Cheap college student meals: 15 dinners for one, under $2

What are the cheapest meals for a student?

Pasta with tinned tomatoes and an egg on top, egg fried rice with frozen peas, and a lentil soup are the 3 cheapest that are genuinely worth eating. All 3 come in near $1 a serving and none needs more than one pan.

The real saving is not the recipe though. It is buying 5 staples in the biggest size you will finish and refusing to buy fresh herbs, single peppers or anything else that expires before a second use.

It helps to know where the money actually goes. Most students do not overspend on dinners at all; they overspend on the lunches and coffees bought because there was nothing to bring. Cooking 2 portions and taking the second one out of the house the next morning removes more cost from a week than any individual recipe on this list.

The shopping list that covers all 15

This is a single shop of about 12 items that produces a fortnight of dinners. Nothing on it expires quickly except the eggs.

• Cupboard. Pasta, rice, red lentils, tinned tomatoes, tinned chickpeas, tinned tuna, peanut butter.
• Fridge. Eggs, a block of cheese, and a tub of yoghurt if you will use it.
• Freezer. Peas, spinach and mixed vegetables. Frozen is the correct choice for one person, not a compromise.
• One flavour item. Chilli oil, curry paste or soy sauce. Buy 1, not 3.

Onions and garlic are the only fresh vegetables worth buying loose, because both keep for weeks. Everything else fresh is a bet that you will cook on a specific day, and lectures usually win that bet.

Fifteen-minute dinners with one pan

Each of these is a single pan on a single ring, which matters in a shared kitchen. Two of them do not need a hob at all.

• Tomato pasta with an egg on top. Cook pasta, drain, fry garlic in the same pan with a tin of tomatoes, return the pasta, then crack an egg on top and cover for 3 minutes.
• Egg fried rice with frozen peas. Cold rice, 2 eggs, a handful of peas from the freezer and soy sauce. Eight minutes.
• Peanut noodles. Noodles from the kettle, then peanut butter, soy and a splash of the noodle water stirred into a sauce in the bowl.
• Bean quesadilla. Mashed beans and cheese in a tortilla, dry pan, 3 minutes a side.
• Jacket potato with beans. Microwave 8 minutes, finish under a grill if you want the skin crisp.

Cook once, eat twice

Anything simmered is cheaper and easier at 2 portions than 1. Make the full amount, eat half, and refrigerate the rest in the pan you cooked it in if there is nothing else clean.

1. 1Red lentil soup. A cup of lentils, a tin of tomatoes, an onion and stock. Four portions, roughly 25 minutes, freezes in cups.
2. 2Chickpea curry. One tin of chickpeas, curry paste, frozen spinach and a splash of yoghurt. Two dinners.
3. 3Bolognese with lentils. Half mince, half lentils. Cheaper, and it stretches to 4 servings.
4. 4Rice for the week. Cook 3 portions, keep it covered and cold, and fry it later. Cold rice is what fried rice needs anyway.

What equipment do you actually need?

Student kitchens are usually shared, badly equipped and missing whichever item you need. Four things cover every recipe in this collection, and none of them is expensive.

• One deep frying pan with a lid. A lid turns a frying pan into a pot, which is what makes one-pan rice and covered eggs possible.
• A sharp knife. One is enough. A blunt knife is the main reason people stop chopping onions and start buying sauces.
• A sieve or colander. Or a plate held over the pan, which works and has worked for generations.
• Two containers with lids. The second portion has to go somewhere, and that is the whole cook-once strategy.

A kettle and a microwave cover the rest. Three of the recipes above need no hob at all, which matters at 7pm when 4 people are cooking in a kitchen built for 1.

A fortnight built from one shop

The 12-item list makes about 10 dinners with leftovers, and the order matters. Cook the things with fresh ingredients first and let the cupboard meals fill the end of the fortnight.

1. 1Days 1 and 2. Red lentil soup, made as 4 portions. Two now, 2 in the fridge.
2. 2Day 3. Tomato pasta with an egg on top, using the onions and garlic while they are freshest.
3. 3Days 4 and 5. Chickpea curry with frozen spinach, 2 portions.
4. 4Day 6. Egg fried rice, using rice cooked alongside the curry.
5. 5Day 7. Bean quesadilla, which needs nothing fresh at all.
6. 6Week 2. Repeat with the flavour item changed, so the same base tastes different.
7. 7Any evening you cannot face it. Peanut noodles from the kettle, which needs 8 minutes and no hob.

How do you stop eating the same thing?

Change the finish, not the base. The same lentils and rice read as a different meal with chilli oil, lemon, yoghurt or a fried egg on top, and none of those costs more than a few cents a serving. Rotating 3 finishes across 2 base recipes gives 6 dinners that feel unrelated, which is as much variety as most weeks need.

The wider version of this argument is in cheap recipes, and the weekly planning version in meal prep on a budget. For the evenings when even 15 minutes is too much, 5-minute meals is the shorter list.

Recipes saved from social video are the main source for most students, and both save TikTok recipes and why saved recipes get lost deal with getting them back. On free options, ReciBites vs Copy Me That and ReciBites vs Samsung Food are the 2 worth reading.