Cheap, Healthy College Student Recipes

I've been feeding a growing family of 7 on a budget, and for many years did it with only one income in the house. Let me tell you some of the things I have learned.

First, Skinnytaste is my favorite healthy recipe website. So check that one out. Cooking Classy is rapidly becoming my second favorite.

Protein is usually the most expensive part of your meal. Cheap proteins include eggs, beans (especially if you buy dried and soak/cook them yourself but canned are very cheap too), peanut butter, cheese, canned/pouch tuna, and greek yogurt (store brand plain greek yogurt is perfectly good, just make sure it's real greek yogurt and not faked up with pectin or other thickeners). Ground beef bought on sale can be another good source of fairly cheap protein, but watch the fat content. High fat just means you pay for stuff you're pouring off and not using. I basically never buy anything higher than 10% fat, unless it's for burgers and then I buy 15%. When it comes to non ground meat, pork and chicken are usually much cheaper than beef, and if you find a good sale they can be crazy cheap. One thing I have done for years is buy meat that is marked down because it has to be sold that day, and either cook it same day or freeze it, but watch the prices carefully because often the fresher sale meat is a better deal.

Whole grains are great bang for the buck when it comes to fiber, vitamins and minerals. If you have a store near you that has bulk bins, you can buy so many things for much less per ounce because you're not paying for fancy packaging and marketing. At my WinCo I can buy whole oat groats in bulk, and I make overnight oats with them in my slow cooker. I've also bought quinoa (great plant source of protein too) and different varieties of rice this way.

Fruit and veggies are a food source you need but have to be careful with when you're on a budget because they can go bad quickly and then you wasted your money. Eating as many different colors of produce as you can is an easy strategy for balanced nutrition. I try not to buy fresh produce I don't have an immediate plan for so that I don't end up with nutrition rotting in my fridge. My "immediate plan" may be as simple as apples and bananas for lunchboxes over the course of the week, or something like mushrooms for this dish, zucchini for this dish, celery for that dish that I am cooking later in the week. Frozen vegetables are a great resource because since they are flash frozen within hours of harvest, they sometimes have better nutrition than "fresh" stuff that has been sitting at the market for days, after days of transport. They stay edible longer and store brands are perfectly acceptable for a lower per-ounce price. (Learning to pay attention to per unit pricing is the best long term strategy for food budgeting I can give you.) Canned tomatoes are a staple resource you should always have in your pantry because they are so versatile, and again preserve nutrients for a much longer time.

Cooking larger meals and portioning out individual servings for fridge or freezer is a great way to help yourself eat on a budget. Most of the time my husband and I take dinner leftovers for our work lunches. I currently have almost a gallon of chili in my freezer that I cooked several weeks ago. We ate the other gallon slowly over those weeks. Invest in a slow cooker or Instant Pot (which has several functions including slow cooker, pressure cooker, and rice cooker to name a few) because that is gonna be your best friend. Plan out your meals for a week, go shopping, spend a few hours prepping and cooking, and you can have yourself set up for success. I will warn you that cooked pasta does not freeze and reheat well, so I usually make sauces and freeze those, then cook the pasta the day I will eat it and add the reheated sauce.

Good luck and hopefully I didn't overwhelm you. This is one of my favorite topics.