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Back in my early 20s there were a few things.
No idea if those are still cost effective, but two or three of those could be stretched out over a week for under $10 at the time. I still eat all of those things at least every few years for some hits of nostalgia, even the cheap ass pizza.
Beans and cornbread. Or beans and rice. Cornmeal is especially cheap in the US with how subsidized it is, so cornbread is a good way to fill out a meal.
Falafel: dried chickpeas with garlic & parsley fried in oil. Very high calorie/cost, because the chickpeas are basically oil sponges, and it's hard to beat vegetable oil on calories/cost. $1.50 for 1000 calories.
Kimchi fried rice: Kimchi, rice, couple of fried eggs for protein. $2.10 for 1000 calories. Make your own kimchi even cheaper.
Chili noodles: cheap, store-brand spaghetti with chili oil-soy sauce dressing. Don't sub ramen for pasta - that stuff's expensive. $2.50/1000 cal. Make your own chili oil for extra savings.
To add to this, buying from specific ethnicity markets tends to be cheaper. If you have nearby Chinese/Eastern, any middle eastern, Mexican/Latin American stores, you can find a lot of really cheap staples to make.
My ultimate struggle meal:
In 1 pot:
Fast, really cheap, and has the important bonus that the only dish to clean is the 1 pot. When struggling, I also don't feel like doing a lot of housework.
Sadly, I can never remember the best ratios, so the mayonnaise is rather mandatory as it can save a rather bland filling. Sometimes, I splurge and use guacamole instead, sometimes I also put in mini-spring rolls from the same shop I buy the rice and curry.
With my "recipe" out of the way, the important thing is to find some ingredients that have a low price for lot's of weight, and then choose a recipe that's like 90% cheap ingredients by weight. (Remember that some ingredients take on a lot of water, rice taking on twice it's volume for example, so they're cheaper than the price tag implies). I personally look for food that's under 3€/kg. The other 10% of the meal can be way more expensive (curry paste in my recipe), but, because you only use so little of it, as a whole it's still cheap.
Probably the absolute cheapest meal are homemade hash browns, potatoes are ridiculously cheap, with apples being the cheapest fruit where I live. Next cheapest vegetable around here are carrots.
Cuban beans and rice are very delicious and very affordable.
Nothing against the other suggestions, but pretty much anything you can buy that is "ready to eat" (canned soup) or "easy to make" (Kraft dinner), even if it is already cheap, would still be cheaper to make yourself from scratch. Cooking, in bulk, is your friend.
Two cartons of soup broth $1.77 CDN/946ml each, half a bag of frozen veggies $2.57/500g, boom you have 5 soup meals for <$1 per meal. A cup of flour to make dumplings in that soup and make it more appealing. Compare that to a canned soup which seems to be up in price lately, between 1.50 - 3.00, and you're laughing, and eating a lot less salt.
I haven't figured out exactly the cost of making bread (I play with the recipe and how many loaves), but I am absolutely certain it costs less and tastes better than the cheapest bullshit bread you can get at a store. So less than $2 for a loaf, and it actually smells and tastes like bread and doesn't dissolve in your mouth like cotton candy. No bullshit preservatives.
Pasta with pasta sauce, ez and cheap af, filling. <$1 per meal.
Things that are more difficult imo are meat and cheese due to the cost. I like to buy frozen logs of ground beef which isn't that appealing on it's own, but is passable in chili and shepherd's pie. Cheese can go a long way especially if you shred it for pizza (and you already have flour and pasta sauce from above.)
Speaking of shepherd's pie, potatoes are cheap and versatile. One tube of ground beef with a layer of frozen veg and mashed taters on top, again <$1 per meal.
Not to mention rice which is maybe the ultimate value-for-money food when you just need something in your stomach. Foodies will crucify me, but I love to eat it with margerine (way cheaper than butter) and salt and pepper. There's so much more you can do with it, though. Good for bulking up soups too.
I used to fry a pan of frozen veggies with salt and thyme, but these days I'm often lucky enough to be able to get a lot of rescued food for free.
Sweet potatoes. Alternately, potatoes, carrots and green beans stewed together with cornbread or rice. If you can afford it, chicken, pork, or turkey for flavor and protein. It need not be expensive cuts, necks or tails will do.
