Vegan Budget Meals - Under $1 per serving - Blog Vegan

Best Vegan Blog - These Easy, Healthy Vegan Meals are not only good for you, but they are good to your wallet too.  I've always been mindful of my budget, but with the rising prices of everything, I think we are all feeling the need to be even more cautious of where our dollars are going. 

I hope these vegan meal ideas are inspiration that you can eat good food, even on a budget! 

Check out these ideas and let me know which one you try (it should be all 3). 

How to make Vegan Tex Mex Rice

How to Be Vegan on a Budget

If you want to be more budget-friendly, you have to become an artist. A bit of a creative thinker.

Because it's going to take consistently looking at your current circumstances and solving it differently than everyone else.

And of course there's these foundational principles, right? You need to be disciplined, uh you got to be resourceful, but what does that mean to the person who has always had variety for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? And they're finally on their own.

In comparison to the person whose variety was always just something on white bread.

As we go through the recipes, I'm going to talk through some of the thought processes I have that I believe could apply regardless of your situation.

With this first meal we're using nothing but pantry staples and extremely cheap produce.

Also this meal is a total of eight servings, which means your price per serving is only 72 cents.

That is about six times cheaper than one gallon of gas. Today. At least where I live.

Did you notice that I made more rice than I needed? We'll get to that.

This tex-mex rice on my website is actually made in an Instantpot, just for the easy, you know, dump everything and go type of recipe, but I made it here in pots and pans to help demonstrate that you don't have to skip a recipe because you don't have the recommended hardware.

That's part of that current circumstance, solving differently approach.

I used basmati brown rice, you can certainly use another type of rice if you found something that's possibly cheaper.

In this recipe, I like to swap out the beans and instead of using black ones I use pinto beans or I go with that option of just using two different type of beans at the same time and then I take the corn out of the recipe.

How to Add More Protein To Budget Meals 

I do that as a higher protein option but also it helps stretch the recipe into more servings because beans are more filling than corn.

If you want to make the meal just a bit more interesting simply add it into a tortilla, add a little salsa on top, and roll it into a burrito.

You could also freeze it and take it to work as lunch.

You can pop it right in the microwave and similar to like your store-bought version you want to make sure the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees fahrenheit.

Because everyone brings a food thermometer to work.

Easy No Yeast Vegan Pizza Recipe

Why Pizza is One of the Cheapest Recipes to Make

I've always wondered why there are so many pizza stores.

I mean outside of the fact that it's bread, smothered in sauce, which is like the most delicious invention ever.

My thought is, it's profit margin. Making pizza is disturbingly cheap.

You know aside from using budget-friendly ingredients, yet combining that with simply just being resourceful.

Is a recipe for dough in your pockets. All puns intended.

This recipe was a no yeast dough.

So we're saving some change since we're not actually adding yeast into the recipe but also we're saving time which is also money because we simply don't need to wait for the dough to rise.

This pizza dough cost a total of 49 cents. And I had enough to make two pizzas.

Vegan Pizza Topping Tips

We reused some of the ingredients from the first recipe, such as garlic, onions.

Also used pantry staples, and some leftover items, like those cherry tomatoes. They were from a salad last week.

Well, I don't still have the salad. I just have you know a container of like leftover tomatoes. Hopefully that clears that up.

Pizza is basically just using bread as a vessel for leftovers. Try not to overdo it on sauce.

You want to keep it on there thin, otherwise it's going to be hard to avoid getting the dough soggy.

When adding on leafy greens I've learned the hard way you should add those on after you pull it out the oven.

Otherwise uh you're gonna witness your pizza change seasons right from spring all the way to fall. Brown leaves, crispy, and all.

That rhymed. Like me try to use canned tomato sauce, and just season it to taste, rather than buying pizza sauce.

Non-Tomato Based Sauces for Pizza

Other sauces you can make because possibly tomato sauce just isn't your thing for whatever your reason may be.

You can use carrots and blend that up with vegetable stock.

That's actually a pretty good sauce, and extremely cheap to make.

Again season to taste.

You can add italian seasoning, you know some fresh garlic, things like that.

Some basil, whatever you want.

Or the other one I do, extremely cheap and extremely tasty, I actually blend up a can of butter beans.

There are endless toppings you can put on a pizza so crack open your fridge or pantry and get creative.

Quick and Easy Vegan Fried Rice

(this one isn't on my site yet, so quickly posting here)

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon agave 
• red pepper flakes 
• 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil (optional)
• 3 tablespoons vegan butter or 2 tbsp oil 
• 1 1/2 cup frozen veggies
• 4 cups cooked rice 
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced

Directions

1. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce and agave, and season to taste with red pepper flakes.
2. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add veggies and cook for about 2 mins until defrosted and water evaporates. Add the rice and the rest of the butter, toss until the butter coats the rice. Pour in the sauce, cook until the rice is crisping, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in the green onions and remove from the heat. If using oil instead of butter, add in then start with the veggies.
3. Serve warm, topped with more green onions if desired

Why You Should Meal Prep To Save Money

The biggest way to start saving money when it comes to food is learning how to plan ahead.

Meal prep is always looked at as making a bunch of food and then portioning things out from there.

But it's also just simply planning.

I'm making rice, just the thought sparks of what else can I do with this rice? When it comes to shopping, only shop deals.

If that means going to several stores to make the most of your money then make it happen.

You also have to limit costly substitutions.

Chicken fried rice was a thing for me prior to being vegan.

That doesn't mean now I should go looking for a vegan meat substitute to replace it.

Canned or bagged beans, um fresh produce or you know frozen veggies, are a way better all-around options for add-ins.

And don't forget break all of the rules.

Vegan butter isn't traditionally used in fried rice, but that's all I had on hand so I made it work. Technically you want to go for like a high heat oil.

This recipe costs a total of two dollars and seven cents. And it's as much as four servings of fried rice. That breaks down to 52 cents a serving.

If you haven't made fried rice before you want to make sure you're using a really large skillet or a wok would be best.

You need as much space as possible to push your ingredients around on and off the heat.

Before tossing anything into the pot, you want to make sure your oil is really hot. Basically slightly smoking.

Any rice works here, whether it's brown or wild rice or you know your basic white rice.

The key is that it's cold and you want it to be about a day old. That's for best results.

The agave I wouldn't swap with anything that has you know like strong flavor.

For example, I wouldn't go with maple syrup.

Just think of fried rice like any other stir fry, just toss all types of stuff in there that you think are going to be good and you'll most likely come out with a pretty successful dish.

All the recipes we discussed today are linked in the description at my website.

Also you can find some more tips there on how to be vegan on a budget.

Need more dinner inspiration? You can check out one of the two videos you see here.

Thank you so much for watching. And as always, believe in good.