A Two-Week Meal Plan for Under €30 a Week

Key takeaways

A complete 14-day dinner rotation, around €30 per person per week including breakfasts and lunches.
Structure: five planned dinners, one flexible night, one free night — the free night is what makes the plan survive real life.
Built on sixteen cheap core ingredients so nothing gets bought for a single meal.
All ten recipes included below, free.

Here is a complete two-week dinner rotation. Every recipe is below. Take it, use it, change it.

I’m giving it away because the plan isn’t the valuable part — the structure underneath is, and I’ll explain it as we go so you can eventually build your own.

The structure

Every week has the same shape:

Five planned dinners — decided in advance, no thinking required on the night
One flexible night — whatever needs using up
One free night — takeaway, eating out, cereal at nine o’clock

The free night is deliberate, and it’s the part people want to delete. Don’t. A plan that assumes seven perfect nights breaks the first time life happens, and a broken plan gets abandoned. Building the night off in is what makes it survive past week three.

The shopping engine

Sixteen items do almost all the work:

The core ten: onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, tinned tomatoes, dried lentils, chickpeas or beans, rice and pasta, eggs, frozen vegetables.

The flavour six: cooking oil, salt and pepper, cumin and paprika, dried oregano, stock cubes, lemons or vinegar.

Under €15 for a week’s worth in most of Europe. Everything below is built on these plus two or three extras per meal. The flavour six matter more than they look — cheap food that tastes of nothing is the fastest route back to delivery apps.

Week One

Monday — Red lentil dal with rice and yoghurt (€0.65/portion)
Tuesday — Chicken thigh traybake with root veg (€1.40)
Wednesday — Pasta with tomato, garlic and sardines (€0.95)
Thursday — Chickpea and spinach curry (€0.80)
Friday — Flexible: use up what’s dying
Saturday — Pork and cabbage with mash (€2.10)
Sunday — Free night

Week Two

Monday — Potato and leek soup with bread (€0.55)
Tuesday — Egg fried rice with frozen peas (€0.70)
Wednesday — White bean and tomato stew (€0.85)
Thursday — Frozen fish, roast potatoes, greens (€1.65)
Friday — Flexible: use up
Saturday — Something better: whatever you fancy (~€2.50)
Sunday — Free night

Notice the overlaps. Tinned tomatoes appear three times, rice twice, potatoes twice, onions in nearly everything. Nothing is bought for a single meal, so nothing gets stranded in the fridge — that’s the single biggest source of savings in the whole plan.

Notice the cost tiers too. Four meals under €0.90, four in the middle, two genuinely good ones. That mix is why the average works without any night feeling like a budget diet.

The recipes

All serve four. “Onion base” means a fried onion and garlic — eight minutes.

1. Red lentil dal — €0.65
300g red lentils, 1 onion, 3 garlic cloves, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp paprika, 1 stock cube, oil, half a lemon.
Fry the onion until golden, 8 minutes. Add garlic and spices for one minute. Add lentils, stock cube, 900ml water. Simmer 20 minutes until collapsed. Salt generously, finish with lemon. Serve on rice with yoghurt. The lemon isn’t optional — it’s what makes it taste finished.

2. Chicken thigh traybake — €1.40
8 bone-in thighs, 600g potatoes, 3 carrots, 2 onions, paprika, oil, salt.
Chop everything into similar chunks, toss with oil and seasoning, chicken skin-side up on top. 200°C, 45 minutes, single layer. The chicken fat renders into the vegetables — that’s the entire point. Thighs are half the price of breast and much harder to overcook.

3. Pasta with tomato, garlic and sardines — €0.95
360g pasta, 2 tins sardines in oil, 1 tin tomatoes, 4 garlic cloves.
Fry sliced garlic gently in the sardine oil. Add tomatoes, simmer 10 minutes. Flake in sardines at the end. Toss with pasta and a splash of its water. Tinned oily fish is the cheapest way to eat fish in Europe — the tinning is why it’s cheap, not a compromise.

4. Chickpea and spinach curry — €0.80
2 tins chickpeas, 1 tin tomatoes, 250g frozen spinach, onion base, cumin, paprika.
Warm the onion base, add spices for a minute. Tomatoes and chickpeas, simmer 15 minutes. Stir in spinach until heated through. Rice or bread.

5. Pork and cabbage with mash — €2.10
600g pork shoulder cubed, half a cabbage, 800g potatoes, onion base, stock cube.
Brown the pork hard in batches. Add onion base, stock cube, 300ml water. Cover, simmer gently 60 minutes. Shredded cabbage for the last 12 minutes. Mash alongside.

6. Potato and leek soup — €0.55
800g potatoes, 2 leeks, stock cube, 30g butter, splash of milk, black pepper.
Sweat the leeks in butter 10 minutes without colouring. Add cubed potato, stock cube, 1.2 litres water. Simmer 20 minutes. Blend or leave chunky. Lots of black pepper.

7. Egg fried rice — €0.70
600g cooked cold rice, 4 eggs, 200g frozen peas, half an onion, oil, soy sauce.
Rice must be cold or it turns to paste. Very hot pan: onion 2 minutes, peas 2 minutes, push aside, scramble eggs, combine. Rice in, toss hard 3 minutes. Soy sauce at the end. (Cool rice fast after cooking, refrigerate within the hour, reheat thoroughly and only once.)

8. White bean and tomato stew — €0.85
2 tins white beans, 1 tin tomatoes, 2 carrots, onion base, oregano, stock cube.
Soften diced carrots in the onion base 10 minutes. Add everything else plus 200ml water, simmer 20 minutes until thick. Olive oil over the top at the table. Freezes very well — double it.

9. Frozen fish, roast potatoes, greens — €1.65
4 frozen white fish fillets, 800g potatoes, frozen peas.
Potatoes into a 200°C oven with oil and salt, 40 minutes. Fish in for the last 18 minutes straight from frozen. Greens boiled 4 minutes. Lemon over everything.

10. The flexible night — three formats
Pick whichever fits what’s dying in your fridge:

Soup: onion base + any vegetables + stock cube + a handful of red lentils, simmer 25 minutes.
Fried rice or grain bowl: leftover rice, an egg, any vegetables cut small. Ten minutes.
Traybake: everything chopped, oil, salt, 210°C, 40 minutes. Tired vegetables are transformed, not just used up.

Lunches and breakfasts

No separate plan needed.

Lunch: cook one and a half times the dinner recipe — tomorrow’s lunch is done. Every meal above reheats well; that’s a selection criterion, not a coincidence. A bought sandwich, drink and fruit runs €5–6; across a working month that’s over €100.

Breakfast: should be boring, and that’s a feature. Pick two or three you’ll repeat — oats, eggs, yoghurt with fruit — and stop planning it. Oats cost about €0.08 a portion.

Two practical notes

Sequence by shelf life. Fresh fish early in the week, lentil meals late. Costs nothing and eliminates most spoilage on its own.

Making it yours. Run this rotation as written for a fortnight, then swap what didn’t work. Keep three rules: build around the core sixteen, keep the cost tiers mixed, and overlap ingredients deliberately — if Monday uses half a cabbage, something later that week uses the other half.

The full system — how to design a rotation from scratch, the 90-minute batch-cooking session that covers five weeknights, and what to do when the plan breaks — is in The €30 Week, a short practical ebook.