30 Cheap Dinner Ideas When You Can’t Decide (All Under £3 A Portion)

It's Tuesday at 6pm. The fridge has half an onion, three eggs, two carrots that have seen better days, and the end of a block of cheese. There's pasta in the cupboard. The delivery apps have started loading themselves on your phone before you've consciously decided to scroll. You're tired, the kids are loud or the housemates are out, and "deciding what to eat" has somehow become harder than cooking it.

This list is built for that exact moment. Thirty dinners, all under £3 a portion based on UK supermarket prices in 2026, sorted by what kind of evening you're in. The point isn't to teach you to cook. The point is to remove the deciding part so you can get on with feeding yourself.

Jack Monroe (the writer behind A Girl Called Jack and Cooking on a Bootstrap) made the case better than anyone that cooking cheap is mostly about confidence with five or six staples, not about finding the right recipe. The dinners below assume you keep a basic shelf of pasta, rice, eggs, tinned tomatoes, tinned beans, an onion and some stock cubes. Nothing fancy.

If you have 15 minutes (or less)

These need no planning. Most use one pan. None require you to follow a recipe, you just need to be reminded they exist.

1. Beans on toast, but properly. Heat the beans in a small pan with a knob of butter, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and a grind of pepper. Toast the bread. Melt cheese on top. Two minutes of effort, much better than the tin-on-bread version. About 80p.
2. Tomato pasta from a tin. Fry half an onion until soft, tip in a tin of chopped tomatoes, simmer 8 minutes, season hard, mix with pasta. The trick is salt: a properly salted tomato sauce tastes twice as expensive as it is. About £1 a portion.
3. Egg fried rice. Day-old rice from yesterday's leftovers, or microwave a pouch. Push to the side of the pan, scramble two eggs in the gap, mix together. Soy sauce, sesame oil if you have it, frozen peas. Done in eight minutes. About £1.
4. Cheese and beans quesadilla. Tortilla, half a tin of black beans (or kidney beans, fine), grated cheese, fold, dry-fry until crispy. Salsa or just hot sauce. Four minutes. About £1.20.
5. Pesto pasta with frozen peas. Cook pasta. Drain. Stir in pesto and a handful of frozen peas (they'll thaw in the residual heat). Black pepper. £1.50.
6. The everything omelette. Three eggs, beaten with salt. Whatever's in the fridge: half an onion, leftover spinach, a chopped tomato, the end of a piece of cheese. Folded. Eight minutes start to finish. £1.
7. Cheese on toast with chutney and onion. Toast the bread first. Spread chutney (or even brown sauce). Cheese on top. Thin rings of red onion. Under the grill. Five minutes. £1.
8. Microwave jacket potato. Prick a baking potato, microwave 8 minutes, top with butter and whatever else (tin of tuna and mayo, baked beans and cheese, last night's chili). Around 80p.
9. Sausage sandwich. Two sausages from the freezer, brown bread, butter, ketchup or brown sauce. Twelve minutes if you grill the sausages, ten if you fry them. £1.80.
10. Tuna pasta with peas and lemon. Pasta, drained tin of tuna, frozen peas, a squeeze of lemon, olive oil. Black pepper. £1.50.

If you've got an hour and want leftovers for the week

These are the dinners that pay for themselves. Cook once on a Sunday, eat four times. Per-portion costs assume you actually portion and freeze them, which is the part most people skip.

11. Chili con carne. Mince, onion, garlic, tin of tomatoes, tin of kidney beans, chili powder, cumin, simmer 30 minutes. Rice optional. Freezes brilliantly. £2 a portion across four servings.
12. Bolognese. Same starting point as the chili but with carrot and celery in the soffritto, no beans, and a longer simmer. Italians will tell you it needs an hour. They're right but 30 minutes is fine. £2.
13. Daal. Red lentils, onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, a tin of tomatoes, water, salt. Forty minutes. Cheaper than almost anything else and astonishingly good. About 60p a portion. Add a fried-spice topping (mustard seeds, dried chili, curry leaves in oil) if you've got it.
14. Sausage and bean casserole. Brown sausages, take out, sweat onions, garlic, smoked paprika, tin of tomatoes, tin of butter beans, sausages back in, simmer. Forty minutes. £1.80.
15. Lentil soup. Onion, carrot, celery, garlic. Soften. Add a cup of red lentils, two tins of tomatoes, stock, cumin. Simmer 30 minutes. Blend or don't. £0.80.
16. Mac and cheese. Cook pasta. Make a roux (butter, flour, milk, whisked, cheese stirred in until smooth), pour over pasta, bake 20 minutes. The best cheap dinner there is. £1.50.
17. Lasagne. If you've already made bolognese, the second half of the batch becomes lasagne with a white sauce and pasta sheets. Worth doing for one big tray. £2.20.
18. Fish pie. Cheap fish (basa, mackerel fillets, frozen white fish), white sauce, mashed potato on top, bake. £2.50, the dearest one on the list.
19. Curry from scratch. Onion, garlic, ginger, garam masala, tin of tomatoes, tin of chickpeas (or chicken thighs if you have them), simmer. Rice. £1.80.
20. Bean stew. Two tins of mixed beans, tin of tomatoes, smoked paprika, half a chorizo if you have it (or just paprika and a stock cube if not), simmer. Crusty bread. £0.80.

