21 Cheap Eats Recipes

Looking for something easy, cheap, and thrillingly tasty? This round-up goes from snacks to sides, breakfast to after-dinner treats and everything in between. We’ve got all your thrifty bases covered.

Homemade hummus sprinkled with paprika and drizzled with oil swirled on a grey plate.
This homemade hummus is easy to make, creamy, and exceptionally versatile. Chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and cumin. Need we say more?
Recipe
A cast-iron skillet filled with chilaquiles on a wooden cutting board with a block of queso fresco and half a jalapeno beside it.
These chilaquiles are a quick, authentic, and very satisfying Mexican breakfast, made with day-old tortillas, eggs, and cheese.
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An earthenware bowl filled with curried sweet potato and lentil soup with cracked pepper on top and a spoon resting in the soup.
Curried sweet potato and lentil soup, made with red lentils and curry paste, packs a wallop of that traditional Thai juxtaposition of sweet, sour, salty, and hot even though it’s not at all southeast Asian in origin.
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A pot roast with potatoes and vegetables on a decorative platter with a serving fork on the platter and a napkin on the side.
This easy pot roast with potatoes and vegetables is quick to assemble and then made in the slow cooker or crock pot or simply slid into the oven. A simple classic with beef, carrots, potatoes, and red wine. Perhaps our best—and most comforting—Sunday supper.
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A white bowl filled with slow cooker split pea soup on a napkin.
Slow cooker split pea soup with ham is traditional winter comfort food made easy. Just toss everything in a Crock pot and walk away. You’re welcome.
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A bowl of Cuban black bean soup with a wooden ladle next to a yellow plate filled with white rice.
This Cuban black bean soup is made from scratch from dried black beans, peppers, onion, garlic, cumin, and vinegar. lt’s cheap, simple, and vegetarian.
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Roasted red cabbage on a cooling rack set in a baking sheet.
Roasted red cabbage (actually, some would argue it looks more like PURPLE cabbage) is so incredibly easy—and surprisingly satisfying—to make in the oven. Simply toss with oil and cook.
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A white platter with nine roasted carrots covered in carrot top pesto.
Carrot top pesto?! Believe it. Walnuts and fresh herbs and olive oil help create a vegan version of traditional pesto that puts to good use what would otherwise be kitchen scraps. 
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A white bowl of braised radishes on a marble countertop.
Braised radishes are a relatively unknown novelty, or shall we say art form, that rely on a French cooking technique, chicken stock, and butter to turn the everyday into the elegant.
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A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips with one bite gone and some chips scattered around it.
This peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips is less of a recipe and more of us giving you permission to make something that’s already indulgent and satisfying even more so.
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Two people reaching for traditional molletes on a platter with a bowl of salsa in the middle.
This molletes is really more something you commit to memory than it is a recipe. It’s just refried beans on toast smothered with cheese and broiled until bubbly. Essentially Mexican grilled cheese.
Recipe
Old frying pan with two leftover mashed potato cakes being turned by a spatula.
Leftover mashed potato cakes are the answer to Post-Thanksgiving food glut in the fridge. Leftover mashed potatoes are formed into pucks, floured, dipped in egg, and coated with panko breadcrumbs. They’re then pan-fried to crisp, golden perfection.
Recipe
Two stacks of cornmeal griddle cakes on a patterned plate.
These cornmeal griddle cakes are a simple Southern staple, made with a handful of inexpensive pantry ingredients including cornmeal, baking powder, salt, egg, and water. Entirely gluten-free and amazing at breakfast and beyond. Here’s how to make them.
Recipe
A baking sheet lined with parchment and covered with easy roasted carrots and onions with burnt edges.
These easy roasted carrots boast four ingredients–carrots, butter, salt, and pepper–and one simple and perfect technique for roasting them to magnificence, bringing out their earthy sweetness.
Recipe
Two bowls of slow cooker applesauce with two spoons nearby.
This slow cooker applesauce requires no work and only four ingredients: apples, brown sugar, ginger, and apple juice. You’ll never go back to jarred sauce again.
Recipe
A plastic bag filled with homemade pancake mix and cup resting in the mix and a wet ice cream scoop on the side.
With this homemade pancake mix, you can make fluffy buttermilk pancakes from scratch in minutes. Easy peasy. Simply combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and butter and stash the whole shebang in the freezer. Then add milk and eggs.
Recipe
A thin circle of stretched pizza dough being tossed in the air.
Jim Lahey’s pizza dough allows you to create the sort of quality pizza crust at home that you’ve only ever experienced at the best of Italian bakeries and pizzerias. And it’s easier than you’d expect.
Recipe
The ingredients for vegetable broth, including carrots, celery, bay leaves, and onions, in an enamel pot.
Vegetable broth is easily made with vegetable scraps collected throughout the week. It's an economical and easy way to make sure you always have vegetarian stock in the freezer.
Recipe
Many prepared potato gnocchi on a floured kitchen towel, with a mound of gnocchi dough in the background.
These homemade potato gnocchi are the best version of this Italian classic we've ever had. They're made with russet potatoes, flour, egg, and salt and are like little pillows of potato heaven. Four ingredients. Ridiculously easy. Wonderfully inexpensive.
Recipe
Five teaspoons, each topped with a swirl of homemade peanut butter.
Make your own homemade peanut butter thanks to this nifty, easy technique that turns out creamy, healthy, tasty nut butter every time.
Recipe

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