Cheap Meal: Chorizo & Potato — Three Ways
Let's make a cheap dinner.
One of the easiest ways to stretch a meal is to take something with a lot of flavor and add an inexpensive ingredient that makes it go further. Chorizo and potatoes are perfect for that.
Start With the Main Filling
For this meal, we're using:
1 package (9 oz) chorizo
2 medium potatoes
That's it for the main part of the meal.
Dice the potatoes fairly small so they cook quickly and you get a little potato and chorizo in every bite. Cook the chorizo, add your potatoes, and cook everything together until the potatoes are tender.
The chorizo has so much seasoning and flavor that the potatoes don't feel like something we're adding just to make the meat stretch. They become part of the dish.
And now we have choices!
🌮 Tacos, 🌯 Burritos or Tostadas?
Use the same chorizo-potato filling and choose what works for your family — or simply use whatever you already have in the pantry.
Tacos: Grab a box of crunchy taco shells.
Burritos: Use a package of flour tortillas.
Tostadas: Grab inexpensive corn tortillas and crisp them until they're crunchy. You can fry them in a little oil, bake them, or put them in the air fryer.
No need to buy all three. Pick one.
That's one of the secrets to keeping this meal cheap.
Now Let's Talk Toppings
Here's where it's very easy to turn a cheap dinner into an expensive one.
You do NOT need every taco topping known to mankind!
Look in your refrigerator first.
Some possibilities are:
Shredded lettuce
Shredded cheese
Tomato
Onion
Jalapeño
Salsa
Use what you have and what your family will actually eat.
If you have half an onion left from another meal, use it. One tomato sitting on the counter? Perfect. A little cheese left in the bag? That's enough.
But What Did Dinner REALLY Cost?
This is something I think we get wrong when we talk about inexpensive meals.
If I buy a bag of shredded cheese for $2.50, I didn't eat $2.50 worth of cheese for dinner.
If I open a jar of salsa, I didn't use the whole jar.
The same goes for lettuce, onions and jalapeños.
So there are really two different numbers:
What did I have to spend at the grocery store today?
and
How much food did we actually use for this meal?
For our chorizo-potato dinner, the main filling is only around $3–$4, depending on what you pay for chorizo and potatoes.
Add roughly $2–$3 for your choice of taco shells or tortillas.
Then add only the portion of toppings you actually use.
We're looking at roughly a $9–$10 family dinner, give or take a little depending on prices in your area and what's already in your refrigerator.
And that's the whole idea behind a cheap meal.
One Filling. Three Choices.
Chorizo + two potatoes.
Turn it into tacos.
Roll it into burritos.
Pile it onto crispy tostadas.
Top it with whatever you have.
And if a little chorizo-potato filling happens to survive dinner?
Put it in the refrigerator.
Tomorrow morning, scramble an egg into it, wrap it in a leftover tortilla, and breakfast is taken care of too.
Cheap doesn't have to mean boring. Sometimes it just means making the ingredients you buy work a little harder.
Sides for this could be mexican corn casserole, spanish rice, pintos and cheese.
Let’s Connect
Have an idea?
Share it in the comments — I’d love to hear what’s working for you during your different phases 💛
Till we meet again
love and find joy in your day
Louise
