HEALTHY Budget-Friendly Dinner Recipes | easy meal ideas #Healthyfood

Hi everyone, how's it going? Welcome back to my channel. In today's video, I'm gonna be sharing with you four really healthy and budget-friendly dinner recipes. And these recipes are great if you're looking for meals that are pretty easy to whip up, but that are still very nutritious and very affordable as well. So I think that you're going to love them. Full recipe details can be found over on my blog, so I will leave links below in the description box to each recipe for you to get the full instructions. And let's get started. The first recipe we're making today is a chicken and spinach curry, also known as an Indian chicken saag. I absolutely love Indian food, and the combination of spices used in this dish, like cumin and coriander and ginger and cinnamon, are so, so good. So we're gonna start by chopping up some garlic and onion, and adding that to a pan with some coconut oil or butter. You could also use ghee. And sauteing that until it's lightly browned and really fragrant. Next, we're gonna add in some chopped chicken breast and all of our spices. So we have ginger, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and some sea salt. So give that a good stir until the chicken is fully cooked. And next, we're gonna add in our spinach. I've got here some frozen blocks of fresh spinach that'll just thaw out. You can get these in the freezer section of your grocery store. You can absolutely use fresh spinach. I've done that many times for this recipe, but it does take up more space and needs to be added in in increments to allow it to kind of wilt down. Frozen spinach is also really cost-effective. One package here that contains two blocks in it cost me less than $2 each. Give the mixture a stir every few minutes as the spinach thaws until it's cooked down, and then simmer for about 25 to 30 minutes or so. When it's done, you'll have a really nice, thick spinach sauce with chicken that breaks apart pretty easily, and serve that over rice. I have jasmine rice here, and enjoy. This recipe is so incredibly flavorful. The next recipe we're making today is a potato leek and chickpea soup. This is a pretty classic potato leek soup that's warming and nourishing, but has some added chickpeas for some plant-based protein. So we're gonna start by slicing up our leeks. I like to cut them into thin slices width-wise, using up both the green and the white portion of the stalk. Next, you wanna dice up your potato as well into small chunks. Russet or Yukon gold potatoes work well here. And then add the veggies to a pot. And we're gonna fill up the pot with just enough water to mostly submerge the veggies. You can use vegetable broth here instead, but I'm gonna be adding in some bouillon cubes to the soup, so you want to omit them if you're using broth. Bring the soup to a boil, add in your bouillon cubes here, and then simmer for about 25 minutes or so until the veggies have softened. Toward the end of the cooking, you can add in your canned chickpeas as well. Next, what I like to do is puree a part of the soup. So a handheld immersion blender works really well here, but since I don't have one, I'm just transferring about three quarters of the soup to my blender, pureeing it, and then transferring it back into the pot. This gives the soup a really nice creamy but slightly chunky texture, although feel free to puree entirely if you want to or leave it as is. Top your soup with some freshly cracked black pepper or fresh herb sprigs. This is also a wonderful meal prepping recipe. There will be lots of leftovers that you can store in some airtight containers for a few days or in the freezer for longer. Our next recipe is a spaghetti squash teriyaki bowl. Super nutritious and incredibly flavorful with the homemade teriyaki sauce on top. So we're gonna start by slicing our spaghetti squash in half lengthwise and placing it flesh down on a parchment-lined baking sheet for about 35 to 40 minutes or so at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. I love spaghetti squash. It's a really nutritious kind of noodle alternative, but for a more budget-friendly option here, feel free to skip this step entirely and use rice noodles, which cook up in no time. But while that's cooking, we're gonna whip up the teriyaki sauce, which is really easy to make. First, you're gonna wanna mince up some fresh garlic and ginger and saute that lightly in a pot with some olive oil. Then we're gonna add in some soy sauce. I like to use gluten-free tamari. Water, arrowroot starch or cornstarch, they're very similar, and some honey. This will thicken and bubble up after just a few minutes and it's ready to go. While the squash is still cooking, we're gonna chop up our vegetables. So you can use whichever ones you like or whichever ones you have on hand, but I have here broccoli and carrots. I also often like to use green beans in this sort of recipe, but pop those into a pan and saute them in a little bit of oil or steam them in a bit of water, your choice. For my protein of choice here, I'm gonna be cooking up some salmon with this recipe, but if you want to use chicken or beef strips or even tofu, you can add those in here with the veggies. Once the squash is fully cooked, remove the seeds, pull apart the noodles, and add them to the pan with the vegetables. And lastly, I'm gonna cook up my salmon here on a pan. I often like to bake salmon, but pan frying is a really quick way to do it and it only takes about 10 minutes or so. So I'm adding it skin down on a pan with a little bit of oil and then gonna flip it after a few minutes. And once it's almost done, you can drizzle on a little bit of the teriyaki sauce to give it a bit of flavor and then serve everything up in some bowls and drizzle on the remaining teriyaki sauce on top. You can also just toss the sauce into the veggies in the pan, directly in the pan, kind of like a stir fry, but I like to drizzle it on top this way. Our last recipe today is a really simple, really cozy stovetop cabbage casserole. This is my take on a recipe that my mom actually often made when I was growing up and I just love it. It's so easy to make. So we're gonna start by finely chopping up a small onion or half of a medium sized onion and then toss that into a large pot in a little bit of olive oil and give it a good saute until it's translucent. Next, we're gonna add in some ground beef, dried parsley, dried thyme, salt, and pepper. You could also use ground chicken or ground turkey if you would like to. Once that's fully cooked, we're gonna add in some diced tomatoes, some beef broth, and rice. And while that's cooking away and allowing the rice to soften a little bit, we're gonna core and slice up some cabbage. So you'll want to use a small cabbage here or about half of a larger one. I like to slice the cabbage in half and then into half again and then remove the tough white core and then simply slice the cabbage into strips. Add the cabbage to the pot, pop on a lid here, and let the mixture simmer for about 25 minutes or so until the cabbage has cooked down. Then we're gonna add in some tomato paste, let it cook a few minutes longer, and then give it a good final stir. And that's it. Super hearty and just a really nice comforting meal. You can serve this in bowls and top it with some fresh parsley or some thyme sprigs. I love this recipe. It is so, so yummy. And that's it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you enjoy these recipes. If you give them a go, give this video a thumbs up. If you enjoyed it, you can also subscribe to my channel for new videos every week. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.