18 Best Frugal Cookbooks

The Flat Broke Cookbook: Thrifty Meals & Shopping Tips for Tough Times: The Flat Broke Cookbook is about shopping for food with limited funds and still feeding your family tasty and nutritious meals. It assumes you have a bit of money to spend, but not a lot. At the same time, you might be living off the supplies in your pantry or freezer for similar reasons. These recipes are simple and filling to keep you nourished when times are tough. 

Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day: Created for people who have to watch every dollar—but particularly those living on the U.S. food stamp allotment of $4.00 a day—Good and Cheap is a cookbook filled with delicious, healthful recipes backed by ideas that will make everyone who uses it a better cook. Plus there are tips on shopping smartly and the minimal equipment needed to cook successfully.

Frugal Vegan: Live a healthy vegan lifestyle without breaking the bank with these 99 affordable and delicious plant-based recipes. Frugal Vegan teaches you how to avoid pricey perishables and special ingredients, and still enjoy nutritious, exciting food at every meal. Learn the tips and tricks to creating plant-based cuisine on a budget and fill yourself up with a delicious feast.

A Girl Called Jack: 100 Delicious Budget Recipes: 100 easy and delicious meals on a tight budget with Jack Monroe’s A Girl Called Jack. Jack is a cash-strapped single mum living in Southend. When she found herself with a shopping budget of just £10 a week to feed herself and her young son, she addressed the situation with immense resourcefulness, creativity and by embracing her local supermarket’s ‘basics’ range. She created recipe after recipe of delicious, simple and upbeat meals that were outrageously cheap.

Plant-Based on a Budget: Toni’s guidance doesn’t just help you save money—it helps you save time, too. Every recipe in this book can be ready in around 30 minutes or less. Through her imaginative and incredibly customizable recipes, Toni empowers readers to make their own substitutions based on the ingredients they have on hand, reducing food waste in the process.

The Frugal Paleo Cookbook: Ciarra uses flavorful but less expensive cuts of meat in traditional yet approachable cooking methods and shares her roll-forward technique for creating multiple dishes to maximize your time in the kitchen. You’ll love her keys to budgeting, tips for making items ahead of time, 5-ingredients-or-less seasoning blends and other money-saving pointers.

The 5-Ingredient College Cookbook: College students don’t typically have a ton of time, money, or kitchen space to get fancy with their meals, which means good and cheap is the name of the game. This college cookbook makes it easy for students to prepare fresh, tasty, healthy meals for themselves on a budget, with more than 100 recipes that only take 30 minutes to throw together, and only require 5 main ingredients.

Quick and Easy Family-Friendly Budget Recipes: The diverse and delicious recipes in this cookbook all contain very few ingredients and most recipes can be prepared for ten dollars or less for a family of 4 and in some cases, much less! You also do not have to sacrifice your health to eat economically. Everything here is far healthier than TV dinners and fast food—things you’ll be happy to see your family eating and enjoying.

Real Food on a Budget: Transforming, reusing and economizing to provide plenty—these are the principles behind Real Food on a Budget developed during 30 years of kitchen management by Mom of 7, Lana McAra. She reveals her secret formula for creating 4 nourishing meals from a single chicken, 3 meals from one beef roast and 107 ways to use ground beef—including Mock Filet Mignon and Mock T-Bone Steak—as well as dozens of substitutions.

Frugal Cooking with Your Instant Pot: Your Instant Pot® has been saving you time and energy in the kitchen for years and now, it’ll save you money, too! With this impressive collection of recipes, you’ll learn how to make a ton of incredible, budget-friendly dinners in your Instant Pot® that cost next to nothing― just $3.00 or less per serving!

Budget Cookbook: 103 Delicious & Easy Recipes That Will CUT Your Grocery Bill in Half: Multi-time best selling cookbook writer and influencer, Olivia Rogers, presents the most popular and best selling “family budget dinner cookbook” on Amazon, which includes a compilation of the most delicious budget dinner recipes as voted by Olivia’s 10,000+ readers and fans. You are guaranteed to find a few winners here with your family!

Budget Bytes: Beth’s eagerly awaited cookbook proves cutting back on cost does not mean cutting back on taste. Budget Bytes has more than 100 simple, healthy, and delicious recipes, including Greek Steak Tacos, Coconut Chicken Curry, Chorizo Sweet Potato Enchilada, and Teriyaki Salmon with Sriracha Mayonnaise, to name a few. It also contains expert principles for saving in the kitchen—including how to combine inexpensive ingredients with expensive to ensure that you can still have that steak you’re craving. Whether you’re urban or rural, vegan or paleo, Budget Bytes is guaranteed to delight both the palate and the pocketbook.

Seriously Good Freezer Meals: 150 Easy Recipes to Save Your Time, Money and Sanity: In Seriously Good Freezer Meals, Karrie shares 150 recipes photos that will change the way you think about freezer cooking. You won’t find your mother or grandmother’s freezer meals here (except lasagna, of course). Her recipes include Morning Energy Bars, Empanada Hand Pies, Coconut Cashew Basil Curry Soup, Smoky Grilled Louisiana Turkey Legs, and Layered Chocolate Mousse Cake with tons of vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan options, too. Plus, she adds a bulk-batch chart for ease in making large quantities of each freezer-meal recipe.

Meal Prep on a Budget: Preparing healthy meals in advance is one of the best ways to keep wellness goals on track while saving time and energy. But how do you keep costs down without sacrificing taste or health? Meal Prep on a Budget is a complete resource for creating balanced, delicious meals that are easy to make and easy on the wallet. Discover clear guidance that breaks down exactly what to buy and how to prepare it―for just $40 per week.

Gluten-Free on a Shoestring: Nicole Hunn has been helping home cooks eat well and on the cheap since 2009. Now, she’s updated her beloved Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, the indispensable guide to simple, inexpensive GF cooking. From chicken potpie to banana cream pie, Nicole shares her recipes for tasty family favorites — all gluten-free, all easy on your wallet. With revised and new recipes, pantry-stocking tips, keys to the best GF flour blends — and of course, more top money-saving secrets.

The $7 a Meal Slow Cooker Cookbook: With this cookbook, families will find 301 great recipes that almost cook themselves, including Spicy Turkey Meatballs; Hearty Root Vegetable Soup; Pizza Fondue; Crock-Pot Fajitas; Black Bean Lasagna; and more. This comprehensive, all-purpose cookbook is packed with simple instructions, nutritional information, and the amount of money needed for each recipe and makes preparing delicious, healthy, and cheap meals easier than ever before!

Good Cheap Eats Dinner in 30 Minutes or Less: Good Cheap Eats serves up 65 two-course dinners, consisting of a main dish and a substantial side, salad, or soup, all of which take 30 minutes or less to prepare. And as a mother of six and a busy parent, she shows home cooks how to get dinner on the table quickly and inexpensively without relying on heavily processed shortcuts or artificial ingredients. Great for time-pressed couples, families with picky eaters, or singles that need a quick solution to dinner tonight.

Easy Frugal Cookbook: It’s easier than you think to make hearty meals that are tasty, budget-friendly, and nutritious. Discover an easy cookbook that shows you how, with 100 inexpensive family recipes that use basic ingredients, and can be made in just a few steps. This easy cookbook will help you whip up satisfying dishes like Crispy Coconut Drumsticks or Open-Face Turkey Sandwiches for everyone in the house for just $5. All it takes is the right recipe, a few tricks, and a little planning to make the most of your food budget.