Check Out This Easy and Delicious $5 Dinner Idea
Today, I'm going to share more $5 dinner ideas. I'm trying to show that five-dollar dinners are still possible in 2024, even with all the crazy inflation. I am shopping at Walmart and planning my meals as I go along.
Ingredients for enchiladas
I love a good Mexican meal. They’ve got green enchilada sauce for a dollar, so I'm thinking, what could I do with this green enchilada sauce?
I think it may be enchiladas, like enchiladas lasagna with beans and rice stuffed into it. The rice is cheap at 88 cents for one pound of rice. I can buy wide kidney beans for 82 cents. Our total amount is $3.70. They have tortillas, but they are all expensive, so I'm going to make homemade tortillas for about $1.26.
I also added five slices of mild cheddar cheese for 0.81 cents from the deli to round out my $5 dinner.
I'm back from Walmart, and I got: green chili enchilada sauce and two cans, which were a dollar apiece. Five slices of cheddar cheese sliced on one at the deli. This cost me 81 cents. Your best bet for tortillas is Dollar Tree, but I don't want to go to Dollar Tree. So I was like, hey, $1.26, let's make our own flour tortillas.
The things that I already have, I am going to price at Walmart prices. I was mistaken about some of the kidney beans. I thought I had some, but I don't.
We'll be using a lot of red kidney beans at the same price of .82 cents. I already have rice, So, I'm not going to use more than a pound. I'm going to price this at 88 cents for the rice that I'm going to use.
That brings the total for all the enchilada ingredients to $ 5.77. I am going to use a few pantry staples that I always have in the house. Maybe oil, salt, pepper, things like that. I am using tomato bouillon with chicken flavor, and it makes the best Mexican rice you will ever have. So, I'll be using some of this.
So I'm thinking that I'll make some enchiladas with rice and beans as the bulk of the enchiladas, and I'll make homemade tortillas.
Make the tortillas
To get started with the homemade tortillas, you'll need half a cup of any fat that you have in your house. You can use oil, you can use butter, you can use Crisco vegetable shortening. Butter, in my opinion, is the best. I have butter, so I'll melt this whole stick of butter.
I have one cup of boiling water, and I'm pouring it in here, and I'll finish melting it and heating the water at the same time.
So, like, a minute more. I've made this recipe a few times before, but this is just a shortcut that I like to use. It's a lot simpler, and it works just as well. The water is heated up, and the butter is fully melted. Now, I'm going to add three cups of all-purpose flour, one tablespoon of baking powder, and two teaspoons of salt.
We're just going to mix this up really, really well and turn it into a dough.
Using your hands is better, but that water and that butter are kind of hot. So be careful if you start to do what I'm about to do because it's a little hot.
I'm just going to turn the mixture over and I'll keep doing this until it's a nice dough, then we're going to divide it up into balls.
It's going to turn into tortillas. Divide the dough into even balls. Divide the dough evenly. I think I'll make 12 balls out of it.
I'll roll each of these into a ball and throw it back into the bowl just to let it rest for about five minutes.
Currently, I have my skillet heating up for about 5 minutes, and then I'll cook the tortillas in it.
I'm just going to flatten them out, then put each one in the skillet.
Brown each side. I have made 12 homemade tortillas.
Prepare the rice
I'm going to use this same pan to make the Mexican rice. I'll add two tablespoons of oil. I'll also add 2 cups of uncooked rice.
We'll toss this around in the oil for about 2 to 3 minutes.
Don't let it burn. Just let it get a little toasty. This should take about two to three minutes, just like this. I'm going to add five cups of water for the stovetop.
Next, I'm going to add three heaping spoonfuls of tomato chicken bouillon. You can add salt to this if you want to. I don't really think it needs that much because it is salty. We're going to add a little bit of garlic powder.
Stir this and let it come to a boil, then turn it down on low and cover it for about 15 minutes. Turn it to low heat.
You need to keep a check on it so it doesn't stick. It's almost done, so I'm going to cover the rice and let it sit without any heat for about five minutes.
Add the kidney beans
I'll add drained and rinsed kidney beans to this rice.
I'll start filling up the tortillas with the rice and bean mixture.
Like I said, my tortillas aren't very pretty, but it's okay. All right, we have one enchilada. Keep repeating the process and add the enchiladas to casserole dishes as you make them.
I ended up with two full casserole dishes!
Cover with enchilada sauce
I'm going to go ahead and use one of these cans per casserole dish to make sure everything gets a little bit of that flavor.
If you like more enchilada sauce, use more.
Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the enchiladas so everything gets a little bit of cheese.
Bake the casseroles
Bake the enchiladas at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes until everything's heated up because everything's already cooked.
I took mine out when a bit of cheese on top melted, and everything heated up. So, this $5 dinner turned out really, really good. For $ 5.77, we'll have leftovers.
$5 dinner idea
This is another of my $5 dinner ideas we'll be serving again. Let me know in the comments below if you made this dish. Share any tweaks you made to it that you think made it even better.
Next, check out my 3 Quick and Easy Sheet Pan Meals.
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