3 Easy Dinners from Just 1 Bag of Groceries | Allrecipes

In this one bag are three dinners to feed my family. Same groceries, different flavors, and a whole lot less wondering what to make tonight. Starting with my proteins, chicken, boneless, skinless chicken breast. You can use chicken thighs also. You just need at least two pounds worth. Also a pack of ground beef, and we've got a lot of freshness in here. Some cilantro, green onions, cucumber, some peppers. I'm doing a jalapeno pepper. You could also just do bell peppers here if you want. And a couple of limes. From the dairy department, just some sour cream and a big block of cheese. To bulk it up, we've got some pasta, rice, tortillas, some chicken stock. However, this should be a pantry staple, so maybe you didn't have to buy this. Some canned beans, coconut milk, a little cream of mushroom, and a big jar of salsa. And some curry paste. That's the bag, and would you believe it? It all fits on a cutting board, and this is enough to feed my family three times. Watch me. First thing I'm making is a very popular dish right now. It is a coconut curry broth bowl. First thing I'm going to do is cook my chicken. This is going to be for dinner one and dinner three. Do it once. We don't need to do it multiple times. So I'm just going to season my chicken. I'm cooking this what I like to call the restaurant way, where I start it on the stove and finish it in the oven. You get the caramelization, so you get a lot of flavor on the outside, but then it's also nice and juicy on the inside. These flavors are going to work with both dishes, so I'm keeping it pretty neutral. We can add more flavors specific to each dish down the road. These brothy bowls have recently been made popular by a lot of content creators. However, they are a long time regional comfort food of Asia and parts of Europe, and comfort is exactly what this dish is. So I've got salt, pepper, a little garlic powder, a little onion powder, and some paprika. Just trying to season enough to establish a little crust. Let's season the other side after we get this down. So heat up a skillet, you want it to be an oven-proof skillet. Add in some oil and you're gonna go down with your chicken, season side down. Okay, I'm just going to repeat the same seasonings on the other side. And we're just going to cook this until it easily releases from the pan and has a nice color on it. The trick to getting multiple dinners from one bag of A bag of groceries is to make a grocery list. Have a little game plan before you go to the store. You will save so much more money that way. That bag of groceries was less than 50 bucks, so three dinners for less than that, not too shabby. Definitely cheaper than takeout. Don't force this. You want it to release from the pan on its own like that. That's that good color. Now we're gonna cook it for just about one minute on this side, and then I'm gonna deglaze to start building my broth. Gotten that hard sear on it, and now we want it to cook a little more gently. If you cook it the whole time at that high temperature, you're just going to end up with chicken jerky. While the chicken cooks, you have enough time to make your rice and cut your veggies. A benefit to not washing the rice is it's going to stick together a little more. And for this dish, that's perfect. Probably don't need an entire cucumber, so you could probably use some of this for also a second dinner. The veggies are our toppings for the bowl. And also, you can top with whatever you want. You could add some avocado here. sugar snap peas or broccoli. This is also a good dinner for a busy weeknight because you can have everything ready and then if you've got kids like I do where everyone's on different schedules they can build their own bowl whenever it's convenient. These green onions are also going to serve double duty. I'm mainly just using the tops for this dish and I'm going to save the bottoms for something else. That's what it's all about when you are making that grocery list is to find things that can serve more than one purpose. You're going to save a lot of money that way. I also probably don't need a whole lime. I'll probably have just enough. Leftover for a cocktail. Chicken is done. Don't forget this handle is hot, so keep something on it. All right, I'm gonna remove the chicken and just let it stand. And then I'm gonna scrape up any bits that remain. Now we're gonna make our curry broth. I'm gonna add a big spoonful of curry paste. You can do that to your liking. It's not super spicy, but it does have a kick. Kind of stir that around in there. And I've got our can of coconut milk. And you want a lot of broth. When we have any sort of soup situation, my kids love the broth the most. And these are broth bowls, so you want plenty per person. I'm gonna add in some soy sauce, a little dried ginger. And then I'm just gonna bring this up to a simmer and let those flavors come together. Give it a little taste, see if we're on the right track. It'll be delicious. Just a little bit of brown sugar. Kind of round it all out and you could just use white sugar if brown sugar is not in your pantry. So all that has to do come to a simmer our chicken is resting then I'll slice it up that's the extent of dinner. I'm just going to do little slices of chicken in my bowl but you can see how good the chicken is cooked. Hot rice we're going to add our chicken trying to do it the way I see other people do it. The star of the show for this meal is the broth. Cucumber. This is one if you want to add other veggies you could for sure. You're just building those perfect bites. A little green onion and then a good squeeze of lime. Dinner number one is complete. Coconut curry chicken broth bowls. See the perfect bite right there? It's like the warm hug from your cool grandmother. It feels like a bowl of comfort with some sophistication. It's got a lot more flavor than your normal just chicken soup or chicken and rice. That coconut The coconut and that curry, mmm. Second meal, we're gonna use the rest of our chicken to make chicken spaghetti. I cannot believe, I don't think I have ever made this for a video. I've done a lot of videos and a lot of recipes. So