Cheap dinners for two: 10 weekday plates

Delivery for two is €25–40 and a 40-minute wait. At home it is €6–12 and the same time if you do not improvise with an empty fridge. This list assumes a minimum pantry: oil, salt, garlic, heat, rice or pasta, eggs, a tin of tomato and a protein.

Filled omelette, eggs in tomato, mushroom scramble, fried rice from yesterday. Eggs are the cheapest protein that still feels like dinner. Do not exile them to breakfast.

Aglio e olio, tuna-lemon, tomato and chickpeas, carbonara without inventions. Rice: a poor risotto with onion and cheese, or fried rice with frozen veg and soy. Finish pasta in the pan — that is the line between “we ate” and “that was good”.

Chickpeas and spinach, fast lentils with a little sausage or paprika, hummus and toast. A €1 tin feeds two if you add fat and acid (oil, lemon).

Eggs, pasta, rice, 2 onions, a bag of frozen veg, one chicken or two tins of tuna, tomato, yoghurt, fruit. That is four nights. The mistake is buying singleton “recipe ingredients” you never reuse.

Continue with meal prep if you want Sunday solved, air fryer if you do not want the big oven, and student recipes. FlexChar groups these searches because they never die.