The $50 Weekly Meal Prep Plan: Full Shopping List and 5 Dinners
A complete week of dinners for two people, costed line by line, built around the four cheapest proteins in the supermarket.
Budget meal prep articles usually cheat. They exclude the oil, salt and spices, assume you already own half the shop, and quietly serve you 300 calories of rice.
This one does not. It is a full week of dinners for two people — ten portions — with everything on the list, and it lands at roughly $50 depending on where you shop.
- total
- $49.60
- portions
- 10
- per portion
- $4.96
- session
- 95 min
#Where the money actually goes
#Protein is the whole budget
Here is the thing nobody tells you: the difference between a $50 week and an $80 week is almost never the vegetables. It is which protein you put in the trolley.
| Protein | Approx. cost per 100 g protein |
|---|---|
| Dried lentils | $1.10 |
| Eggs | $1.90 |
| Tinned beans | $2.30 |
| Chicken thighs, bone-in | $2.60 |
| Frozen white fish | $4.40 |
| Chicken breast | $5.20 |
| Beef mince, 15% | $5.90 |
| Salmon fillet | $9.80 |
#The two swaps that do most of the work
Swapping chicken breast for bone-in thighs halves your protein cost and improves the food. Building two of five dinners around lentils and beans does the rest. Those two decisions account for roughly 60% of the saving in this plan.
#The shopping list
#Proteins — $19.40
- 1.5 kg bone-in chicken thighs — $7.50
- 500 g beef mince, 15% fat — $5.40
- 500 g dried red lentils — $2.20
- 2 tins black beans — $2.10
- 12 eggs — $2.20
#Vegetables — $13.80
- 2 kg potatoes — $2.40
- 1 kg carrots — $1.30
- 1 kg onions — $1.40
- 3 heads garlic — $1.20
- 2 tins chopped tomatoes — $1.80
- 500 g frozen peas — $1.50
- 500 g frozen spinach — $1.60
- 3 peppers — $2.60
#Grains and staples — $8.90
- 2 kg rice — $3.60
- 500 g pasta — $1.10
- 1 loaf bread — $1.80
- 400 ml coconut milk — $1.40
- 100 g tomato paste — $1.00
#Flavour — $7.50
- Olive oil, 500 ml — $4.20
- Cumin, smoked paprika, chilli flakes, dried oregano — $2.10
- 2 lemons — $1.20
Total: $49.60 — $4.96 per portion
For reference, the USDA's Thrifty Food Plan — the benchmark used to set SNAP benefit levels — worked out at roughly $6.20 per person per meal in its most recent reindexing. So this is not a stunt list; it is meaningfully under a budget that is itself designed to be tight.
#The five dinners
#Oven nights
#1. Chicken, potato and carrot tray bake — 2 portions
Thighs skin-side up on a tray with quartered potatoes, thick-cut carrots, whole garlic cloves, olive oil, oregano. 220°C / 425°F for 45 minutes. The chicken fat does all the seasoning work for the vegetables underneath.
$8.90 total, $4.45 per portion.
#5. Spanish-ish potato and pepper tortilla — 2 portions
Six eggs, thinly sliced potato and onion cooked slowly in oil, peppers. Serve wedges with bread. Eats hot, warm or cold, which makes it the most flexible thing on this list.
$5.60 total, $2.80 per portion.
#Hob nights
#2. Red lentil dal with rice — 2 portions
Onion, garlic, cumin, chilli, tin of tomatoes, 250 g red lentils, half the coconut milk, water. Simmer 25 minutes. Stir through frozen spinach at the end.
This is the cheapest dinner here and probably the best one. It also improves in the fridge — day three dal is better than day one.
$4.20 total, $2.10 per portion.
#3. Beef and black bean chilli — 2 portions
Brown the mince properly — actually browned, not grey — then onion, pepper, garlic, cumin, smoked paprika, tomato paste, tin of tomatoes, black beans. Simmer 30 minutes. Serve over rice.
Half the beef, all the beef flavour. The beans do the volume.
$9.10 total, $4.55 per portion.
#4. Pasta with garlic, chilli and peas — 2 portions
Pasta, a lot of garlic softened in olive oil, chilli flakes, frozen peas, lemon zest. Ten minutes start to finish, which matters on the night you get home late.
$3.40 total, $1.70 per portion.
#Prep day: 95 minutes
#The running order
Follow the same order-of-operations logic as our 90-minute Sunday plan.
0–10 min. Oven on. Tray bake in as soon as it hits temperature. Rice on.
10–35 min. Dal on the hob while the oven runs. It needs one stir.
35–65 min. Brown the mince, build the chilli, leave it simmering. Slice potato and onion for the tortilla.
65–85 min. Cook the tortilla. Boil the pasta only if you want it now — otherwise leave that dinner for the night itself, it takes ten minutes.
85–95 min. Cool everything on trays. Pack, label with the date, refrigerate.
#Getting more from the same $50
#Buy whole chickens instead of thighs
About 30% cheaper per kilo, and the carcass makes stock that turns leftover rice and vegetables into a sixth dinner for nothing.
#Cook dried beans instead of tinned
Around a third of the price. Soak overnight, simmer 45 minutes, then freeze in tin-sized portions so they are as convenient as the tins were.
#Freeze days four and five immediately
Two portions of chilli and two of dal, frozen on prep day, become next week's emergency dinners. See our freezer meals guide.
#Shop the reduced shelf for proteins only
Meat marked down at the end of the day goes straight in the freezer. It is the one aisle where the reduced section reliably pays.
#What this plan does not do
It does not hit high protein targets — that is a different goal with a different budget. If you are training and need 40 g a meal, our high-protein bowls cost about $3.40 a portion but need a slightly bigger initial shop.
It also assumes you have salt, pepper and a working oven, and nothing else.