10 minute farro from Trader Joe's. $2 a bag.
https://traderjoesrants.com/2022/04/20/trader-joes-10-minute-farro-whole-grain/
Depends where you’re at. If you’re not too far from forests and meadows, mushrooms, grasshoppers and herbs.
Other than that, rice, noodles. You can add the above things to your rice and noodles.
You can cook your noodles in tomato sauce like spaghetti al‘assassina to get some variety.
Remove wings and legs from grasshoppers before eating, they’re scratchy.
Only eat mushrooms and herbs you’re certain they’re not poisonous.
Beans/legumes can be cheap
Boil some red lentils, add carrots when they're half done. Then some coconut cream and a stock cube. Fry up some onion and garlic with cumin and coriander powder, then chuck that in too. Eat with rice. Add some sambal.
try to opt for dried beans over canned if u have time canned beans are expensive these days. lentils especially red lentils cook pretty fast from dry, whereas white beans or black beans take longer but if u can cook a whole bag it should last u ab a week. u can season w season salt or bouillon or some cheap spice mix so u dont have to buy a bunch of individual spices.
When very low on money, it's what's in the cupboard,.which is oil, butter and pasta. Cheese is a bonus but the fridge will be empty before the cupboard.
You should always have rice and pasta available. Cheep and quick. So good for when tired or lazy, as well as when broke. Lots of people recommend beans but I don't like them so much.
Look at the specials in your supermarket. Many please discount heavily for stuff that is close to expiry date. If you shop daily you've less waste and get food deals.
Rotisserie chicken. Cheapest thing in the store most times, and they're pre-cooked, pre-seasoned, ready to devour
I also lived on chicken nuggets for a while, but I can't recommend those.
Other comments remind me of potatoes! So many simple ways to prepare them. my favorite is microwave baked potato.
Rinse it off, stick holes in it with a fork several times, coat it in oil, salt it, and microwave until you can smash it with your fingers (through a napkin, or use the fork). Then bust it open, add whatever sounds good that's on hand, and eat it up.
If you don't add salt to a baked potato, then it pairs well with most oversalted foods. Like pour a can of baked beans over the opened potato.
Hopefully you like Indian food, because there are loads of lentil dishes that are super cheap. Dal Makhani plus some basmati rice (and if you’re ambitious, make some naan from scratch). Basically lentils, a few spices, an onion, some garlic and ginger, and rice.
Pasta, instant noodles, polenta, rice+tuna, bean guiso or stew whatever you call it. Also whatever vegetables in season and cheap, ie, potatoes, pumpkin.
Frozen Basa fillets are the cheapest unprocessed meat too
Search for guiso recipes if you need to learn what to do with legumes. Beauty of guiso is that the amount of ingredients doesn't matter much and you can always add more of what you like and remove what you don't like. You can add any bits of meat to it like sausages, chorizo, beef, chicken, you name it. You can also add any tubers, onion, or pumpkin if you have any, but if you don't have any of these things you can still cook it.
Rice & Beans
Hashbrowns
Rice & Lentils
Popcorn
Chili butter noodles
I often fry whatever vegetables I can find and add a fried egg.
Rice and buckwheat are very cheap (and vegan if you're of that persuasion). If you cook buckwheat, you can add a few tiny bits of sausage in there and you've got a very filling meal.
Oatmeal is great because you buy it in huge bags that last long and you can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If the budget is not that bad you cook it with milk. If it is you cook it with water (this is called gruel, medieval peasant food). If you're making gruel add a bit of salt to make it more palatable.
An old classic is of course ramen, but the ramen bricks can be made much more filling if you boil them in a pot with a sausage or two (this requires you to have sausage).
If you live in certain tropical areas you can harvest some edible fruits from unfenced land and use this to enrich your diet.
Eating a couple extra hours of sleep for breakfast instead of food is a dubiously healthy but certainly effective way to save some money on weekends.
A pro tip is if your drawer is not very clean your onions will start to sprout and take root. I didn't have to buy onions for about half a year at one point because I just kept cutting off a bit and it kept growing back. I didn't water them or anything, they just did that in my dark dingy cupboard.
