheaper than any meat.

Breakfast 12

Buckwheat with Milk Breakfast25 min344 kcal≈ $0.63

Semolina Porridge Breakfast10 min331 kcal≈ $0.41

Milk Rice Porridge Breakfast30 min386 kcal≈ $0.43

Fluffy Yogurt Pancakes Breakfast20 min596 kcal≈ $0.61

Banana Milk Oatmeal Breakfast10 min406 kcal≈ $0.70

Spiced Pumpkin Muffins Breakfast45 min556 kcal≈ $0.59

Millet Porridge with Pumpkin Breakfast35 min379 kcal≈ $0.81

Apple Kefir Pancakes Breakfast20 min568 kcal≈ $0.80

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Breakfast15 min337 kcal≈ $0.99

Wheat bran porridge with apple Breakfast10 min271 kcal≈ $0.94

Egg and Green Onion Sandwich on Rye Breakfast12 min365 kcal≈ $1.14

Eggs with Tomatoes Breakfast10 min328 kcal≈ $1.13

Lunch 28

Creamy Split Pea and Potato Soup with Crispy Croutons Lunch1 h501 kcal≈ $0.74

Red Lentil Soup Lunch35 min407 kcal≈ $0.85

Lentil-Free Beet Borscht Lunch50 min422 kcal≈ $1.30

Chicken Leg Confit with Noodles Lunch45 min514 kcal≈ $1.21

Mushroom Soup with Pearl Barley Lunch1 h393 kcal≈ $1.81

Chicken with Braised Cabbage Lunch1 h473 kcal≈ $1.43

Chicken Pilaf Lunch55 min750 kcal≈ $1.11

Stufted Cabbage with Sausages Lunch40 min481 kcal≈ $1.71

Beef Liver in Sour Cream & Onion Sauce with Buckwheat Lunch35 min628 kcal≈ $1.71

Split Pea Curry with Turmeric and Rice Lunch40 min615 kcal≈ $1.05

Red bean lobio Lunch30 min459 kcal≈ $1.47

Vegetable and Bean Stew in a Multicooker Lunch50 min220 kcal≈ $1.58

Broccoli and Green Pea Vegetable Soup Lunch30 min259 kcal≈ $1.26

Skillet Lobiani with Red Beans Lunch1 h 10 min680 kcal≈ $0.56

Pea Soup with Potatoes and Sausages Lunch1 h526 kcal≈ $1.02

Chicken and Rice Soup with Egg Ribbons Lunch40 min489 kcal≈ $1.25

Pelmeni Soup (Russian Dumpling Soup) Lunch25 min467 kcal≈ $1.65

Meatball Soup Lunch40 min549 kcal≈ $1.99

Rassolnik with Pearl Barley Lunch1 h 15 min595 kcal≈ $1.52

Chicken Beetroot Soup (Borscht) Lunch1 h 10 min546 kcal≈ $1.62

Creamy Pumpkin Soup Lunch35 min448 kcal≈ $1.76

Cold Beetroot Soup (Svekholnik) Lunch2 h262 kcal≈ $1.81

Chicken Pilaf in the Multicooker Lunch1 h692 kcal≈ $1.07

Multicooker Chicken & Bulgur with Vegetables Lunch55 min623 kcal≈ $1.54

Chicken Liver in Sour Cream with Mashed Potatoes Lunch35 min689 kcal≈ $1.78

Pork and Potato Stew Lunch1 h680 kcal≈ $1.82

Macaroni à la Flottille Lunch30 min819 kcal≈ $2.12

Lazy Cabbage Rolls (Stuffed Cabbage Casserole) Lunch50 min729 kcal≈ $2.51

Dinner 13

Potato Pancakes with Sour Cream Dinner30 min548 kcal≈ $1.01

Zucchini fritters with sour cream Dinner25 min461 kcal≈ $1.52

Chicken Liver Pancakes with Buckwheat Dinner30 min720 kcal≈ $1.51

Egg Fried Rice with Peas and Vegetables Dinner18 min571 kcal≈ $1.32

Chicken & Cabbage Cutlets Dinner40 min452 kcal≈ $1.57

Garlic & Paprika Roast Chicken with Potatoes Dinner1 h 30 min663 kcal≈ $1.60

Homemade Baked Chicken Nuggets Dinner35 min344 kcal≈ $1.16

Oven-baked chicken thighs with potatoes Dinner1 h643 kcal≈ $1.44

Baked Mac and Cheese Dinner35 min512 kcal≈ $0.84

Crab Salad with Apple and Corn Dinner20 min406 kcal≈ $1.73

German Potato Salad with Bacon Dinner40 min353 kcal≈ $1.22

Cheesy Chicken Quesadilla Triangles Dinner25 min431 kcal≈ $1.82

Zucchini Fritters with Sour Cream Dinner20 min419 kcal≈ $1.48

Snack 9

Banana oat cookies Snack25 min314 kcal≈ $0.62

Fluffy Kefir Chocolate Cake Snack2 h 10 min588 kcal≈ $0.61

Two Hard-Boiled Eggs with Salt and a Slice of Bread Snack20 min204 kcal≈ $0.60

Spiced Baked Apples Snack15 min172 kcal≈ $0.62

Soft Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate Chips Snack30 min343 kcal≈ $0.58

Korean-Style Carrots Snack2 h 20 min190 kcal≈ $0.27

Homemade Mint Lemonade Snack15 min86 kcal≈ $0.36

Cranberry Morse Snack20 min93 kcal≈ $0.45

Apple Crisp (Caramelized Apple) Snack1 h365 kcal≈ $0.50

How to use it

Press "Build a week from the collection": the planner builds a week from the cheapest dishes, adds the other meals to match your answers and counts the shopping list in whole packs. If you give your budget in the answers, it fits everything else to it too, not only this collection. Prices come from your store: the same week costs less at a discounter than at a supermarket.

Food is cheapest when the products repeat: cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions and one chicken cover half of this collection. Cook soups and stews for two days, the planner places them that way. Buy grains and legumes in big packs, they keep, and the price per kilo is lower.

Plan a week from this collection

Questions

What can I cook for dinner cheaply?

Potato pancakes, zucchini or liver pancakes, egg fried rice, cabbage and chicken cutlets: the Dinners week is made of these five, and its price per person is under the list. With meat, the cheapest are chicken with cabbage, plov and leg quarters with potatoes.

What can I cook from cheap ingredients?

From potatoes: pancakes, zrazy, chicken with potatoes. From cabbage: stewed with sausages, cabbage cutlets, lazy cabbage rolls. From legumes: mung dal, lobio, pea and lentil soups. From grains: buckwheat with milk, rice porridge, plov, navy-style pasta.

How do I feed a family cheaply?

Plan the whole week rather than each day: a soup for two days, one chicken for three dishes, porridge for breakfast instead of boxed cereal. The "Build a week from the collection" button does this for you and counts the shopping list in packs so nothing is thrown away.

What is cheap to cook without meat?

Mung dal, lobio, lobiani, vegetable stew with beans, lentil soup, lean borscht with beans. The No-meat week has five such dishes, with as much protein as the meat week and a lower price.

What is the cheapest meat?

Chicken leg quarters, drumsticks and a whole chicken, then chicken and beef liver, sausages and pork shoulder. Breast, beef and fish cost one and a half to two times more, and there is almost none of them in this collection.