I was just inspired to use my groceries to make chicken spaghetti. A lot of recipes call for a can of Rotel or diced tomatoes with green chilies. I'm going to use salsa. Some recipes do call for salsa because I'm also using this for meal number three. And I'm using some jalapeno. Instead of a can of green chilies because this is a green chili. I'm also going to use some more of those green onions Just to give a little onion flavor. This is going to create the flavor the base flavor for our sauce So we'll get that going back here. I've got a pot of water coming to a boil for the spaghetti going in with Some butter to saute my veggies, starter sauce. A lot of recipes use cream of chicken and cream of mushroom, sometimes one, sometimes the other. I'm just gonna use cream of mushroom, but I'm kinda gonna make a little cream of chicken too. To the butter, peppers and onion, and a little garlic powder. These do not need a lot of cook time, just about a minute to become fragrant. I'm gonna add in just a little bit of flour. And I'm doing that because I have a little chicken stock left over from our broth base. May as well make use of it. And this is gonna be cream of chicken. To that, I'm going in with our cream of mushroom, and then some salsa. All right, and that's the base for the chicken spaghetti. I'm gonna cook the spaghetti. I'm gonna toss it in here and we just have a couple more ingredients to prep. Shredding the rest of that chicken. See when you slice and shred your meat it goes further because people don't have to think you have to do one whole breast per person. I like kind of chunky shreds when I shred my chicken. So I shred it and then I kind of break it in half so it's a little chunkier. Okay, chicken's done. When you're trying to get double duty out of ingredients, it's another sign to be flexible when it comes to a recipe. For example, maybe this recipe called for cheddar cheese, but you wanted to use... Colby Jack, because you want that for another recipe. Things like that are not going to make a huge difference, so be flexible. A lot of times you save money that way buying one bigger block versus two different kinds of cheeses. And you're also going to save money when you shred your own. Drained my spaghetti and I returned it to the pot because that's now going to be our mixing bowl. Now everything else goes in. Chicken, delicious cream sauce, a little sour cream, and most of our cheese. This is reminding me of a meal you take to people when they've moved into a new house or had a baby. The crew's gonna like that, the crew's gonna like that. Transfer this to a casserole dish and the rest of our cheese on top. And it just goes into the oven until it's bubbly. Of course, everything's hot, so this will not take long. I'm going in to 375. Hot and bubbly coming right up. Oh yeah, chicken spaghetti, meal number two. We're even gonna have leftover groceries. Nothing like a creamy, cheesy pasta casserole. There was room in that bag for a veggie if you wanted to add a salad. or some broccoli or something to this meal or you can say no there's veggies in here. This type of dinner is one of my favorite foods of all time. Chicken spaghetti our first time together for the win and for the record not only is this enough to feed my family but there will also be leftovers. We're going to put our final groceries to work with our final dinner. For my final dinner we're using ground beef as our protein and we are making crispy beef and bean burritos. So we're just going to make some Taco meat, you've seen me do this a million times. Get that good and crumbled and then we'll season it up. You have a packet of taco seasoning, you can use that. Going in with chili powder, cumin, onion powder. Normally I would put some onion in here, but being lazy. And a little garlic powder, salt and pepper. Activate those spices in the heat. And then I'm going in with pinto beans. You could do whatever bean you like. I'm gonna add a little splash of water. I had rice leftover from my bowls. I'm gonna throw that in here. You can also, we had half a pack of rice left, so you could cook more rice. This is gonna feed more than my family. Definitely makes several nice size burritos. Let me show you. Tortillas, going down with a little cheese, which is the rest of our block of cheese. Filling, a little more cheese, some of our salsa, roll it up, and I'm also gonna use the remaining ingredients we have to make a delicious sour cream sauce. That's how you make your Taco Tuesday feel a little more special, like we put a little more effort into it. I know I say this every time I roll a burrito, but I know how to roll a burrito because I used to do it for a living. Before I make them crispy, I'm gonna have a sauce ready to go. So that's gonna be the rest of our sour cream. Your girl screwed up. A lot of this whole thing is cilantro because some was supposed to go in our broth bowls, but I forgot, so just remember that. We've also got more peppers. The creaminess cuts some of the kick and our other lime. Good little pinch of salt. That should be it. See, it's like a sauce, not like a thick dip. To make our burritos crispy, you could do this in the oven or the air fryer. I'm just gonna do it in a skillet. This is not quite a chimichanga because those are deep fried. This is just a little crisping and it just makes for a better burrito because you get all the things. And place it seam side down and let it get crispy. It's like a meal prep thing. You could prep a bunch of these burritos and just keep them in your freezer or fridge. Then you can just thaw it out and crisp it in the skillet. It's giving Taco Bell grilled burrito, but crispy. Oh my, this is gonna be good. Yes, y'all, yes. I'm gonna drizzle sauce all over because it's mine. It's the perfect bite burrito. Every bite's gonna be perfect. You know what I'm gonna say, it's hot. And cold and creamy and crunchy. I probably didn't have to be so messy about it, but this is a recipe you have to try, or next time you make your burrito, you better make it crispy. Three dinners, one bag, and zero reruns. Smart shopping just pays off. And these were three amazing dinners, not just average. My job here is done.