If the fridge is empty (pantry meals)

The fridge isn't actually empty, it just feels that way. The cupboard has more in it than you think. Each of these can be made from tins, pasta, eggs and a single fresh thing.

21. Tinned mackerel on toast. Hot toast, butter, tinned mackerel from the cupboard, hot sauce, squeeze of lemon. Snobbier than it sounds. £1.
22. Carbonara, the real way. Spaghetti, two eggs, parmesan (or strong cheddar), pepper, bacon or pancetta. The trick is mixing eggs and cheese into a paste before tossing with the hot pasta off the heat. £1.50.
23. Stir-fried noodles with whatever. Instant noodles, drained but not the seasoning packet, fried with an egg, soy sauce, frozen veg if you have it. £1.50.
24. Tin of tomato soup with cheese toastie. Don't underestimate this. Heat tomato soup with a swirl of cream, make a proper cheese toastie (butter the outside, two slices of cheese, four minutes per side). £1.
25. Chickpea pasta. Cook pasta. While it cooks, fry garlic in olive oil, tip in a drained tin of chickpeas, smash half of them in the pan with a fork, add a splash of pasta water. Toss with the pasta. £1.

If you want something slightly fancier (still cheap)

For evenings when you've got a bit more time and want to feel like you've made something rather than assembled it.

26. Roast veg traybake. Chop whatever's around, peppers, onions, courgette, potato, carrot. Olive oil, salt, smoked paprika. 35 minutes at 200°C. Crumble feta over the top or serve with a fried egg. £2.
27. Risotto. Rice, onion, garlic, stock added a ladle at a time over 20 minutes. Add whatever (mushrooms, peas, lemon zest, leftover chicken). Parmesan at the end. £1.80.
28. Frittata. Six eggs, whatever vegetables you have, fried in a pan that goes under the grill to finish the top. Cuts into wedges. Cold the next day for lunch. £1.50.
29. Loaded sweet potato. Bake whole, split, top with black beans, lime, chili sauce, sour cream, coriander. Vegetarian, looks like a meal at a café. £1.50.
30. Bibimbap-style bowl. Rice in a bowl. Top with: a fried egg, sliced carrot and cucumber, kimchi or just any pickled veg, gochujang or sriracha, sesame seeds. Stir everything together to eat. £2.

The trick when you still can't decide

The problem is rarely the list of options. The problem is that picking takes more energy than cooking, and you're already short on energy. The fastest fix is to remove the picking entirely. Use the random number generator, set it from 1 to 30, hit Generate, cook whatever it lands on. Don't think about it. If you genuinely hate the result, spin again, but most of the time the first answer is fine because most of these are fine.

If you'd rather narrow down first, the spin wheel takes a smaller list. Pick the four or five from this article that you've got the ingredients for, put them on the wheel, let it choose. Either way, you stop deciding within thirty seconds and start cooking.

Three rules that make cheap cooking work

If you cook cheaply often, three things matter more than any individual recipe.

Salt your food properly. The single difference between cheap food that tastes cheap and cheap food that tastes good is salt. Cheap ingredients are often under-seasoned because they don't come pre-tasted like a takeaway does. Salt the cooking water for pasta. Salt the onions when they're sweating. Taste at the end and add more if it's flat.

Have an acid on hand. Lemon, vinegar, a jar of pickles, hot sauce. Cheap food often lacks brightness. A squeeze of lemon over the chickpea pasta, a splash of vinegar in the soup, a spoon of pickle juice in a salad dressing. Costs nothing, transforms everything.

Cook double when you cook. The marginal cost of doubling a recipe is roughly 30%, but the marginal cost of cooking from scratch on a Tuesday when you don't want to is 100%. Cook the chili on Sunday, eat it twice during the week, and you've saved 90 minutes of decision-and-cooking on a tired evening.

Once those three are habits, almost anything becomes affordable, and the decision of "what for dinner" gets a lot easier because you've already got something good in the fridge or freezer half the time.