5 cheap easy meals for when you don’t know what to cook

Ramen, egg-based meals, and boxed mac and cheese are repeated answers when you need cheap easy meals and do not know what to cook. Rice dishes and bean-and-cheese tortillas offer more options, with eggs, leftovers, or other available ingredients providing variations. These suggestions come from a cooking discussion among home cooks sharing their own fallback dinners. The cheap meal ideas below reflect what people repeatedly said they make, rather than a price comparison or a set of tested recipes.

What can you add to ramen?

Ramen was one of the most frequently named fallback meals. Home cooks mentioned it both as a meal on its own and as a base for whatever suitable leftovers were available.

The additions specifically suggested were straightforward:

• Add an egg, with scrambled egg explicitly mentioned.
• Add leftover meat if available.
• Use other available leftovers, as some home cooks suggested.

The discussion did not settle on a single ramen preparation or provide a detailed method for adding each ingredient. Treat these as options rather than a recipe that requires every addition. If ramen is already your fallback, the egg and leftover suggestions give you a way to vary it without choosing an entirely different meal.

Which egg meals keep the decision simple?

Eggs were another frequently suggested base, with eggs and toast, scrambled eggs, and breakfast foods for supper all appearing in the discussion. The advice was less about a particular recipe and more about choosing a familiar egg meal when deciding on dinner feels difficult.

• Eggs with toast: A repeatedly mentioned simple meal.
• Scrambled eggs: Another option named by home cooks.
• Breakfast for supper: An approach people used instead of choosing a separate dinner dish.

Eggs also appeared in the ramen and rice suggestions. That gives you a choice between making eggs the center of the meal and adding them to another suggested base. No particular cooking style was established as the preferred choice for everyone.

Is boxed mac and cheese enough of a plan?

Boxed mac and cheese came up repeatedly as an easy meal in its own right. Unlike the ramen suggestions, the extracted discussion did not establish a particular set of additions or an expanded method for it.

It can therefore stay a simple option on this list, without an extra ingredient list. The recommendation was boxed mac and cheese itself, not a more elaborate version that requires additional cooking.

Grilled cheese was also named by multiple home cooks, including as a meal with soup. It received less support than the leading options, but it is another specifically mentioned choice if neither noodles nor eggs appeal.

What can go into a simple rice dish?

Rice appeared in several different meal suggestions rather than one agreed-upon recipe. The combinations included rice with eggs, beans, vegetables, soy sauce, or leftovers. These were separate possibilities, not instructions to combine everything in one dish.

• Rice with eggs.
• Rice with beans.
• Rice with vegetables or soy sauce.
• Rice with available leftovers.

One home cook also described a more involved Spanish rice method. That version began by browning a pound of ground beef, then adding 2 cups water, seasonings, butter, a cup of rice, and canned diced tomatoes to simmer for 20 minutes.

That was an individual suggestion, not the shared method behind all the rice recommendations. The discussion did not specify amounts for the seasonings, butter, or tomatoes, so it should not be treated as a fully measured recipe. For a less involved decision, the simpler rice combinations were also directly suggested.

How do you make bean-and-cheese tortillas?

Bean-and-cheese tacos or burritos were suggested by multiple home cooks, sometimes with salsa. This option came with more preparation detail than many of the other meal ideas.

1. Heat the beans while warming the tortilla.
2. Assemble the beans and cheese in the tortilla.
3. Add salsa if desired.

The heating method was flexible. Home cooks described assembling and heating bean-and-cheese tortillas in a microwave as another approach. One person froze assembled tacos and later reheated them in a pan, but that was an individual practice rather than the main recommendation.

A simpler tortilla-and-cheese meal was also described: heat it in a frying pan with a small pat of butter or mayo, then serve with salsa. Opinions split over whether butter should be preferred to margarine, and the discussion did not resolve that distinction. There is no need to treat that preference as a requirement.

What should you try first?

Start with ramen, eggs with toast or scrambled eggs, or boxed mac and cheese. Those were the most frequently repeated choices. If you would rather use rice or tortillas, choose one of the rice combinations or beans and cheese with optional salsa.

These are personal suggestions for cooking at home on a budget, not evidence that one meal costs less than all the others. Choose among the repeated options based on what you already have available.