I Cooked A Week's Worth Of Meals For $30—And Each Was Under 30 Minutes
June, Delish's senior food producer and resident budget eats expert, set out to cook a whole week's worth of meals for two on a $30 budget. The catch? There was a 30-minute time constraint on every meal! Watch to see how she fared—and catch the rest of her series, Budget Eats, on YouTube!
Our Low F.O.D.M.A.P. Budget Eats episode got over 2,000 upvotes, and the top comment inspired the theme for this new challenge.
Due to inflation, we upped our $25 threshold to $30. I bought a hunk of pork shoulder, canned vegetables, beans, rice, and cheese. I also spotted some mind-blowing deals: a huge bag of spinach and a discounted bag of 8 green plantains. There was also a frivolously cheeky purchase of a can of Lay's Stax, but a girl's gotta have her chips sometimes, you know?
Heading into this episode, Julia and I agreed on some new rules:
$30 budget, no dietary restrictions.
Every meal should yield at least 2 servings, and no meals can be repeats.
After the initial prep day, all meals must be completed within 30 minutes of camera time.
In case you haven’t realized this yet, all episodes of Budget Eats (except our camping episode) have been self-shot by yours truly in my 90-square-foot kitchen.
If you’ve never tried to film yourself cooking from different angles with meaty hands, you likely have never thought about how long the whole process takes. On average, 30 minutes of camera time equals about 15 minutes of real cooking time. So if you’re inspired enough to recreate any of these meals, it should take you under 20 minutes.
After spending a day prepping much of my raw ingredients, the chaos began.
Patacón Sliders
These were so mind-blowingly good, I rated them a 12/10. The juicy fattiness of the pork, air-fried until the skin crisped slightly, dripped down my chin as I took my first bites. Simply incredible and ecstatically fantastic. While the plantains could've benefited from a double-fry—as they are traditionally made—they were decent enough that I was not bothered. With a schmear of mashed kidney beans and some vinegary onion and carrot on top, all the components made this dish well-balanced.
Rating: 12/10
Pork "Belly" Fried Rice
This humble dish also got a 12/10. I'm starting to think that maybe fatty pork with the skin on is the secret ingredient to make everything taste good. Who needs butter when you have lard?
I stir-fried leftover rice with oil-poached garlic, onions, carrots, dill stems, spices and condiments until crispy and soaked with flavor, and the rest was history.
Rating: 12/10
Pizza Spinach Rice
This one only got a 10/10, a relative loser compared to our first 2 recipes, but still a winner in the grand scheme of things. I have a fascination with "pizzafying" food that isn't pizza, mainly because I'm pretty obsessed with pizza in general. I've made pizza oatmeal as well as pizza fried rice and loved both, so this variation was a no-brainer.
I folded rice with canned tomatoes and then layered it with seasoned ricotta and spinach leaves. After about 12 minutes in the microwave it all started to melt together. It wasn't a looker in terms of presentation, but the dish delivered all the familiar flavors of classic lasagna, minus the meat.
Rating: 10/10
Chips & Dips
Sometimes you ruin a good thing by doing too much. Trying to squeeze out another meal from the leftover beans, I decided to make a trio of hummus-like dips to accompany my chips. They weren't that bad, but when paired with the perfectly seasoned crisps, they just didn't contribute much to the overall bite. I probably would've had a much better time with other snacks, like pita chips or pretzels.
Rating: 7/10 (I was being generous this week)
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