Cheap and Easy Recipes: Lasagna Chili Dinner (Feed 4 for $5.08)

I love Soup, Chili and Stews!

We have a tradition in our house that whenever it snows we make a pot of soup. I’m really starting to rethinking this tradition after all of the snow that we’ve had this year.

If we have an extremely hot summer I may have to rethink our Summer Salad Tradition too.

Here’s just about everything that you need to make Lasagna Chili. I forgot to include the lasagna noodles and the ingredients for the garlic toast. I don’t know what I was thinking forgetting the stars of the dish.

Do you see that carton of chicken broth? I didn’t use it! I used my homemade broth instead, because it was FREEEEEE. I saved $1.49 using my own broth.

Time to start chopping!

To keep everyone in the room from crying over cutting up an onion, try putting it in the freezer for about 15 minutes before slicing in to it.

Gordon Ramsay has a great video on how to properly chop an onion.
Check it Out: How to Chop an Onion

More chopping.

Do you know how to easily chop a bell pepper? Check out this video How to dice a bell pepper.

Don’t you love all of the How To Video’s on YouTube?

Brown the ground beef, bell peppers and onions.

It’s best to do it in a Dutch oven because it can easily go from the stove top to the oven.

Now it’s time to add all of the canned goodies.

Do you like my new can opener? I’ve been using a hand held one for years and it finally opened up it’s last can. My family has been begging me to get an electric one so I finally decided to give into their demands.

Now add your spices to the mix and bring it to a boil.

Because it’s winter and I wanted to keep the costs low on this meal I had to use dried herbs. If it were summer this picture would have a whole lot more green in it.

I can’t wait to start my herb garden, fresh herbs are the best!!!!

My kids love to break things, so I recruited them to break up the lasagna noodles.

Add the broken noodles to the boiling mixture.

While the noodles are cooking in our yummy meat and tomato mixture, toast up some garlic bread.

I like to keep the costs as low as possible so I used some leftover hamburger buns that I had stored in the freezer. .

You should be in my kitchen right now, it smells amazing!

You can keep the lasagna chili in the Dutch oven, I only moved mine to a casserole dish because I wanted to try out my new birthday present, the Temp-tations bakeware.

Isn’t it pretty!

Place that golden garlic toast that you made on top of the lasagna chili.

Now hide everything with cheese.

I normally use mozzarella cheese for this, but I found a big bag of pizza cheese on clearance.

It’s almost time to eat!

All that’s left to do is pop the dish in the oven and wait for the cheese to start browning.

Doesn’t that look yummy? I wish that you could smell it!!!!

**I doubled this recipe = 1/2 for dinner tonight and the other half I’m freezing.. It freezes really well.

Ingredients

¾ pound ground beef ($1.41)

½ medium onion, chopped ($0.04)

½ green bell pepper, chopped ($0.25)

2 cups chicken broth (free)

15 ounce petite diced tomatoes ($0.49)

8 ounces tomato sauce ($0.25)

2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.08)

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning ($0.02)

½ teaspoon thyme ($0.15)

2 teaspoons brown sugar ($0.01)

½ teaspoon salt

6-8 lasagna noodles, broken into pieces ($0.40)

4 slices bread (free)

2 tablespoons butter, softened ($0.10)

1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese ($1.13)

½ head lettuce ($0.50)

8 tablespoons salad dressing ($0.25)

How to get these prices:

• Ground Beef – (1 pound for $1.88) purchased on sale from a local grocery store. I bought several pounds.
• Onion – (3 pounds for $0.79) purchased at a discount grocery store on sale.*There are 3-4 medium onions in a pound.
• Bell Pepper – (1 pepper for $0.49) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store. *When prices are at their lowest, I’ll buy several to chop up and freeze, you can do the same thing with onions.
• Chicken Broth – (free) I make my own using the carcass from a chicken along with the scraps from onions, celery and carrots. Instead of throwing out the scraps I freeze them for making broth or stock.
• Diced Tomatoes – (15 ounces for $0.49) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store. *I bought a couple of cases, so my shelves are stocked for awhile.
• Tomato Sauce – (8 ounces for $0.25) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store. *I bought quite a few and stocked up.
• Garlic – (1 head for $0.49) purchased from a local grocery store chain. *I used jarred, minced garlic for this recipe, of course it was purchased when it was on sale, I just can’t remember how  much I paid for it.
• Italian Seasoning – (1.23 ounces for $0.99) purchased from a discount grocery store.
• Thyme – (0.37 ounces for $2.82) purchased from Walmart. *1 teaspoon of dried Thyme weighs 0.04 ounces. 
• Brown Sugar – (32 ounces for $1.19) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store. 1 teaspoon of brown sugar weighs 0.15 ounces
• Lasagna Noodles – (16 ounces for $1.00) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store. *There are 20 noodles in a 16 ounce package.
• Bread – (Free) instead of throwing out the last couple of pieces of bread or buns, freeze them for garlic toast, croutons and bread crumbs.
• Butter – (1 pound for $1.69) purchased on sale from a discount grocery store.*Margarine would work too. 
• Cheese – (8 ounces for $1.50) purchased on sale from our local supermarket.
• Lettuce – (1 head for $1.00)  lettuce regularly goes on sale for a $1.00 or less.*Check your weekly store flyers for sales.
• Salad Dressing – (16 ounces for $1.00) purchased from Dollar Tree.