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How to Feed Four for Under £10 With Our Recipes

Seven Meals That Feed a Family of Four for Less Than £10

Not a list of lentil recipes. Seven actual chain-food dinners from this site, costed on supermarket own-brand lines, that come in under ten pounds for four people.

By food.fast editors, recipe, research and data desk 3 min read Updated
A family table laid with home-made burgers, chips, rice and small bowls of sauce, lit warmly against a dark background
AI-generated editorial illustration created for food.fast; it does not depict a documented test.

The useful answer first

  • Seven complete dinners for four, all under £10 and most under £6.
  • Every figure is the quantity used at UK supermarket own-brand prices.
  • Three of them freeze, which makes them cheaper again per meal.
  • The shopping list overlaps heavily, which is the actual point.

The seven meals, costed

All figures are for four people, ingredients at UK supermarket own-brand prices in September 2026, for the quantity used. The method is on how we cost recipes.

Meal Cost for four Per head Time
Jolly Spaghetti £2.85 £0.71 35 min
Pan pizza ×2 with dip £3.82 £0.96 25 min + rising
Crunchwraps ×4 £4.30 £1.08 30 min
Big Macs ×4 £4.40 £1.10 30 min
Chili with rice £4.70 £1.18 110 min
Peri-peri chicken and three sides £8.65 £2.16 50 min + marinating
Fried chicken, mash and gravy £9.10 £2.28 60 min + brining

The cheapest of these is under a pound a head for a dish children genuinely enjoy. The most expensive is a whole roast chicken dinner with three sides for less than a single delivered pizza.

The overlap, which is where the real saving is

Look at those seven meals as one shopping trip rather than seven and the arithmetic improves again, because the store-cupboard items repeat.

Bought once, used in five or more of the seven: plain flour, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, dried oregano, mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar.

Bought once, used in three or four: cheddar, buttermilk, tinned tomatoes, long-grain rice, bread flour, yeast.

Bought for one meal only: banana ketchup, tostadas, pickled jalapeños.

The practical effect is that the first week of cooking this way costs more than the table suggests and every week afterwards costs less. Which is exactly the point made in cost per portion, not per packet.

A week of five of these dinners, shopped together, comes to around £28 for a family of four including the store cupboard, and around £21 the second time.

The three that also fill a freezer

Three of the seven produce leftovers worth having, which changes their real cost per meal substantially.

Chili at 2× gives sixteen portions for about £13. That is 81 pence a portion, and it freezes better than anything else here. Ninety minutes of mostly unattended simmering buys you eight dinners.

Seasoned beef at 2× gives the base for ten meals - tacos, burritos, Crunchwraps, nachos - for about £8.

Crunchwraps freeze folded and unfried, and go from freezer to plate in thirty minutes in an oven. Eight of them for about £9.

Doubling any of the three costs roughly 60 per cent more, not 100 per cent, and takes about 20 per cent longer. That is the batch-cooking argument in numbers, and it is covered properly in which things are worth batch cooking.

What we are not claiming

Four honest caveats.

These are not health foods. They are burgers, pizza and fried chicken. What cooking them yourself changes is salt, sugar, frying oil and portion size, and the nutrition hub is precise about how much.

The time is real. Ninety minutes for a chili is ninety minutes. The table above prints it for that reason.

Some of them need planning. Peri-peri chicken wants overnight marinating; fried chicken wants an eight-hour brine; pizza dough is better after two days. A meal that requires yesterday is not a meal you can decide on at six o'clock.

Prices move. These were costed in September 2026 at UK supermarket own-brand prices and are reviewed quarterly. The ratios will hold better than the absolute numbers.

Questions this raises

What is the cheapest meal on this site?
Jolly Spaghetti at about 71 pence a head for four, or a bean Crunchwrap at around 70 pence each.
Do these figures include everything?
They include ingredients at the quantity used. They exclude energy, your time and equipment, and we say so on every cost page.
Which of these should I make first?
The chili, doubled. It is the biggest return on a single cooking session and it freezes better than anything else here.
How much does the first shop cost?
Around £28 for five of these dinners for four including the store cupboard, and around £21 the second time, because most of the cupboard carries over.

Recipes that use this

Wendy's

Wendy's Chili Copycat Recipe

Beef browned hard and broken into chunks rather than crumbled, a sweet tomato-juice base, and two kinds of bean. Nine…

1 hr 50 min Easy Serves 8