Free: 20 Dinners Under $2 a Serving

I started pricing my dinners the week I noticed the grocery total had crept up $40 and I could not say where it went. Not on the big things. On the small ones: a bag of cheese here, a jar of sauce there. The only way I found to fix it was to write the price next to every ingredient and add up the dinner.

I am Amy, and that habit is what this site is built on. Every recipe I share shows the total cost, the cost per serving, and the price I assumed for each line. When a price in your store is different, you change one number and see the new total.

This free cookbook collects 20 dinners that each come in under $2 a serving. They are the dinners I cook when the week has been long and the account balance is short.

What is inside

A 25 page printable PDF. Each dinner gets its own page with the serving count, prep and cook time, an ingredient list with a price on every line, a numbered method and one tip that makes it cheaper. The last pages explain exactly how I price a recipe and five habits that keep a dinner under $2.

All prices are estimates at 2025 US grocery prices for store-brand items at a budget grocery store. Your city and your store will change them, which is why the price is on every line.

Three dinners from the book

• Black Bean and Rice Burrito Bowls: $3.58 for the pot, $0.90 a serving. Rice, canned black beans, corn, salsa and a little cheddar.
• Lentil and Potato Soup: $0.67 a serving and it makes six. One cup of dry lentils is a few cents and it stays on the shelf for a year.
• Chicken and Rice Skillet: $1.16 a serving, using bone-in thighs, which are usually about half the price per pound of boneless breasts.

None of them need a special tool. One is a soup pot, one is a skillet, and the burrito bowls are what I make when I do not want to think.

How the pricing works

For each ingredient I take the shelf price of the package, divide by the amount in it, and multiply by what the recipe uses. Two tablespoons of oil from a $4 bottle shows as 15 cents. The recipe total is the sum of those lines, and cost per serving is that total divided by the servings. You can check any dinner with a pencil.

Get the free cookbook

Enter your email and I will send the PDF straight to you. Once a week I send one cheap dinner with the price shown, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.

Want the planning done for you?

If you would rather not decide what to cook at all, The Whole Pantry Bundle has everything: eight weeks of meal plans with shopping lists under $60 a week, a 30 item pantry cookbook, 40 one-pot dinners and 30 single-serving dinners. That is 160 priced recipes for $29.99 instead of $52.96 bought separately.