Can You Make a Vegan Dinner For $6? (Dollar General Meal Challenge)

With things being so tight these days for a lot of people, it may be hard to imagine eating vegan inexpensively.

After all, a lot of products tailored towards vegans tend to be on the pricier side. Many cost-effective products (like ramen, mac & cheese, and microwave-ready meals) are more often than not, not vegan.

The good news is that we have options, as I’ll illustrate in today’s post. To be honest, it wasn’t actually all that hard to put together a meal; the trick was to balance low cost and ease of preparation.

I did my shopping for this meal at Dollar General, but I imagine similar items could be found at Dollar Tree or another dollar store near you.

The Haul

From Dollar General, I picked up 6 items that totaled $5.95. I grabbed some Spanish rice, pinto beans, taco seasoning, a can of corn, a can of diced tomatoes, and a package of taco shells.

We saved some green by going with Dollar General’s Clover Valley brand on these ingredients, rather than their name brand counterparts.

We pack in more flavor and less prep by buying a stovetop rice mix that already has seasonings in it. The hardest ingredient to prepare out of what I’ve purchased, really, is the pinto beans. I’ll show you how I prepared everything below.

The Prep

To prepare these burrito bowls, the first thing I did was soak my beans in water for a few hours. This makes them not only cook more quickly, but also makes them a bit easier to digest.

I rinsed the beans after soaking (which I learned was the opposite of what you’re supposed to do), then boiled them in fresh water for about an hour and a half. I mashed them, then added taco seasoning to taste.

I prepared the rice according to the package directions, as well as the crunchy tortillas. I heated the corn a little, but served the tomatoes as they were, sort of like a salsa.

I composed the burrito bowls and crumbled the tortillas on top slightly, sort of like tortilla chips. I suppose you could have made these burrito bowls without the crunchy tortillas, but I really feel like they added some nice extra texture–plus the added fun of eating the burrito bowl like a dip.

The reason I went with crunchy tortillas instead of tortilla chips was the price. Any tortilla chips you might try to get at Dollar General would be upwards of $2, but these crunchy tortillas were just a buck–and served virtually the same purpose.

The Meal

I think these burrito bowls came out really tasty! I was surprised at how much food this made. I separated it into three separate servings, but I got full before I could finish my serving. I think this could have easily made four servings, depending on how hungry you get.

All in all, I think this was a very satisfying meal. It was totally vegan, and the ingredients were pretty easy to find in my store.

The total cost per serving came out to $1.98 each for three servings, with the entire meal prep coming out to $5.95. Separated into five slightly smaller, lunch-sized portions, it would come out to $1.19 per serving.

Hopefully you got something useful out of this post! This was one of my first times doing something like this, so if there’s something you think I could do better (or if you’d like me to do it again), please let me know in the comments!

Until next time, peace 🙂