I imagine the right answer differs from country to country, as prices can be pretty different from place to place.

But in the U.S., when I was poor I’d often use regular boxes of dried pasta and add canned chili to them, and maybe shred a little bit of cheddar on top, add hot sauce to taste.

0.5 lb (230g) of pasta: 800 calories, 28g protein. Approximately $0.50 ($1/box).

15 oz (425g) of canned chili with beans: 460 calories, 29g protein. Approximately $3.

4 oz (113g) block of cheddar cheese: 440 calories, 24g protein. Approximately $1.50 ($3 per 8 oz pack).

That’s a 1700 calorie meal with 81g of protein, for about $5, that takes about 12-15 minutes. It requires only a single pot and a cheese shredder if you prefer shredding it yourself (you can also buy pre shredded for maximum ease/convenience).

Obviously you can portion down in size, or keep some leftovers, if you’re not the type of person to need a 1700 calorie meal in a single sitting.

Oatmeal. Lentils. Beans and rice. Pasta.

Pot of beans with chicken meat in it. A rotisserie chicken is pretty cheap. You can also do a lot with meat, rice, and gravy or sauce. Asian recipes do a lot of delicious things with a little, too.

Soup with lots of root vegetables, cabbage, lentils etc. whatever is in season (a tip is to roast the veg in the oven first for better flavour and mouth feel). I always have some good sausages in the freezer that I buy for 50% off because they’re close to expiration. Thaw them and fry them pretty hard before joining the soup. I can easily feed myself and my gf for a week from one batch. A boring week for sure but you do what you gotta do. Mix it up with some different toppings or other flavourings during the week.

I can get many varieties of squash and brassica cultivars locally for a ridiculously low price as most of the entire county I live in used to be all farmland and we have a ton of actual farmers markets that aren’t fully commercialized

So I eat a lot of acorn and spaghetti squash, broccoli and cabbage in many forms, peppers are usually cheap as well as carrots. Onions are cheap as well as bananas

Beef and chicken bouillon for cheap flavor, whatever fruit is on sale for desert

Tofu for protein as I can’t stand the texture of beans

So far wasnt in the situation, buuut:
Cheap and easy spaghetti salad: A big bowl
1 piece of garlic, finely chopped or sliced
2-3 big tomatoes or appeopiate amount of smaller tomatoes, small pieces
Basil, finely chopped
Spices (rosemary, Oregano, etc. for other pizza and pasta appropriate spices)
Olive oil, a healthy amount. The ingredients should be moderately covered in a small pool of oil (dont drown it.)
Pepper and chili flakes as much as you like
Let it rest for >60min. But you can be impatient and eat it earlier)
Salt to taste (should be a bit saltier than you like)

Cook as much spaghetti as you like.
Remove from water and add to the bowl with the oil mix.
Mix all ingredients hntil everything is covered.

Enjoy :)

In a beat boxing tone:

Beans 'n rice (repeat as many times as needed).

Also do pasta with tomato sauce a lot, add whatever I have or what I can find on sale (mostly lentils, beans, frozen vegetables (kinds that have protein)).

I’ve always loved lentils but I’ve kinda rediscovered them lately, it’s crazy how good they are in every way. Cheap, somehow always makes more food than you think, easy to cook and extremely versatile, makes you feel full with less and keeps you going for longer. Truly a superfood IMO.

Really depends on the situation.

If I’m just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don’t hunt, but I’m not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.

And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I’d take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I’d go there and take what they had to offer.

At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.

A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don’t go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper – in moderation – so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.

When I’ve just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I’d just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.

Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.

Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.

Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.

So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don’t have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that’s still a meal even if that’s not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that’s still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you’ve got.

Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!

Pasta and sauce. As long as you have a few basic herbs and spices on hand (garlic powder, Italian seasonings, salt pepper), you can buy a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of pasta, and you can have several delicious, filling meals for less than 5 bucks total. Spend a little more and toss in ground beef, ground pork, or mushrooms, or a combination of all three.

Aldi has the ingredients for really cheap. You can even buy a pound of ground pork for only about $3. The spices are only about a buck each.

Rice bowls, rice with chickpeas, rice with beans, throw some furikake and kimchi in there and some sriracha mayonaise.

I eat cheap all the time, but rice and beans is the classic. If you can afford a can of tomatoes and some spices, then you can upgrade this to rajma masala. That’s one of my fav post workout meals. Throw in some alliums, and other vegetables as you can (frozen is often p cheap).

Actually just look up vegan Indian recipes and source ingredients as cheaply as you can. Like dried beans, lentils, chickpeas, and spices — ideally purchased from bulk store — and you’ll be healthy and satisfied for less money than you would believe.

When I was literal piss-broke, there was a college campus near me with an open food court. Couldn’t afford the actual shops selling food there, but in that food court was a condiments station that randomly had one of those electric hot water dispensers for making tea, and styrofoam cups. It also had ketchup packets, saltine crackers, and pepper.

Turns out you can make a pretty passable tomato soup with ketchup and hot water. Bit of pepper and a handful of saltine cracker packets, and I had myself a hot meal for exactly $0.00

With some money to spend, rice is where it’s at. Hitch a ride to Costco or Sam’s with someone who has a membership, and they have iirc 50 lb bags of that short grain fortified rice for like… $15? That’s well over 100 meals worth of rice.

Cook that up with literally almost anything that has some flavor or nutrients - whatever’s cheap. Or just eat it straight… bland, but it’ll fill you up. Eggs go great with rice.

Fair warning, you’ll get fat. Cheap food is NOT usually healthy.

Roasted whole chicken from grocery; where I’m at they’re $5 and you can make sandwiches for days and or make chicken based soup with the leftovers. Also beans and potatoes. So many things you can make with them. Accent them with cheap bulk spices and some herbs grown with a little cheap desktop hydroponic grower, or outside depending on climate.

Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they’re DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you’ll find it’s basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever